- Seven of the twelve Chamber of Deputies committees reviewing President Keiko Fujimori's request for 120 days of decree powers have now voted against it; only two have approved it.
- The Economy Committee, which controls the largest slice of the request — 16 measures, including a proposed end to Peru's 114% cap on interest rates — pushed its vote to September 16 after a deadlocked debate.
- Even if the Chamber approves a trimmed-down version, the Senate has the final word, and some ruling-party senators want the original scope restored.
A seventh committee turns the request down
President Keiko Fujimori's push for 120 days of rule-by-decree authority lost more ground this week, with the Consumer Defense and Public Services Regulation Committee becoming the seventh of twelve Chamber of Deputies panels to recommend against it, according to a Monday count from El Comercio. Committee chairman Luis Masco, of the Cívico Obras party, needed a tie-breaking vote to push the opinion through over objections from Fuerza Popular and Renovación Popular lawmakers, who argued the bill's 436-page justification already answers the committee's concerns. Only two panels, Environment and National Defense, have sided with the government so far.
The committee holding the biggest piece of the puzzle stalls
No panel carries more weight than the Economy, Banking, Finance and Financial Intelligence Committee, which is weighing 16 separate economic measures — among them a proposal to lift the 114% ceiling Peru currently places on consumer interest rates. After more than two hours without agreement, committee chair José Marcelo Salazar postponed the vote to Wednesday, September 16, La República reported. Fuerza Popular tried to split the interest-rate provision from the rest of the committee's draft opinion, hoping to spare it from an outright rejection; the maneuver failed by a 9–11 vote, leaving all 16 points inside a single opinion that currently recommends against every one of them.
What the government says it needs, and why
Labor Minister Juan Sheput has been the request's most visible defender in committee hearings, describing a package built around eight policy areas and 66 legislative decrees meant to unstick years of accumulated institutional, labor, economic and security problems. He criticized lawmakers who announced their opposition before hearing the government's case, saying that refusing to listen amounts to turning your back on a reality that demands urgent decisions. Fujimori herself asked lawmakers weeks earlier for patience, saying she was appealing to lawmakers' good will and objective judgment and predicting every political bloc would eventually back the bill.
Resistance isn't only coming from the opposition
Some of the pushback is coming from inside the governing coalition itself. Renovación Popular senator Lourdes Alcorta, whose party backs Fujimori, said in a televised interview that the request went too far, arguing that public safety and El Niño preparedness deserve a focused bill rather than measures scattered across transport, housing and other sectors. Deputy Roxana Rocha made a similar case in writing, sending the Constitution Committee an alternative text meant to pin down which of the 66 measures are actually workable. Lawmakers from Obras, Ahora Nación and Juntos por el Perú went further still, formally asking Prime Minister Luis Galarreta for a narrower bill limited to fighting crime and managing El Niño — a weather pattern that, according to one estimate circulated by Willax, could cost Peru's economy between S/ 6 billion and S/ 9 billion.
Constitution Committee next, then a wait for the Senate
The twelve committees' opinions are non-binding, and they now funnel into the Constitution Committee, led by Giannina Avendaño, which must draft the pre-opinion that goes to the full Chamber. Avendaño has said that review won't start until after Congress's Representation Week, which runs September 21–25 — pushing any floor vote to September 28 at the earliest. If deputies do scale back the original request, the Senate gets the final say, and some Fujimorista senators have already signaled they'd try to restore it to its full scope. Ahora Nación senator Jaime Delgado warned that risks backfiring: if deputies can't rule out having their work overturned upstairs, he said, they may withhold the powers entirely as a defensive move.
