Weekly Report - 29 January 2015 (WR-15-04)

President Ollanta Humala experienced the bitter taste of defeat this week after congress annulled his government’s youth employment law. In an extraordinary session, congress voted overwhelmingly to strike down a law that it had approved scarcely six weeks earlier. Four large protest marches were enough to persuade much of the political opposition, with one eye on next year’s general elections, to jettison the law out of populist motives rather than conviction. The vote also exposed the rupture in the disparate ruling coalition, Gana Perú, which augurs badly for Humala in the remaining 17 months of his mandate.