A Guide to the Fight Between Peru’s President and Congress

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a onetime Wall Street investment banker, has spent much of his 14 months in office jousting with Congress. It has the upper hand. Kuczynski, 78, is Peru’s first leader in a quarter century to govern without a majority in Congress. The opposition has enough votes to block legislation and force cabinet ministers to resign. It forced Kuczynski’s entire cabinet to quit in a no-confidence vote Sept. 15, paving the way for -- take your pick -- a period of smoother relations with the government, or greater turbulence ending with dissolution of the current Congress.

Peru’s Congress has proved to be more interested in weakening Kuczynski’s administration than in considering his ideas for reforming labor legislation, the welfare system and the judiciary. The main opposition party, Popular Force, holds 71 of the 130 seats in the single-chamber Congress and has exploited political errors by Kuczynski, leader of the Peruvians for Change party, and his cabinet of technocrats.