First term 1990 general election During the first presidency of
Alan García, the economy had entered a period of
hyperinflation and the political system was in crisis due to the country's internal conflict, leaving Peru in "economic and political chaos". The
armed forces grew frustrated with the inability of the García administration to handle the nation's crises and began to draft
Plan Verde as a plan to overthrow his government. According to Rospigliosi, lawyer and friend of Fujimori,
Vladimiro Montesinos was not initially involved with the
Plan Verde, but his ability to resolve issues for the military resulted with the armed forces tasking Montesinos with implementing the plan with Fujimori, Both General and Montesinos were responsible for the relationship between the armed forces and Fujimori. Rendón writes that the United States supported Fujimori because of his relationship with Montesinos, who had previously been charged with spying on the Peruvian military for the CIA. Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election as a
dark horse candidate under the banner of
Cambio 90, defeating Vargas Llosa in a surprise result. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with outgoing president
Alan García and the
American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party (APRA). During the campaign, Fujimori was nicknamed
"el chino," which translates to "the Chinese guy" or "the
Chinaman"; it is common for people of any East Asian descent to be called
chino in Peru, as elsewhere in Spanish-speaking Latin America, both derogatorily and affectionately. Although he was of Japanese heritage, Fujimori suggested that he was always pleased by the nickname, which he perceived as a term of affection. With his election victory, he became the third person of East Asian descent to serve as presidency of a South American state, after President
Arthur Chung of Guyana and
Henk Chin A Sen of Suriname.
Economic shock According to news magazine
Oiga, the armed forces finalized plans on 18 June 1990 involving multiple scenarios for a
coup d'état to be executed on 27 July 1990, the day prior to Fujimori's inauguration. The magazine noted that in one of the scenarios, titled "Negotiation and agreement with Fujimori. Bases of negotiation: concept of directed Democracy and Market Economy", Fujimori was to be directed on accepting the military's plan at least 24 hours before his inauguration. Montesinos and SIN officials ultimately assumed the armed forces' position in the plan, placing SIN operatives into military leadership roles. with Chile, 13 November 1999
Jacques Delors in Brussels, 21 October 1991 After taking office, Fujimori abandoned the economic platform he promoted during his campaign, adopting more aggressive neoliberal policies than those espoused by Vargas Llosa, his opponent in the election. During his first term in office, Fujimori enacted wide-ranging neoliberal reforms, known as the
Fujishock. It was Fujimori's stated objective to pacify the nation and restore economic balance. This program bore little resemblance to his campaign platform and was in fact more drastic than anything Vargas Llosa had proposed.
Hernando de Soto, the founder of one of the first neoliberal organizations in Latin America, the
Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), began to receive assistance from the U.S. government under
Ronald Reagan, with the
National Endowment for Democracy's Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) providing his ILD with funding and education for advertising campaigns. Between 1988 and 1995, de Soto and the ILD were mainly responsible for some four hundred initiatives, laws, and regulations that led to significant changes in Peru's
economic system. Under Fujimori, de Soto served as "the President's personal representative", with
The New York Times describing de Soto as an "overseas salesman" for Fujimori in 1990, writing that he had represented the government when meeting with
creditors and United States representatives. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) was content with Peru's measures, and guaranteed loan funding for Peru.
Inflation rapidly began to fall and foreign investment capital flooded in. The
privatization campaign involved selling off of hundreds of
state-owned enterprises, and replacing the country's troubled currency, the
inti, with the
nuevo sol. Fujimori and his military handlers had planned for a coup during his preceding two years in office. Congress was shut down by the military, the constitution was suspended and the judiciary was dissolved. Without political obstacles, the military was able to implement the objectives outlined in Plan Verde
Vladimiro Montesinos would go on to adopt the actual function of Peru's government. Fujimori often cited this public support in defending the coup, which he characterized as "not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary... a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy". Fujimori's coup was immediately met with near-unanimous condemnation from the international community. despite Fujimori's claim that the coup represented a "popular uprising". Negotiations between the OAS, the government, and opposition groups initially led Fujimori to propose a referendum to ratify the auto-coup, but the OAS rejected this. Fujimori then proposed scheduling elections for a Democratic Constituent Congress (CCD), which would draft a new constitution to be ratified by a national referendum. Despite a lack of consensus among political forces in Peru regarding this proposal, an
ad hoc OAS meeting of ministers nevertheless endorsed this scenario in mid-May. Elections for the
Democratic Constituent Congress were held on
22 November 1992. Fujimori, in turn, later received most of the participants of the
November 1992 Venezuelan coup attempt as political
asylees, who had fled to Peru after its failure.
Peru–United States relations earlier in Fujimori's presidency had been dominated by questions of
coca eradication and Fujimori's initial reluctance to sign an accord to increase his military's eradication efforts in the lowlands. Fujimori's
autogolpe became a major obstacle to relations, as the United States immediately suspended all military and economic aid, with exceptions for counter-narcotic and humanitarian funds. Two weeks after the self-coup, the
George H. W. Bush administration changed its position and officially recognized Fujimori as the legitimate leader of Peru, partly because he was willing to implement economic austerity measures, but also because of his adamant opposition to the
Shining Path. On 13 November 1992, General attempted to overthrow Fujimori in a
failed military coup. Salinas asserted that his intentions were to turn Fujimori over to be tried for violating the constitution.
