Fujimori Grabs for More Power in Peru
Keiko Fujimori took office promising order. Barely two months later, her government was pressing Congress to hand the executive 120 days of delegated legislative authority over a wide range of issues, including public security, El Niño preparedness, taxation and employment policy.
On September 29, Fujimori complained that lawmakers had spent four weeks considering the request and were 'testing our patience.' She said her government would take measures against crime whether or not Congress granted the powers, while adding that it would act within the democratic framework. The statement turned a routine constitutional dispute into an unusually direct warning from a new president to the legislature.
The backlash was immediate. Demonstrators marched toward Congress the next day to oppose the delegation of powers. Reuters footage showed police pushing protesters back and using pepper spray. Some demonstrators explicitly linked the request to fears of repeating the concentration of authority associated with Alberto Fujimori's presidency.
The substance of Keiko Fujimori's request is consequential even without relying on the family analogy. Her government has sought special authority to move more aggressively against organized crime, including proposals to classify criminal organizations as hostile or terrorist groups and expand the state's security tools.
At the same time, Fujimori's administration is accelerating a business-first mining agenda. Energy and Mines Minister Guillermo Shinno said the government plans to eliminate roughly 27 of about 100 permitting requirements as it tries to unlock a $64 billion mining pipeline, around 70% of it tied to copper. Chinese and U.S. firms are lining up for projects.
Taken together, the pattern is already clear: urgency is being used to justify faster executive action across security, economic regulation and resource extraction. Crime is urgent. El Niño is urgent. Mining investment is urgent. Congressional hesitation is framed as an obstacle to action.
That governing style deserves scrutiny precisely because Peru's institutions have spent years lurching between executive weakness, congressional obstruction, corruption scandals and constitutional confrontation. Concentrating more decision-making in the presidency is not an administrative footnote in that context.
Fujimori won a narrow mandate. Her first months are showing how she intends to use it: press the legislature for room to govern by decree, enlarge the security state's toolkit and strip obstacles from an extractive investment drive.
The issue is not whether Peru faces real crime, climate and investment problems. It does. The issue is whether those problems become a standing argument for shifting more power upward while reducing the time and institutional friction that democratic scrutiny is supposed to impose.
Comments