La Constitución peruana de 1993: sobreviviendo pese a todo pronóstico

Abstract

The current Constitution of Peru was enacted in 1993 as a political escape to the coup d’état suggested by the OAS in order to overcome the entrapment caused by the de facto government that Fujimori established, in complicity with the army, in 1992. The Constituent Congress that drafted it, even though it had to make concessions to the democratic opposition, maintained some authoritative points, specially the presidential re-election, which Fujimori wanted above all. After being re-elected three times, Fujimori fell by implosion in November 2000 when he fled from the country secretly. The entire world thought that it was time to disregard the 1993 Constitution and return to the 1979 Constitution with indispensable amendments or, in any case, convene a Constituent Assembly to decide freely what was more convenient for the country. Neither one nor the other took place. Some specific amendments were instead made and the Constitution passed with Fujimori, which was thought to last very little, is nowadays going to be 20 years in force, a clear record in the Peruvian constitutional history. What is the reason of this phenomenon? Several factors explain it: idleness of the political class, interest of the business class not to change it because the economic section favors them, and fear of the public opinion that a Constituent Assembly might be overwhelmed and go to extremes as have been seen in other countries of the region. The analysis of this situation is the objective of this paper.