Filibusters

Our Congress is one of the most criticized institutions of Peruvian democracy, but many readers would be surprised by the techniques of parliamentary debate that exist in other countries. In the U.S. Senate there is a legal process called a “filibuster,” by which a senator may block debate and hold up a bill by speaking for as long as he wants on any sort of subject.

This obstructionist resource has been used by the minority, which can endlessly prolong a debate and make the majority lose patience and finally withdraw without getting the bill in question put to a vote. The vote can only take place when the debate is over, and in order to do this a majority of 60 senators out of 100 is required.

An issue that provoked some of the most famous filibusters was the Civil Rights Act. The record is held by Sen. Strom Thurmond (1902-2003), who in 1957 spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to block a law on civil rights. He went as far as to recite the Declaration of Independence, the electoral statutes and his grandmother’s cooking recipes.

Another famous filibuster occurred in 1964, when a group of Democratic senators from the southern states tried to block the Civil Rights Act, and several of them took turns, blocking debate for 75 hours. During George Bush’s administration, the filibuster was used 112 times, when the Democrats attempted to block the appointment of conservative federal judges.

Recently there has been a lot of concern over the Democrats losing their 60-seat majority in the Senate with the recent election of Sen. Brown, a Republican who is replacing the late Edward Kennedy, and who happens to be against the health care reform that President Obama supports.

The filibuster also exists in the parliaments of England, Australia and New Zealand. In Spain, on the other hand, there was the well-known Communist minister Cayetano Bolívar, who, when he saw that a vote was not going his way, asked for the floor and read from Das Kapital. The right-wing ministers walked out indignantly, and he was thus able to win the vote.

If the Peruvian parliament is not considering this mechanism (happily for the citizens), we must not forget the case of Fortunato Quezada, who in order to avoid a censure during Belaunde Terry’s second administration (1980-1985]), made an endless speech. We do some voting because our congressmen have not yet learned the full potential of this debating maneuver.