Not everyone buys his version of democracy. Since his first inauguration 10 years ago, the 61-year-old president has suspended the Constitution, dissolved Congress and rewritten the law to exempt himself from term limits. During this year’s campaign season the irregularities were almost farcical in their scope. But Fujimori’s team took no chances. Even after the April 9 first-round vote left their candidate facing Toledo, a little-known centrist technocrat, the state-run broadcast media kept the challenger in a virtual news blackout. Still hoping for a full airing of his views, Toledo tried to get the runoff vote postponed to mid-June. The Clinton administration and the Organization of American States endorsed his bid. But Fujimori refused. Toledo finally withdrew in protest. “I hope the United States doesn’t allow Fujimori to get away with it,” the 54-year-old Stanford economist told NEWSWEEK after last week’s vote. “That would establish a grave precedent for Latin America.”
His warning may prove true. There’s just one question: what is Bill Clinton–or anyone else outside Peru–going to do about it? The U.S. State Department promptly rejected the runoff outcome as “not valid.” The OAS countries’ Washington ambassadors held an urgent meeting to formulate a proper reply to Fujimori’s arrogance. But everyone soon calmed down. The OAS representatives left all decisions to the 34 member nations’ foreign ministers at their annual meeting this week in Ontario. Clinton aides quickly recanted the State Department remark. “It was bad phraseology,” says a senior official. “Under the Peruvian Constitution [the vote] was legitimate. The real question was whether international standards were observed. Everyone agreed they were not.” In any case, tough economic sanctions are out, says the official: “The problem is [the risk of] crippling Peru.”
Sanctions don’t scare Fujimori anyway. He weathered them handily enough after he shut down Congress and scrapped the Constitution in 1992. Last week’s international hubbub was mild by comparison. Back then the United States immediately froze all nonhumanitarian aid, and both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund announced they were withholding all further credits until democracy was restored. Peru’s leader held his ground, and within a couple of weeks the Bush administration blinked, agreeing to continue recognizing Fujimori as president. The White House had scant choice. No one else in Peru seemed capable of leading the fight against the drug kingpins and the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path. Fujimori calmly went about his business, chopping the legislative and judicial branches into firewood.
Peruvians will have to defend their own democracy. Toledo kicked off a post-election campaign at a rally in Lima last week. His plan is to lead a series of larger and larger demonstrations, culminating with a massive protest march on July 28 intended to block Fujimori’s inauguration. “We will not allow him to be sworn in,” Toledo promised last week. “He can bring all his tanks into the streets if he wishes, but he will have to confront more than 16 million Peruvians.” That’s practically everyone older than 15; the country’s total population is 26 million. Hardly anyone thinks Toledo’s protesters will keep Fujimori from taking the oath of office. “I see no possibility,” says Hugo Otero, a leading opposition politician and a key advisor to former president Alan Garcia. “The ’national protest march’ is a romantic gesture that will not make Fujimori and his people tremble.”
The president hardly seems worried. “We are coming out of this ‘political crisis’ a bit sooner than the pundits expected,” he said last week. “It’s been a brief period, and the [level of] social agitation is par for the course. There have always been marches and rallies here. They are part of the country’s democratic climate.” The most reliable opinion polls say roughly half the people of Peru continue to stand squarely behind him. They aren’t about to participate in any mass people-power uprising against their hero. After all, they say, Fujimori is the president who stopped hyperinflation and crushed the ruthless terrorists of the Shining Path.
Could anyone but an autocrat have performed such feats? Asked last week whether he considers himself a dictator or a democrat, Fujimori gave a reply suggesting neither and both: “I am a serious manager of the government’s program, a pragmatist when I have to be. The government consists of technocrats. Not one member of my cabinet is a politician.”
Those technocrats have a big job to do. The country has spent the last two years stuck in a recession. Foreign investment has dried up in every area but mining. Only one worker in four has full-time employment. With a platform promising more jobs and better wages, Toledo presented the biggest electoral challenge of Fujimori’s career. The president insists the complaints of dirty politics are only a side issue for most Peruvians. “One sector of the population believes that some steps were taken that weren’t completely democratic,” he acknowledges. “But the most important issue for people is unemployment and low wages. That was a factor that naturally lowered our support.”
His support is likely to keep on falling unless he finds a way to revive the economy. So far no one sees any improvement. “There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” complains a foreign businessman in Lima. “Popular discontent could build and build until Fujimori finally has to step down after a couple of years.” The president built his name on being tougher than his adversaries. But sheer personal toughness can’t cure Peru’s ailing economy. This job needs a subtler approach–and that’s a new kind of challenge for Fujimori.
