On January 7, Magistrate Carlos Ramos submitted a report to the Constitutional Court (TC) recommending that it throw out the lawsuit filed by the president of the Permanent Committee, Pedro Olaechea, against the Executive branch for dissolving the Peruvian Congress last year. The Court is expected to begin its analysis of Ramos’s report on January 14.

The lawsuit has its roots in Peru’s political crisis when President Martín Vizcarra dissolved Congress at the end of September last year and called for elections to renew its composition, scheduled for January 26. 

Congress ceased to function at that point, and its legislative role was assumed by the Permanent Committee whose president Pedro Olaechea turned to the Court requesting it issue a ruling on the validity of Vizcarra’s decision. 

Now with Ramos’s report in hand, the Court has two options: it can either endorse or reject it, as by so doing, it has the final word on the constitutionality of Vizcarra’s decision. Whatever the verdict decided, the Court has warned that its decision cannot be overturned through legislative elections to renew the composition of Congress.