Congress and Cesar Acuña against the regional movement. Chronicles of Fernando Vivas | Policy

There is a detail in this story that explains the duality of the party/movement: the leader of T+T, Elías Rodríguez was APRA Secretary General. This suggests that something is happening in the parties that makes these movements more attractive to voters and candidates. APRA lost its registration in 2021, and Rodríguez formed T+T with a group of Liberteños to launch in his region. I talked to him. “Along the way, we resisted the temptations of Acuña, who wanted to destroy us, and we built a solid platform. Look, out of 83 seats in La Libertad, Acuña won two provincial mayors, four district mayors, and Gol; a total of seven seats. We won 12 provincial governorships and six of several districts; a total of 17. Fortaleza (another movement) won 14 places,” he told me. According to my Libertad sources, the temptations of Acuña were not limited to the campaign trail.

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My Liberteño sources tell me a story before the 2022 Regional and Municipal Elections (ERM). Richard Acuña went looking for Rodríguez and took him to the house of his father César. There, Papa Acuña proposed to his compatriot and rival to join forces. Even, according to these sources, he would have even offered him the gubernatorial candidacy under the APP logo. But Rodríguez did not accept, because he was already on his own platform. Acuña did not have another team that could guarantee him victory in the “solid” North, so he launched the attack on his own. If he wins, it will be largely thanks to the voters’ perception of him as a supplier magnate who can make up for the shortcomings of the system with his financial resources.

If we look at the performance of the APP at the national level and compare it to the other parties, it comes in third place with 17.7%, according to the effectiveness measured by the JNE research team (the relationship between the registered list and the place obtained). In first place is Somos Perú, with 20.2% of the votes (they won 6 governorships), and in second place is Avanza País, with 17.9%. In this table, with only 3 regional wins throughout the country and no conquest of any region or province, the effectiveness of the Popular Force in the 2022 ERM is a negligible 1.4%. Now, let’s compare the performance of the parties with the movements in the same ERM. In the documents I looked at from the JNE, there are no effectiveness figures recorded at this level, but I did find them: while the parties won 40% of the governorships and vice-governorships, the movements won 53.3% (6.7% the coalition). At the level of regional councillors, the parties won 36.8% of the votes, while the movements were significantly ahead of them with 59.9%. At the level of provincial and district governors, the political party received 41.2% support, while the Movement Party received 56.5% support.

Fatal dilemma

A regional movement leader, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that he is in a fatal dilemma: either he becomes realistic and joins a party with his leaders before July 12 (estimated to be the “deadline” to join and be able to apply for the presidential or congressional list in 2026) or before October of this year, the “deadline” to apply for the ERM at the end of 2026. Or he remains hopeful and hopes that the next legislative session will hold a second vote to achieve the elimination movement, but fail to obtain 87 votes. They may not be able to participate in the race using their own logo or that of their political party! This is a fatal attack on the right to political participation, enshrined in Article II of the Constitution.

I spoke with Freddy Vracko, a lawyer for Madre de Dios and president of the Regional Movement Association (AMR). Its leadership has so clearly identified Acuña as its main enemy that they issued a statement calling him “persona non grata.” Vracko told me in no uncertain terms that Congressman Eduardo Salvana “is Acuña’s killer because he was the one who announced the alternative text hidden in the vote approving the re-election of the mayor and governor.” In fact, the demise of the MR was achieved not by adding a few lines to some articles, but by removing the word “movement” from Article 35 of the Constitution: “Citizens may exercise their rights individually or through political organizations such as parties, movements or alliances.”

Vracko told me that a party leader told him that APP led Opposition to the movement’s initiative, but he himself and other parties joined because it was convenient for themWhen I interviewed party leaders on the subject, they agreed that movements are unstable, disappear after elections, are often tools of leaders with mafia ties, and are not monitored like parties. I mentioned this list of criticisms to Vracko, and he responded, “Of course we are audited and the requirements are high, more than parties, and our threshold has been raised to 10% of voters in the area.” Álvaro Henzler, president of Transparencia, told me that in his association they keep a comparison table of requirements for parties and movements, and that there are indeed stricter requirements for the former, but that this can be addressed with simple regulatory adjustments.

Regarding the volatility of the movements, it is likely much higher than that of the parties (according to ONPE, 161 movements have been proposed in the ERM 2022 and 84 are currently registered, the result of several that have lost registration for not passing the fence and some new ones have been registered). Flacco denies that the MR is as fleeting as they portray it, and he cites the example of movements that have been maintained for more than a decade, not necessarily because they won the Gol, but because mayors, councillors and councillors in various districts and provinces have remained. Among their positions: AYNI in Huancavelica (since 2006), the Regional Front of Cajamarca (2006), Arequipa Tradición y Futuro (2006, which brought Yamiira Osorio to power), among others, are still active. What a dilemma awaits them: either join the party as soon as possible or thwart the second vote in the next legislature. It is a provocative irony that instead of joining APP, FP, Somos, Avanza or other parties that wish them gone, the grassroots movement has joined the newly registered parties, the very competition this Congress fears the most and the very competition they are fighting against. They are already designing their lethal weapons.