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Defying the Clinton administration’s demand that he postpone the second round of the presidential election, which the U.S. declared seriously tainted by an electoral process that lacked fairness and transparency, last May Peru’s president Alberto Fujimori went ahead with it and won an unprecedented third term.
Three weeks ago, a little over a month after he was sworn in to the new five-year term, Fujimori threw the Clinton administration into confusion by announcing he would call for new elections in which he would not be a candidate. Though the picture was far from clear, it appeared that Fujimori had been weakened by a corruption scandal and other developments involving Vladimiro Montesinos, the chief of Peru’s National Intelligence service and Fujimori’s close political ally, of whom Washington had been severely critical for his alleged role in organizing electoral fraud and what was presumed to be a major role in the transfer to the Colombian guerrilla of 10,000 AK-47 assault rifles sold by Jordan to Peru.
Forced into exile, Montesinos is now in Panama, and the Clinton administration, publicly embarrassed when it became known a week ago that Montesinos had been a CIA “asset” since the 1970s, is pressuring the Panamanian government to give him permanent asylum.
This past week Fujimori has befuddled the Clinton administration even further.
In a totally unexpected move, he jumped on a plane to Washington after making a sudden request to confer with U.S. administration officials and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, telling officials that he now wants to restore the very democratic institutions he is seen as having undermined during his decade in office.
“You’ve done the right thing,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fujimori on Friday, according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, who said she also urged Fujimori to promote reforms that will end abuses that have marked past election campaigns.
Fujimori also met with President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger. White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Fujimori received a consistent message from Albright and Berger that he is pursuing the right path forward toward “full democracy.”
Fujimori's visit to Washington also included a meeting with OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria, who is overseeing a dialogue among Peruvian political leaders aimed at forging a consensus on ground rules for next year’s elections.
At a news conference Friday, Gaviria said the process is working well, noting that a series of agreements has been reached, including a commitment to announce an election date by Oct. 15.
Nobody, within the administration or elsewhere, can say for certain where Fujimori is trying to go with all this personal maneuvering. Speculation that he was trying to fend off a military coup back home does not make sense; the Peruvian armed forces got from Fujimori three weeks ago all they wanted from him. But other moves his administration is carrying out through more regular channels — and which have not been given as much public exposure as Fujimori’s own personal comings and goings — suggest a scenario that is gaining increasing acceptance among observers of Latin American politics.
Even as Fujimori was making his well-publicized rounds in Washington, the Peruvian government was quietly agreeing to pay $58 million to Elliott Associates, a New York hedge fund, to settle claims on defaulted loans from the 1980s. This move will allow the government to avoid a wider default on $3.7 billion in its sovereign debt, which should bring some relief to foreign investors rattled by events in Peru.
This is part of a concerted effort by the Peruvian government to bring back investors’ confidence in their country. Recent events have knocked a market already struggling to attract foreign investors who have preferred Argentina or Brazil, where the economic outlook has been more encouraging.
Before the political crisis, things seemed to be improving in Peru. The appointment as Finance minister of Carlos Bolona, who steered through a number of International Monetary Fund-style reforms in the early 1990s, was seen as a step forward and the market was awaiting a new batch of privatizations, which are now likely to be postponed until after the elections.
Despite estimates that Peru's economy will grow 4 per cent this year the crisis highlights its deep economic problems. As exports and foreign investment earnings have dropped, the government has been faced with a widening fiscal deficit. Bolona has warned that the deficit could get out of hand and that the economy was being damaged by the political turbulence.
But, why should be Fujimori be so concerned with an economic future for Peru of which he would not be a part? The answer is that he does indeed plan to a be a part of it.
It is speculated that Fujimori will draw upon the popular support he still has (calling to new elections has purged him of his major political sins) to help a candidate of his preference—the name most mentioned is his vice president, Antonio Tudela—to get elected as a caretaker of his political interests, with Peruvians knowing that Fujimori is behind him. Thus, according to this scenario, five years from now—when he hopes to be a robust 73—Fujimori would be well positioned to run again for office and. he thinks, win.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com