Second term The 1993 Constitution allowed Fujimori to run for a second term, and in April 1995, at the height of his popularity, Fujimori easily won reelection with almost two-thirds of the vote. His main opponent, former
UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, won only 21 percent of the vote. Fujimori's supporters won comfortable majority in the new
unicameral Congress. One of the first acts of the new congress was to declare an amnesty for all members of the
military and
police accused or convicted of
human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995. During his second term, Fujimori and Ecuadorian President
Sixto Durán Ballén signed a peace agreement over a
border dispute that had simmered for more than a century. The treaty allowed the two countries to obtain international funds for developing the border region. Fujimori also settled some issues with Chile, Peru's southern neighbor, which had been unresolved since the 1929
Treaty of Lima. The 1995 election was the turning point in Fujimori's career. Peruvians began to be more concerned about
freedom of speech and the press. Before he was sworn in for a second term, he stripped two universities of their autonomy and reshuffled the national electoral board. This led his opponents to call him "Chinochet", a reference to his previous nickname and to Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet. Modeling his rule after Pinochet, Fujimori reportedly enjoyed this nickname. According to a poll by the Peruvian Research and Marketing Company conducted in 1997, 40.6% of Lima residents considered President Fujimori an authoritarian. In addition to the fate of
democracy under Fujimori, Peruvians were becoming increasingly interested in the myriad allegations of criminality that involved Fujimori and his chief of the
National Intelligence Service (SIN),
Vladimiro Montesinos. Using SIN, Fujimori gained control of the majority of the armed forces, with the
Financial Times stating that "[i]n no other country in Latin America did a president have so much control over the armed forces". A 2002 report by Health Minister
Fernando Carbone later suggested that Fujimori was involved in the
forced sterilizations of up to 300,000 indigenous women between 1996 and 2000, as part of a population control program. A 2004
World Bank publication said that in this period Montesinos's abuse of the power Fujimori granted him "led to a steady and systematic undermining of the
rule of law".
Third term, flight to Japan and resignation By the arrival of the new millennium, Alberto Fujimori became increasingly authoritarian, strengthening collaboration with
Vladimiro Montesinos and the
National Intelligence Service. Shortly after Fujimori began his second term, his supporters in Congress passed a law of "authentic interpretation" which effectively allowed him to run for another term in 2000. A 1998 effort to repeal this law by referendum failed. In late 1999, Fujimori announced that he would run for a third term. The electoral authorities, which were politically sympathetic to Fujimori, accepted his argument that the two-term restriction did not apply to him, as it was enacted while he was already in office.
Exit polls showed Fujimori fell short of the 50% required to avoid an electoral runoff, but the first official results showed him with 49.6% of the vote, just short of outright victory. Eventually, Fujimori was credited with 49.9%—20,000 votes short of avoiding a runoff. Despite reports of numerous irregularities, the international observers recognized an adjusted victory of Fujimori. As voting is mandatory in Peru, Fujimori's primary opponent,
Alejandro Toledo, called for his supporters to spoil their ballots in the runoff by writing "No to fraud!" on them. The
OAS electoral observation mission pulled out of the country, saying that the process would be neither free nor fair. In the runoff, Fujimori won with 51.1% of the total votes. While votes for Toledo declined from 37.0% of the total votes cast in the first round to 17.7% of the votes in the second round, invalid votes jumped from 8.1% of the total votes cast in the first round to 31.1% of total votes in the second round. The large percentage of invalid votes in the election suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the electoral process among voters. Although Fujimori won the runoff with only a bare majority (but 3/4 valid votes), rumors of irregularities led most of the international community to shun his third swearing-in on 28 July. For the next seven weeks, there were daily demonstrations in front of the
presidential palace. As a conciliatory gesture, Fujimori appointed former opposition candidate
Federico Salas as prime minister. Opposition parties in Congress refused to support this move, and Toledo campaigned vigorously to have the election annulled. At this point, a corruption scandal involving
Vladimiro Montesinos broke out, and exploded into full force on the evening of 14 September 2000, when the cable television station
Canal N broadcast footage of Montesinos apparently bribing opposition congressman
Alberto Kouri to defect to Fujimori's
Peru 2000 party. The video was originally presented at press conference by
Fernando Olivera and
Luis Iberico of the
FIM (Independent Moralizing Front); many other similar videos were released in the following weeks. Fujimori's support virtually collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the SIN and call new elections, in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to
Brunei to attend the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On 16 November,
Valentín Paniagua took over as president of Congress after the pro-Fujimori leadership lost a vote of confidence. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential
resignation via fax. Congress refused to accept his resignation, instead voting on 22 November 62–9 to remove Fujimori from office on the grounds that he was "permanently morally disabled" and banned him from Peruvian politics for a decade. On 19 November, government ministers presented their resignations en bloc. Fujimori's first vice president,
Francisco Tudela, had broken with Fujimori and resigned a few days earlier. This left second vice president
Ricardo Márquez Flores as next in line for the presidency. Congress refused to recognize him, as he was an ardent Fujimori loyalist; Márquez resigned two days later. Paniagua was next in line, and became interim president to oversee the April 2001 elections. ==Post-presidency (2000–2024)==