Peruvian President announces consultation on new Constitution

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced on April 22 that he would send a bill to Congress to consult the citizens in the local elections of October if they wanted a new Constitution.

“We will send a bill to the Congress of the Republic, following the constitutional course, so that in these next municipal and regional elections […] the Peruvian people are consulted on whether or not they agree with a new Constitution,” said the leftist president.

The ruling party blames the current Constitution, promulgated in 1993 by then-President Alberto Fujimori, for being responsible for the economic inequalities in Peru, by enshrining a free-market model.

“We will submit this bill, which we will work on immediately,” Castillo added while speaking at a public session of the Council of Ministers in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca Empire.

CALL FOR A REFERENDUM

During the campaign that brought him to power nine months ago, Castillo promised to convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution.

However, he did not clarify what mechanism he would propose to draft a new charter, an initiative resisted by the leaders of the opposition right-wing who control the Peruvian Congress.

On April 10, the National Jury of Elections (JNE) had clarified that the call for a referendum to approve a constitutional change requires prior approval of Congress by an absolute majority.

Castillo is a 52-year-old rural teacher who, as a candidate of a small Marxist-Leninist party, won the presidency in 2021 after a close runoff against the right-wing Keiko Fujimori, the first-born daughter of the former president.