Peruvian law students from the Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas, Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cuscoare reporting for JURIST on law-related events in or affecting Perú. All of them are from CIED (Centro de Investigación de los Estudiantes de Derecho), a student research center in UNSAAC’s faculty of law dedicated to spreading legal information and improving legal culture through study and research, promoting critical and reflective debate to contribute to the development of the country. Vanesa Escobar Marcavillaca is a law graduate from UNSAAC and an extraordinary member of CIED. She files this dispatch from Cusco.

In 2023 The Economist conducted a survey of democracy levels in countries around the world. In this index, Peru scored 5.81 points out of 10, which means this country has what might be termed a “hybrid” government, basically authoritarianism with a few aspects of democracy.

In 2024 the scenario in Peru has not changed. The Peruvian Parliament continues acting to the detriment of the country and showing absolute incompetence in its operation, despite popular opposition. Recent parliamentary laws and proposals illustrate the profound damage Peru is suffering.

For example, a few days ago, Law N° 27934 was officially published. Although some years ago Peru overhauled its penal procedure to give prosecutors the lead in criminal investigations, this recent law gives more investigative power to the police, who had previously lost it due to corruption concerns.

Another recent piece of legislation is Law N° 27379. Here the investigation process has been modified with pretty negative effects, to the point of actually “supporting criminal activities,” according to some experts. In Peru, when someone is subject to criminal investigation, a judge can order the police to raid the suspect’s home, essentially allowing entry without consent, solely based on the judge’s mandate. This legislation establishes that such “forced entry” is no longer permitted until a lawyer arrives, with all the logistical problems that brings. This potentially gives the suspect time to hide important evidence.

But Peru’s parliamentarians are doing more(or maybe less!)  than just publishing damaging laws showing their disregard for justice. For example, in the last 2 weeks Peru has faced one of its  worst wave of forest fires ever, affecting almost 22 of the country’s 24 geographic departments.

Despite the low attention this problem received from the government, parliamentarians showed even less. In fact, only 15 parliamentarians attended the Minister of Environment’s testimony on the fires, even though he was testifying because of Parliament’s call.

In a similar but no less important event, Parliament also recently interrogated the president of the Central Reserve Peruvian Bank (BCRP), Julio Velarde, but this time asked him very controversial questions that today are being criticized by many Peruvians. For many years, Peru has been going through an employment crisis. According to COMEX, more than half of the active population work in “informal” conditions, up to 71.1% in 2023. Also, in this year 977,399 people were unemployed, which represents an important increase over 2022. The only function of the BCR is to preserve the Peruvian currency’s stability, separately from the government, which plays an important role in management of employment policies. The unemployment rate is directly related to the government’s efficiency, and not the BCR’s. Ignoring this, most of the parliamentarians’ questions were designed to attack Julio Velarde for not doing the bidding of the government, as incredible as it sounds.

Nowadays, public disapproval of the Parliament has reached 94%, and they appear to be working ever harder to increase this rate. We’ll see what happens…