New Leader in Peru Seen As Distracted by the Many Probes of His Predecessor

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
 

LIMA, Peru -- In Villa El Salvador, a stretch of concrete houses built on southern Lima's sand dunes, a neighborhood once named for disgraced former president
Alberto Fujimori has lodged a protest against his corrupt government. People there have changed the name of where they live.

"When this place was built, yes, we had that name for it," said Gloria Huamani, who owns a small, mostly empty restaurant in Neighborhood 2, Stage 4 Alberto
Fujimori, as these squalid few blocks are still known on paper. "But no longer. No one calls it that now."

It was this current of popular disgust that Alejandro Toledo rode to election as president in June, promising to root out deep-seated corruption of the Fujimori era
and restore Peruvians' faith in elected government.

The animating theme of his administration has been coming to terms with the past. That means nonstop corruption investigations and diplomatic efforts to bring
Fujimori back from Japan, where he has been granted citizenship, to face charges that include embezzling millions of dollars and using death squads.

The job is consuming enormous amounts of Toledo's time and political capital. Even some of the president's supporters say it is distracting him from important tasks
such as creating jobs, improving schools and helping impoverished farmers in a country where more than half the population survives on less than $3 a day.

"You don't drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror," said Roberto Danino, Toledo's appointed prime minister. "You have to look ahead. This [rooting out of
corruption] must be done, but it must not overtake the national agenda."

Besides pledging to end corruption, Toledo, a former World Bank consultant, won election by promising a host of populist programs to compete with those of his
left-leaning challenger, former president Alan Garcia.

Today officials around Toledo can point to some improving numbers in the economy. But Eduardo McBride, senior adviser to Toledo's Peru Possible congressional
delegation, said large parts of the president's legislative agenda have languished in recent months, including a measure that would transfer to regional governments
much of Peru's centralized political power and allow them more fiscal independence.

Attention has focused instead on criminal investigations, which in recent months have revealed secret after secret at the top levels of government during Fujimori's
decade in power, which ended last year. Evidence has emerged that bribery was rife, drug trafficking a profitable enterprise for senior military officials and civilian
massacres an acceptable method of dealing with terrorism.

Leading politicians, media owners, bankers and church leaders have been caught up in the intrigue -- many were captured making compromising statements by the
video camera of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's intelligence chief, who is in a Lima military prison awaiting trial.

Much of the job of helping the country account for past transgressions is supposed to be handled by a national Truth Commission, a putatively independent panel
appointed by Toledo's caretaker predecessor, Valentin Paniagua. The commission has been traveling the countryside gathering testimony about human rights abuses
during the Fujimori years.

At the same time, Toledo's own government has waded in. The process has not been smooth or swift.

In one embarrassing episode, Justice Minister Fernando Olivera recently traveled to the Vatican with letters purporting to show that Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, a
longtime friend of Fujimori's, had accepted money from Montesinos and sought to have the evidence destroyed. One letter was supposedly written by Cipriani, and
two others by the Vatican's ambassador to Peru. All turned out to be fake.

Earlier this month, Olivera joined two other cabinet ministers for 11 hours of testimony before the Peruvian Congress about lax security conditions at the prison
where Montesinos is being held. The long duration was not unusual: There are 120 congressional committees looking into the Fujimori years and only 28 managing
legislation.

"It has become a huge distraction and is absorbing enormous amounts of time," said McBride, the adviser to Toledo's congressional delegation.

Jose Ugaz, the special prosecutor handling much of the investigation, said Fujimori's riches have been harder to track than Montesinos's secret accounts, most likely
because the former president appears to have stashed his cash in more opaque Asian banks. But the preliminary findings of one congressional investigation, released
this month in 18 three-ring binders, accuses Fujimori of stealing $180 million.

Those investigative results follow Congress's decision in August to allow Fujimori to be charged with crimes against humanity for allegedly endorsing a
Montesinos-run death squad that killed 24 civilians. Legislators hope that the findings and the charges will prompt Japan to reconsider its refusal to return the former
president for trial, even though it has no formal extradition treaty with Peru.

Federico Salas has spent much of the past year testifying to congressional committees and anti-corruption magistrates about his role as Fujimori's last prime minister.
Although he held the job for only 110 days, his tenure spanned the final, crucial weeks of the government.

Once a leading Fujimori critic, Salas has faced questions about whether he accepted a $30,000 bonus for taking the post at a time when few wanted it, and about his
allegedly central role in creating a $15 million retirement fund for Montesinos. A judge has blocked his exit from the country four times.

"What [Toledo and his supporters] are trying to do is distract the country from the fact that they have no clear course to take this country," said Salas, who has
denied the allegations against him. "Blaming everything on Fujimori is a way to do this. Ten years of frustration that they have felt is now flourishing."

In the meantime, Toledo's administration has also faced charges of corruption. Political critics have faulted him for putting relatives on the government payroll and
accepting a monthly salary set by the cabinet of $18,000. Under pressure, he reduced his pay to $12,000.

Western officials say that despite all the wheel-spinning and delays, Toledo's government can point to some genuine gains. In October, it secured $600 million in new
cash pledges from European countries and the United States for emergency job-creation programs to build rural roads, low-cost housing and other facilities.

A U.S. official called Toledo's move to reduce defense spending by 15 percent "gutsy" given the Peruvian military's history of meddling in politics. Toledo has also
improved government transparency through Web sites, toll-free information numbers and the appointment of the first anti-corruption czar.

"As chaotic and messy as it's looked, you have a good economic team and good political leadership working these issues," the U.S. official said.

Danino, the prime minister, said that economic indicators, including a rise in energy consumption and cement sales, suggest the economy is improving. But he said that
the administration's first few months have been complicated by the news media's loyalty to Fujimori and the existence of a "Montesinos mafia" that has engineered
protests against the government.

He said those factors help explain why Toledo's popularity rating is now around 30 percent, although he won election six months ago with 54 percent of the vote.
"There has also been our own inability to show immediate results to people who are hungry," Danino said.

In the Alberto Fujimori neighborhood, Toledo's party headquarters sits across from where Luis Alberto Castaneda washes taxis for less than $3 a day. On that
amount, he supports three children and a wife.

He voted for Toledo, but his faith barely lasted a month. "Nothing ever changes, whether it's Fujimori or Toledo," he said. "The same problems that existed back then
still exist now. He [Toledo] needs to stop talking about it, and make something happen here."

                                               © 2001