The Executive’s project is expected to be filed today in the Constitution Commission.
A draft opinion has been released, which archives the president’s constitutional reform project, affirming as support that article 206 of the Constitution it is the work of the constituent power and therefore it cannot be modified.
They say it is intangible.
Yes. And that is not true. Article 206, like any other of the Constitutionis modifiable through the procedure provided for in article 206. That article even allows the total reform of the Constitution, so there is no unconstitutionality in the project for pretending add a constitutional reform procedure to the Constitution, introducing an article 207. It is not legally correct that they file the Executive’s project because they consider it unconstitutional. Article 206 is part of the Constitution, it is modifiable, and it is also the work of the Democratic Constituent Congress (CCD) of 92 that is not a constituent, it is a congress called by a dictatorship, that of Alberto Fujimori, and that CCD drew up a Constitution that imposed 8 years on the country, until the moment Fujimori fled the country. This Constitution is not a work of the constituent power.
YOU CAN SEE: They investigate former minister Juan Silva and congressmen known as ‘The Children’
But in the fundamentals they say that this constituent power was democratic.
No, that Constitution was drawn up by a constituent congress, called democratic, called by the Fujimori dictatorship. It was convened unilaterally, without any consensus. That CCD, which is not an expression of the constituent power, is the one that made the Constitution. What happens is that Constitution was imposed on the country until the year 2000 when the dictatorship ended. That Constitution governs the political process, but not because it is the work of the people in the exercise of constituent power, but because the citizens decided not to abolish it when the dictatorship of Fujimori.
In any case, today the government project does not pass.
Yes, but the rationale for shelving it is inconsistent, untenable.
It is true that the Constituent project looks bad from the beginning. More as a political instrument than as a serious proposal to make changes.
That is something else, in fact it deserves a lot of criticism, but it is a project that has been raised with the rules of the current Constitution. If Congress thinks it’s improvised, that it doesn’t have solid foundations, what they have to do is disapprove it. But do not file it through the Constitution Commission.
YOU CAN SEE: Prosecutor will investigate Pedro Castillo and his wife for alleged thesis plagiarism
Without a better livelihood.
The commission should have decided to approve it or not, but not file it as unconstitutional.
Is it clear that this is not a constituent moment?
This project was presented to make a new Constitution following the procedure of the current Constitution. The constituent moment is for other types of changes. It is the one that is required when a new Constitution is going to be made without following the constitutional reform procedure foreseen in the Constitution that is to be transformed. When there is a consensus of the political forces that it is necessary to change the Constitution even without using the procedure provided for in it, in this case 206.
Why the Executive’s project arouses so much suspicion in part of Congress.
There is a misunderstanding that unites the opposition and the government. They affirm that if this project is approved and the Constituent Assembly is introduced in the Constitution, via article 207, that Constituent Assembly will be all-embracing, all-powerful and can totally change the political system. It is not true. It works with the limits that the Constitution places on it, mainly with the limits that the reform law that incorporated it into the Constitution places on it. There are constitutions like those of Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Colombia, which provide for constituent assemblies and are not almighty to modify absolutely everything.
They do not install a dictatorship.
No, because the Constituent it is a figure of the constitutional democratic system, when it is used for something else, it becomes the mask of a dictatorship.