Elections 2022: To what extent did the “youth quota” affect the increase in representation in public office?

Next Regional and municipal elections – 2022 27.3% of voters in the national register will be young people under the age of 30. Of these, more than 800 thousand citizens will vote for the first time.

According to him National Electoral Jury (JNE)this sizable mass of voters makes up the largest age group, even surpassing the range of voters aged 30 to 39 (21.6%) and 40 to 49 (18.4%).

“This is a sector that politicians should focus on. Polls show that young people are more interested in politics than in other areas. This is a sector that mobilizes a lot and plays an active role in election campaigns,” says Ivan Lanegra, general secretary of the Civic Association for Transparency.

Is this set of voters represented in regional and municipal candidatures? In 2006, in order to encourage youth participation in political decision-making, the ENE established a youth quota, a measure that requires party lists put up for elections to have at least 20% of candidates under the age of 29.

In the current process Regional and municipal elections – 2022especially in the race for the municipality of Lima, the list purple partyled by Guillermo Flores, was expelled precisely because it did not cover the minimum percentage of young people among its alderman candidates.

Jorge Rafael Ramírez, director of the Peruvian Ashanti Youth Network of African Descent, said the quota is necessary because it breaks the generational barrier. “If we want to promote and achieve real change in politics, let’s start with the youth. They are agents of change, and if they are not included in the processes, we will repeat the mistakes of the past.”

Incomplete tasks

For 15 years of implementation the standard ‘young fee’ This allowed a third of applicants for positions of aldermen or councilors to be under 29 years of age. However, only a fifth of them were elected at the district level; and one eighth was elected at the provincial level. They are usually found at the bottom of the charts.

According to Jimena Docarmo, project coordinator of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Peru, parties and movements need to create space for participation and dialogue with young people in order to think about the abolition of “mandatory quotas”. According to the expert, while this does not happen ‘young fee’ It will continue to be an essential tool.

“We need political parties to fulfill the task of planning and promoting more effective youth participation, decentralize work, which is often the case in Lima today, and cede power space so that new generations play a more decisive role in political parties, political organizations,” he says.

Among the lists that aim to reach the municipality of Lima, the payrolls with the most young people under the age of 29 belong to Alliance for Progress (app) D We can Peru. Each group has 12 young alderman candidates, which is 30% of the total list.

Unmet requirements

Ivan Lanegra of Transparencia highlights the lack of appeals to youth in the campaign Regional and municipal elections – 2022. “There are very few details of a specific policy aimed at young people in the plans of the government. We hope that in the coming weeks there will be more proposals for this sector,” he clarifies.

In the same vein, Jorge Rafael Ramírez points out that he has not defined proposals aimed at this electorate. “It’s a shame because it’s a promising sector. Stop political campaigns without offerings to young people,” he says.

The National Youth Policy document published in 2019 identified “Education, health and work” as the main concerns of this group. Inclusion in the world of work is a hidden need, Lanegra adds.

“Many of them are just starting their working life, and it is very difficult for them to connect to this space. They constantly express their concern about the few opportunities that exist. These fears are periodically repeated in the youth agenda and often do not find an adequate response from politicians,” he notes.

Dokarmo notes that the ability to settle these debts may face restrictions from regional and municipal authorities in areas such as work, health care and education. “There are few proposals because these local governments do not have much power in these areas. Therefore, I can imagine that there will not be many concrete proposals that can actually be implemented by these governments,” he notes.