Populist Playbook: Peru referendum would redraft market-friendly constitution

Peruvian Prime Minister Anibal Torres announced on Monday that the government will call for a referendum to propose a redrafting of the constitution – a move which could help achieve a promise made by socialist President Pedro Castillo to boost the role of the state in the country’s faltering economy.

"We have submitted to congress a bill to amend the constitution with the purpose of calling a constitutional assembly to redact a new constitutional text," Torres said, adding that the process could ultimately be rejected by voters.

The announcement came at a time when the unpopular leftist government is facing national unrest and street protests over rising food and fuel prices, rampant inflation and the hangover from a presidential campaign that has left the country deeply divided with many Peruvians feeling dissatisfied with both the government and the congress.

According to a recent Datum poll, 76% of Peruvians have said they disapprove of the president, while only 19% said they support the former schoolteacher and trade unionist who won the presidency under a “Marxist-Leninist” banner in June of 2021.

After only 8 months in office, Castillo has already survived two impeachment attempts.

Although talk of a referendum helped propel Castillo to victory over conservative Keiko Fujimori in 2021, the move would ultimately require congressional support and is thus unlikely to be approved in the opposition-controlled legislature.

Talk of constitutional reform had not been heard in Lima since February when ousted former Prime Minister Hector Valer said he supported amending the country’s market-friendly constitution.

"From the executive's side we've been fulfilling what the president promised during the campaign, which is to create a constitution-making moment for a new constitution," the new prime minister told reporters.

But the renewed interest in the referendum is telling of a strategic shift in Peruvian politics and are perhaps indicative of Castillo’s intention to actively push for a constitutional reform – a tactic actively pursued by left-wing regimes across Latin America to consolidate power.

As Andres Oppenheimer previously noted in the Miami Herald, changing the country’s constitution is “exactly what late Venezuelan authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez did immediately after taking office in 1999, and what Chavez’s followers did in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua to grab absolute powers and seek to re-elect themselves indefinitely.”