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Popular Action Acción Popular
Abbreviation	AP
President	Julio Chávez Chiong
General Secretary	Edmundo del Águila
Founder	Fernando Belaúnde
Founded	7 July 1956; 69 years ago (1956-07-07)
Preceded by	Democratic Youth Front
Headquarters	Lima
Membership(2023)	250,472
Ideology	Social liberalism Reformism
Political position	Centre[1][2] tocentre-right[3][4][5]
Anthem	"Popular Action March"[6]
Congress	9 / 130
Governorships	0 / 25
Regional Councillors	6 / 342
Province Mayorships	3 / 196
District Mayorships	61 / 1,874
Website
accionpopular.com.pe
Politics of Peru Political parties Elections

ThePopular Action (Spanish:Acción Popular, AP) is aliberal andreformistpolitical party inPeru, founded by former Peruvian presidentFernando Belaúnde.

Fernando Belaúnde founded Popular Action (Acción Popular) in 1956 as a reformist alternative to the status quo conservative forces and the populistAmerican Popular Revolutionary Alliance party.

Although Belaúnde's message was not^{[citation needed]} all that different from APRA's, his tactics were more inclusive and less confrontational. He was able to appeal to some of the same political base as APRA, primarily the middle class, but also to a wider base of professionals and white-collar workers. It also advocated scientific advancement andtechnocracy, a policy set that it took from theProgressive Social Movement, a splinter party which it eventually absorbed.^[7] The AP had significant electoral success, attaining the presidency in 1963 and 1980, but the party was more of an electoral machine for the persona of Belaúnde than an institutionalized organization. The AP was initially reckoned as a center-left party. However, by the 1980s, Peru's political spectrum had shifted sharply leftward, and the AP found itself on the center-right.

After AP's second administration, in 1985, the party was defeated by theAPRA party, gaining only 6.4 percent of the vote. In 1990, AP participated in the elections as a part of theDemocratic Front, a center-right coalition headed byMario Vargas Llosa.

In 2000,Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde was selected as the presidential nominee, being the worst general election for AP, gaining only 0.42% of the popular vote. Only three AP congressman were elected. As many assume the election was a fraud, Fujimori resigned after the corruption of his government was revealed by the opposition.

AP memberValentín Paniagua would becomePresident of the Congress in November 2000 for a few days and, after the fall of theFujimori administration, became the interim President of the Republic, holding office from November 2000 to July 2001.

In the 8 April 2001 election, the party won 4.2% of the popular vote and three out of 120 seats inCongress.

Likewise, in 2002, regional elections were held for the first time, which aimed to elect Regional Presidents for the 25 departments of Peru. In that sense, party participation was quite high (15 political groups). In these elections, AP ranked sixth by number of votes.^[8]

For the2006 national election, the party joined forces withWe Are Peru andNational Coordinator of Independents to form theCentre Front coalition. Paniagua was the presidential candidate, while the vice-presidential candidates belonged to AP's allies. The Center Front ended in the fifth place in the national election, with 5.6% of the popular vote.

For the2011 national election, the party joined forces withWe Are Peru andPossible Peru to form thePossible Peru Electoral Alliance. The presidential candidate was former Peru's president and leader ofPossible Peru,Alejandro Toledo. The alliance ended in the fourth place in the national election, with 15.6% of the popular vote.

For the2016 national election, the party ran alone for the first time since 2000, when Congressman Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde ran against the sitting presidentAlberto Fujimori, and it was the first time since 2006 that Popular Action participated with a party member as a presidential candidate when former President Valentín Paniagua ran for office. The presidential candidate wasAlfredo Barnechea, journalist and political analyst, who won the party's primaries with 52% of the votes, defeatingMesías Guevara (40%), the party's president for the 2014–2018 term, the lawyerBeatríz Mejía (6%) and former DeputyAlejandro Montoya (2%). Popular Action ended in fourth place in the national election, with 6.97% of the popular vote. This was the best result for Popular Action since 1985. For the 2016–2021 term, AP had five congressmen out of 130 representing the party, until thesnap election in 2020, when it increased its representation to 25 congressmen until the end of the 2016–2021 term. In the2021 elections, Lescano placed 5th in a fractured race of 18 candidates while the party gained 16 seats for the 2021–2026 congressional term. On 26 July 2021, an alliance led by Popular Action memberMaría del Carmen Alva successfully negotiated an agreement to gain control ofPeru's Congress.^[9]

Popularactionism is the name that has been given to the party's ideological doctrine. It is pointed out that the main feature of his thinking is a situationalhumanism.^{[citation needed]}

Popularactionism considers that the role of the State should be limited to regulating and encouraging private enterprise and sustainable development. Within the main feature of his theory, situational humanism, it considers in the Peruvian case that it is specifically inspired by what has been called"Peru as Doctrine".

