Voting system

Peru is a presidential representative democratic republic with a multi-party system, effectively barring any party from dominating the country’s politics. Thus the most recent governments have been a coalition between different parties.

Peru holds general elections every 5 years, with simultaneous voting for the President, Congress members and Andean Parliament members. Voting is compulsory through ages 18 to 70, with exception for the members of the Armed Forces and the Police.

The current version of the Constitution does not allow consecutive presidential re-election. However, an ex-president may run for office again in the next elections. The current elected President, Ollanta Humala Tasso, is at the same time the leader of the most represented block Gana Perú.

The President appoints the Prime Minister, together they appoint and the Council of Ministers. Under current Constitution, the role of the Prime Minister is carrying out the decisions of the President. The Prime Minister chairs the session of the Council of Ministers unless the President is in attendance. He is also the second spokesperson on the country and the coordinator of the Ministers in specific areas.

The Congress is formed by proportional representation after elections, with members serving 5 years.

Since 1993 the elections are organized by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) and supervised by the National Jury of Elections (JNE). JNE is responsible for registration of the political parties and for checking the compliance of the political campaigns with the regulations. After each electoral cycle JNE publishes a publicly available comprehensive statistical report on participation and results.

Finances of political campaigns

At this moment, the conditions of campaign funding are defined by the 2003 Electoral Law. Before this law came into action, the funding of political campaigns was largely unregulated.

Peruvian political parties are funded from two sources: public and private.

The state provides each political party represented in Congress with funding from the budget in amount of 0.1% of Unidad Impositiva Tributaria (PER 3.8=USD 1.35 for 2014) per each vote that the party obtained during the latest elections. Of all state funding, 40% is distributed evenly between all political parties represented in the Congress, and 60% is distributed in proportional fashion.

The political parties also can receive private funding from a variety of sources, such as membership fees, funds obtained through direct activities undertaken by the party, benefits from properties, income from other sources authorized by law and many kinds of donations. Examples of prohibited sources of funding include any religious donations and most types of transactions from other countries. A political party can receive private funding from any number of physical or legal persons; however, the maximal contribution of each of those persons cannot exceed 60 UID (about USD 80,000) per year. All private funding contributions need to be written in an accounting book that is periodically checked by JNE.

Media advertisement

Peruvian mainstream news media are highly commercialized. There is one state-owned TV channel, one radio station and one newspaper; all other news outlets are privately owned. As well, none of the mass media are owned by the political parties. According to Patrón Galindo, the mass media are highly critical of all politicians and parties, actively searching for corruption scandals (2010). Lack of recurring support of specific parties by specific media platforms shows high independence of mass media from political powers. At the same time, politics always remains a hot topic of discussion. We will see in the media review chapter that the most discussed topics in the media are exactly the corruption scandals.

The 1993 Constitution guarantees for all political parties free access to state-owned mass media with time limits dependent on the last general election results.

The provision of air time (franja electoral) is governed by the same 2003 Electoral Law. All political parties are given free air time between 30 and 2 days prior to elections. In the last 48 hours before elections the law forbids all political advertising.

State reduces the transmission fees for TV and radio stations proportionally to the air-time given to parties, as well as provides radio and television facilities for production purposes. 50 percent of the time is distributed evenly between all running parties, and 50 percent proportionally to the representation in Congress. Parties running for the first time get the same air time as the party with the lowest representation.

There are as well regulations on paid advertisement. The rates on political advertisement during the campaign period cannot be higher than average advertisement rates. Political advertisement can only appear between 60 and 10 days before the elections, for five minutes per day total in all media.

References

1. “The World Factbook: Peru”, Central Intelligence Agency, accessed April 27, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/pe.html

2. “Compendio Estadístico Electoral”, Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, Lima, julio 2011, http://portal.jne.gob.pe/informacionelectoral/estadisticaelectoral/COMPENDIO_ESTADISTICO.pdf

3. Pedro Patrón Galindo, “14 Political marketing in a weak democracy? The Peruvian case” in Global Political Marketing, ed. Jennifer Lees-Marshment et al. (Routledge, 2010), 202-217

4. Ley n.º 28094, de Partidos Políticos (October 31, 2003), http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Electoral/Peru/partidospoliticos.pdf

5. “Índices y tacas – Unidad Impositiva Tributaria”, Superintendencia Nacional de Aduanas y de Administración Tributaria, http://www.sunat.gob.pe/indicestasas/uit.html