Last night, the Peruvian Congress approved an interpretative law of the Constitution that prevents the executive from making a question of confidence on matters that fall within the competence of the legislative body or refer to constitutional issues, which La Republica newspaper interpreted as arbitrary.

It also outlawed the concept of factual denial of confidence to the ministerial cabinet, to which former President Martin Vizcarra appealed to dissolve the Congress in September 2019.

After that incident, the Constitutional Court endorsed the presidential decision and ruled that, based on the balance of powers, the Government can appeal to that measure in practically any situation, which was contradicted last night by the Parliament when it approved the reform.

The members of the Peru Libre ruling party argued that only the Constitutional Court can interpret the Constitution and the Congress can only do so with laws in force, and charged that the measure aims at presidential vacancy, which in recent weeks has been openly talked about by opposition sectors.

The Peru Libre lawmakers also noted that the procedure for a measure affecting the Constitution must be a reform and not an interpretative law, and the opposition majority used the latter because it did not have the necessary support for the reform (two-thirds of votes) and it would have taken more time.

Former Constitutional Court Judge Cesar Landa pointed out that the approved law is unconstitutional because the current Constitution does not grant the Parliament the power to interpret the Constitution.

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