It affirms that the proclamation is of a "democratic, nationalist and revolutionary" court:

• Democratic, inasmuch as it respects, disseminates and defends the democratic system.
• Nationalist, in that it promotes local traditions and economic and cultural development.
• Revolutionary, inasmuch as it aspires to keeping up-to-date with the new modernity and rapid change that improves social and cultural structures.

The idea of "Peru as Doctrine" is based on the values and principles arising from the historical and cultural particularity in which Peru developed but which have universal significance. An important part of their doctrine is developed in what they callPopular Cooperation.

In Peruvian political history, it has happened that on occasions the right has called Popular Action a leftist party (first government) or that the left has called it a right-wing party (second government). Towards the end of the 1960s, a radicalized sector split from the party (the so-called "hotheads"), forming Acción Popular Socialista (Manuel Seoane, Gustavo Mohme, among other intellectuals).^{[citation needed]}

Likewise, a significant percentage of the so-called "young Turks" (or "chapulines"/grasshoppers, young popularactionists of the early 1980s), at the beginning of the 1990s migrated to liberal political positions (to the Liberty Movement and then to Fujimorism). These are the two biggest party losses suffered by this party. Consequently, from then on, Popular Action is generally identified with positions of the center, with factions of both the progressive left and the conservative right.^{[citation needed]}

Towards the end of the 1990s, the former popularactionistLuis Castañeda founded theNational Solidarity, which with an alliance with theChristian People's Party within theNational Unity coalition won the municipal elections in the capital, Lima, in 2002.^{[citation needed]}

• Fernando Belaúnde (1963–1968; 1980–1985)
• Valentín Paniagua (2000–2001)
• Manuel Merino (10–15 Nov. 2020)

Election	Candidate	First round		Second round		Result
		Votes	%	Votes	%
1956	Fernando Belaúnde	457,966	36.69			LostN
1962	Fernando Belaúnde	544,180	32.21			LostN
1963	Fernando Belaúnde	708,662	39.05			WonY
1980	Fernando Belaúnde	1,793,190	44.93			WonY
1985	Javier Alva Orlandini	472,627	7.26			LostN
1990	Mario Vargas Llosa[a]	2,163,323	32.57	2,708,291	37.62	LostN
1995	Raúl Diez Canseco	122,383	1.64			LostN
2000	Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde	46,523	0.42			LostN
2001	Did not contest					N/A
2006	Valentín Paniagua[b]	706,156	5.75			LostN
2011	Alejandro Toledo[c]	2,289,561	15.63			LostN
2016	Alfredo Barnechea	1,069,360	6.97			LostN
2021	Yonhy Lescano	1,306,288	9.07			LostN

Election	Leader	Senate				Chamber of Deputies				Position	Government
		Votes	%	Seats	+/–	Votes	%	Seats	+/–
1956	Fernando Belaúnde			5 / 53				21 / 182		3rd	Minority
1962				16 / 55	11			61 / 186	40	2nd	Elections annulled
1963				15 / 45	1			39 / 139	22	2nd	Minority government
1980		1,694,952	40.92	26 / 60	11	1,413,233	38.92	98 / 180	59	1st	Majority
1985		492,056	8.14	5 / 61	21	491,581	8.43	10 / 180	88	4th	Minority
1990		1,772,953	32.06 (FREDEMO)	20 / 62	15	1,561,291	30.03 (FREDEMO)	62 / 180	52	1st	Minority

Election	Leader	Votes	%	Congress	+/–	Rank	Government
1992	Fernando Belaúnde	Boycotted		0 / 80	62	19th	Extra-parliamentary
1995		146,018	3.34	4 / 120	4	6th	Minority
2000		245,115	2.47	3 / 120	1	9th	Minority
2001		393,433	4.18	3 / 120	0	7th	Minority
2006	Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde	760,261	7.07 (FC)	5 / 120	2	5th	Minority
2011	Javier Alva Orlandini	1,904,180	14.83 (AEPP)	5 / 130	1	3rd	Minority
2016	Mesías Guevara	877,734	7.20	5 / 130	0	6th	Minority
2020		1,518,171	10.26	25 / 130	20	1st	Majority coalition
2021		1,159,734	9.02	16 / 130	9	3rd	Minority

• Official site
• Congress - Popular Action

• Political parties established in 1956
• Political parties in Peru
• 1956 establishments in Peru

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