Inside Peru's 90-Day Decree Push: How 27 Powers Will Reshape Crime and Disaster Response

Peru's Senate voted 35 to 18, with six abstentions, on Wednesday to hand President Keiko Fujimori the authority to issue legislative decrees across 27 policy areas for 90 calendar days — broadening a narrower 20-point package the Chamber of Deputies had already cleared. After more than three hours of plenary session, the Senate backed a substitute text drafted by its Constitutional Commission, which incorporated seven areas the lower chamber had not debated. It is the most expansive grant of fast-track legislative authority the Fujimori administration has received since taking office in July.

Two converging crises shaped the political demand for this legislation: organized crime that has burrowed into Peru's overcrowded prison system and directs extortion operations from behind bars, and the looming arrival of an El Niño weather cycle that Peru's emergency infrastructure has historically failed to absorb in time. The scope of the Senate's final package — and the manner in which it was reached — has also opened a parallel debate about the constitutional limits of Senate authority when adding to a bill already passed by the Chamber of Deputies.

From 20 to 27: How the Package Grew

The process has its origins in a bill the Fujimori administration submitted to Congress on August 28, originally requesting decree powers over 66 legislative matters for 120 calendar days — a scope spanning criminal law, labor, administrative simplification, environmental policy, and productive development. The Chamber of Deputies significantly narrowed that request, clearing a focused 20-point version covering only security and El Niño preparedness and reducing the authorized term to 90 days.

The Senate's Constitutional Commission, chaired by Carlos Mesía Ramírez of Fuerza Popular, then voted unanimously among members present — seven votes in favor — to add seven more areas before the full Senate took up the bill. Six of the seven additions fall under citizen security; one concerns El Niño disaster response. The security additions include: military deployment at the outer perimeters of high-risk correctional facilities (without displacing civilian custodial authority); strengthened coordination and intelligence-sharing powers for the DINI, Peru's national intelligence directorate; migration and nationality controls; and a post-release supervised freedom registry for convicts linked to organized crime, extortion, and sicariato — designed to reduce recidivism without overriding constitutional rights.

The Security Provisions That Drew Controversy

No element of the expanded package provoked more debate than authorizing military personnel to operate at the external perimeters of Peru's highest-risk correctional facilities. Peru's penal system has become a logistics platform for criminal networks — organizations that direct extortion rings, kidnapping cells, and trafficking operations from inside prison walls with documented effectiveness. The Fujimori government — which announced plans for "strong and very tough" security measures from the outset — argues that deploying troops to facility perimeters is a necessary next step. Opposition critics counter that the move sets a precedent for deeper militarization of civilian institutions over time.

The DINI expansion also attracted scrutiny. Under the approved framework, the government would be empowered to strengthen coordination among all components of Peru's national intelligence system and expand the agency's capacity to process, analyze, and share intelligence on organized crime and national security threats. On digital infrastructure, the legislation authorizes security and incident-management standards for public-sector platforms, while explicitly prohibiting any new government authority to access private communications or personal data in the private sector.

El Niño Response: Speed Over Bureaucracy

The single El Niño-related addition the Senate incorporated empowers INDECI — Peru's national civil defense agency — to procure and deliver emergency humanitarian goods directly during the first 15 days following an officially declared disaster or emergency. That provision targets the procurement bottlenecks that have repeatedly hampered Peru's response capacity: during past El Niño cycles, mandatory contracting timelines left affected communities waiting weeks for food, water, and shelter supplies that were nominally funded and available.

The broader El Niño block within the 27 approved areas also covers accelerated permitting for priority climate-risk infrastructure — roads, drainage networks, and flood barriers that have stalled in administrative queues even when funding was in place. Speed of execution has been the historic failure point, and the legislation's stated goal is to break that pattern before the next major climate event arrives.

Political Fractures: Boycotts and Constitutional Questions

The committee session in which the seven additional areas were incorporated concluded on the final day allowed under procedural rules and took place with several opposition members absent. Senators Víctor Cutipa, Íber Maraví, and Humberto Morales of Juntos por el Perú were not present, nor was Ahora Nación senator Ruth Luque — a separate opposition bloc from Juntos por el Perú. Luque had publicly announced her absence in advance, arguing that the commission was advancing additional areas that had never passed through the Chamber of Deputies' deliberative process and that the Senate's authority to modify such a package had constitutional limits.

The absence triggered a public dispute: Senator Patricia Juárez of Fuerza Popular challenged Luque's stated reasoning on social media, while Luque maintained that her position rested on legal, not procedural, grounds. The exchange laid bare a deeper fracture over who holds — and should hold — the authority to define the scope of executive decree power when two chambers are in play.

President Fujimori's administration had originally sought decree authority over 66 matters for 120 days — a considerably broader mandate than the 27 areas for 90 days that Congress ultimately approved. The 35-to-18 vote sealed an outcome that reflected a legislature willing to grant meaningful fast-track authority while declining the full scope of what the presidency had requested.

What Comes Next — and What It Means for Citizens

With the Senate's approval on record, the delegation becomes law once published in Peru's official gazette. The Fujimori administration then has 90 calendar days to issue individual legislative decrees within each of the 27 authorized areas — each one strictly limited to the scope defined in the delegation law. Peru's Constitution gives Congress oversight and review authority over all such decrees: any that exceed their authorized scope or conflict with constitutional norms can be challenged and overturned.

For more than 33 million Peruvians — bracing for El Niño's effects and living through a sustained crime surge — Wednesday's vote is a procedural milestone, not a resolution. Decree authority is a legal instrument. What determines its real-world impact is whether the policies it generates reach the streets, the prisons, and the flood-threatened communities that have been waiting, through multiple governments, for something to materially change.

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