Adriana Tudela will present a draft renewal of the Congress every 2 years

Congresswoman Adriana Tudela had surprised with the announcement of a bill that would make voluntary voting since the elections of 2026. Added to this is a new proposal to be presented that would allow the conformation of Congress to be renewed every two years. According to the parliamentarian herself, the details of this idea will be known in the coming days.

“Allow citizens every two and a half years to make an evaluation of the work that congressmen are doing and be able to reward the congressman who is doing his job well by re-electing him to complete his term or, otherwise, replace him with another person who is better able to perform the work of representation”, she pointed out what would be her next proposal as a parliamentarian.

However, this is not the only change you want to make about the way representatives of the population are elected. Tudela added that he will propose to reform the electoral system in order for Congress to abandon the proportional representation system and use a system of single name representation.

“Leave the system of proportional representation, which is what we have had so far in which lists of candidates are presented and they are entering Congress because of the proportion of the votes obtained, and move on to having a system of single name representation. This is that each constituency has a clearly identifiable representative in Congress. Of course, the constituencies would be smaller,” he stressed.

VOLUNTARY VOTE

Voting in Peru is mandatory for all citizens over the age of 18, but for Congresswoman Adriana Tudela this right ceases to be when it ceases to be exercised freely. “It's a bill that seeks to uphold a principle. The right to vote must be free, otherwise it ceases to be a right,” he said.

“This initiative is part of a package of political reform projects that I plan to present over the course of this week. What I am proposing is that the vote be exercised voluntarily, it is not possible that, in Peru, which is a right, it is exercised under duress of fines. At the same time, a right cannot be an obligation,” added the parliamentarian.

For the proposal to succeed, they will need to repeal articles 9, 17, 21, 26 of Law No. 26859, Organic Law on Elections, which mention the mandatory nature of voting in elections in Peru. “If we want to see changes in our political class, we need to make changes to the electoral system. If we continue to do everything the same, we will not find different results. This is a way to strengthen democracy,” said Tudela to explain the motivation of the future project.

Regarding the proposal of Congresswoman Betssy Chávez that in the event of the president being vacated, general elections should be called, which Tudela said is rather a response to the political context that the president is facing. “The reform of the minister seems to me rather to prevent a possible vacancy at all costs than to make a substantive reform. The vice-presidents exist for something, if the president is vacated, the general elections would not make any sense, so why do we elect a vice president,” he said.

“On the subject of the advance of elections, in general, I think that, if that is the only way out, it is something that I would support. But it is not the best way out of the crisis we are experiencing, I think that the best way out is vacancy, it is constitutional and democratic. Predicted for situations that we are experiencing today,” he added.

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