Word: fujimori
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Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori recently declared that new presidential elections would be held in his country, and that he would not be a candidate. This announcement comes only seven weeks into Fujimori's landmark third term as president, after he was elected in May and inaugurated this July. Although he did not say how soon the new elections would be held, Fujimori's decision to step down came when a videotape surfaced showing the Chief of Peru's Secret Service bribing a Peruvian lawmaker in attempts to get him to ally with Fujimori's political party...
Corruption is nothing new in Fujimori's ten-year-old administration. In 1997, he fired three of the seven members of Peru's Constitutional Tribunal, allowing himself to run for a third five-year term--even though the Peruvian Constitution explicitly limits a president to two terms. After his May victory, Fujimori was internationally criticized for his use of a fraudulent signature campaign as well as smear and harassment tactics against his opponent...
...While Fujimori's free-market reforms have made Peru one of the more prosperous Latin American nations, the infringements against his people's civil rights through his efforts to control the country's election processes, media, legislative and judicial systems have made a mockery of Peru's so-called democratic government. Indeed, after he announced his resignation, protestors outside the Presidential Palace chanted "the dictatorship is over...
...Peru may ostensibly be a democracy, but the security forces continue to play a major role in politics, and Montesinos had long been viewed as the power behind Fujimori's throne. To understand exactly what has happened over the past week, it would help to know just how the videotape depicting him in what appears to be an act of bribery found its way into the hands of the opposition and onto television - an apparent sting worthy of his own intelligence service's political dirty tricks. Observers will be closely watching Montesinos's movements, because while Fujimori also announced...
...reasons for Fujimori?s sudden departure remain murky, but of more immediate concern to Peruvians is the dangers that arise from the fact that he delivered an incomplete announcement. He said he'd quit, but not when and how. Pressure on the streets may grow for the president?s immediate resignation, but right now there?s considerable uncertainty over how any transition would be managed. And that means Peru could be heading into a political vacuum - something nature, and the military, tends to abhor...