Tue, 19 Sep 2000

Fujimori, a loner who loves to surprise

LIMA (Reuters): Peru's President Alberto Fujimori, who dropped a bombshell on Saturday by announcing that he was calling new elections, in which he would not run, is a loner with hardline instincts and a knack for the unexpected.

His announcement, in a televised address to the nation, was a staggering about-face for a man who has clung to power for 10 years and who stared down the international community in May when they criticized his win in a runoff election as badly flawed.

Peruvians were not surprised at his previous silence amid a mounting corruption scandal, which broke on Thursday night when an opposition politician made public a video showing Fujimori's secretive adviser and spymaster, Vladimiro Montesinos, allegedly bribing an opposition congressman.

Most thought that Fujimori, who has straddled a line between dictatorship and democracy since coming to power in 1990, would ultimately speak about the scandal -- but many believed he would sacrifice Montesinos before falling on his own sword.

Fujimori, 62, boasts of an instinct that has not failed him in dealing with economic chaos, a hostage crisis, Shining Path rebels, an illegal drug trade, a military coup attempt and a messy divorce.

Fujimori's frayed relations with the international community evoke memories of perhaps the most controversial moment of his first term.

In April 1992, he presided over a virtual dictatorship for eight months after dissolving Congress and the judiciary in a "self-coup."

International criticism ensued, but with his popularity unscathed at home among people tired of a corrupt ruling class, it was soon business as usual with the diplomatic community.

Washington could have pressed Fujimori to keep more strictly to a democratic script. But it appeared reluctant to undermine his power, especially as it valued Peru's new political and economic stability and his determination to face down rebels and drug lords, political analysts said.

Peru has proved an important U.S. ally in the regional fight against drug traffickers and rebels in recent years.

When Fujimori, a little-known agriculture professor, won the 1990 presidential election, few Peruvians could have guessed he would become the Western Hemisphere's longest-serving democratically elected president.

Even fewer voters could have imagined that the working-class son of Japanese immigrants would be a Latin American strongman, feared and admired by many Peruvians.

He has traveled, often dressed in a poncho and with notebook in hand, to supervise flood aid on the coast, the construction of hospitals and schools in the Andes, and the coordination of military operations to capture leftist rebels in the jungle.

Disdainful of cocktail parties with Lima's social elite, "El Chino" ("The Chinese," a Latin American nickname for anyone of Asian origin) appears more comfortable talking with Indians in cold, wind-swept highlands and cracking jokes with farmers.

"He is an authoritarian, workaholic, loner and essentially a working-class man whom many Peruvians feel they can relate to," political analyst Mirko Lauer said.

Peru has one of the worst human rights records in the region -- a record exacerbated by its latest election campaign, which was riddled with allegations of irregularity.

Fujimori's two terms have been marred by an alliance with a scandal-plagued spy service that has allowed him to exert more control over the legislature, judiciary and media.

By his side from the first election onward has been Montesinos, who won Fujimori's confidence by helping him fend off unproven allegations of tax-dodging.

Fittingly, his fall has also been in the company of the disgraced former army captain, a man who has been accused of corruption and rights abuses. Fujimori once said he would put his "hands in the fire for" Montesinos.

In 1990, he rode a tide of voter anger at traditional party politicians to beat international novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a darling of the Peruvian elite.

Tough economic reforms, a relentless campaign to eradicate rebels and the self-coup all strengthened his grip on power and brought him re-election in 1995, with 64 percent of the vote, against former UN chief Javier Perez de Cuellar.

His war on the communist guerrillas yielded the capture of the nation's most-wanted rebels in 1992: Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman and Victor Polay, leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). Fujimori also jailed thousands of rebels and encouraged thousands of others to put down arms in return for amnesty.

His divorce from Susana Higuchi in 1995 attracted international media attention when she accused his government of corruption and he locked her out of the presidential palace.

One of his biggest successes came in 1997, when he supervised a daring military operation that freed 72 hostages held at the Japanese ambassador's residence after a four-month siege by Marxist MRTA rebels in Lima. The operation, in which all 14 rebels died, brought Fujimori worldwide recognition.