MIM Notes # 222       Nov 15, 2000

Why did Fujimori fall?

By Luis Arce Borja
Reprinted from El Diario Internacional
Translation by MIM

Alberto Fujimori announced that he would retire from the 
presidency of Peru Saturday the sixteenth of September, the 
dictator surprisingly presented himself on Peruvian television 
to announce that he would dissolve the National Intelligence 
Service (NIS) and that he would surrender power. Along with 
this he offered to call new general elections for the month of 
March 2001. Indicating at the same time that he would not be a 
presidential candidate.

On the surface, Furjimori's rendering of power would have its 
principal cause in the discovery of an act of corruption 
directed from the (NIS) whose implied principal is Valdimiro 
Montesinos, chief of this institution and personal consultant 
of the presidency. In effect, days before this live 
announcement, Fernando Olivera, Fujimori's opponent and the 
leader of the Moralizing Independent Front, (MIF) made public 
a video which showed the moment in which Vladimiro Montesino 
turned over fifteen-thousand dollars to Luis Alberto Kouri 
(member of "A possible Peru's" parliament), so that the 
fujimorist grouping be passed to the rows in "Peru 2000." This 
is the anecdotal part of the fall of Fujimori.

What is the explanation for Fujimori's renouncement?

 It is unexplainable that a regimen render power for a mere 
fifteen thousand dollars given that it made corruption, 
blackmail, lies and crime its fundamental mode of governing. 
This in the generalized framework of corruption in Peru has no 
significant relevance. There exists no logical reason that 
would explain why Fujimori and his consultant Montesinos would 
renounce the facts that we are commenting on, given that in 
the last ten years of power they have proven themselves 
unscrupulous, cynical without the most fundamental respect for 
the morals and ethics of politics. To shake themselves of the 
blame brought by the tape, it would have sufficed to deny the 
charges, give a contradictory statement to the official media, 
intimidate the accuser and finally make him vanish, as they 
have done hundreds of times since 1990. 

Approaching this problem from another angle, it could be said 
that Fujimori's rendering of power takes its origins in the 
accumulation of social protests against his government. 
However this is not the root of the problem even if it is true 
the Peruvian masses repudiate this government, furthermore it 
has not had the capacity to generate a solid independent 
movement to struggle against the dictatorship. Brutal 
repression and militarization have been dissuasive 
measurements used to control any political actions of workers 
and the other oppressed sectors of Peru. Not even Alejandro 
Toledo or any of the other opponents that Fujimori faced in 
last April and May's electoral debates could ruin the 
strategic plans of the current government. The political 
activity of what is known in Peru as "Fujimori's opposition" 
(parties, groups and electoral fronts), has only served to 
contribute a bit of color to the electoral circus and to give 
a legitimate legal image to Fujimori's regimen. Within this 
panorama, the timid "protests" of the OEA and of the United 
States against the last presidential elections in Peru served 
only as background music to the electoral fraud of this year.

One must look to the gears that exist within the North 
Amerikan government and the regimen directed by Fujimori to 
find the fundamental factor causing the fall of the current 
government of Peru. As is known, the United States, with the 
help of Fujimori and Montesinos, inaugurated in Latin America 
a government completely supported and directed by the Amerikan 
CIA. Vladimiro Montesino's unlimited power was a direct result 
of his ties with the high-ranking officials of this Amerikan 
intelligence agency. As a result it was seen in the last ten 
years that the Peruvian government and moreover Montesinos 
acted with impunity to submit to their desires the Peruvian 
Armed Forces, to give orders to squadrons of death, commit 
horrendous assassinations, to make big business deals with 
drug traffickers, and to participate in scandalous crimes of 
corruption and theft in the State.

What then occurred between the CIA and the Peruvian 
government?

The umbilical cord between the Peruvian government and the CIA 
was cut after the discovery of million dollar arms trafficking 
directed by Fujimori and Montesinos. The actual problem has 
not been the discovery of illegal arms rather the fact that 
rifles, bombs, munitions and rockets where headed towards the 
hands of the guerrillas of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of 
Colombia (ARFC). The matter of fact has to do with the events 
that occurred last year between March and July. Fujimori and 
Montesino's agents turned over to the ARFC ten thousand 
Kalashnikov 47 rifles made in Russia. To cover up this 
trafficking ploy the company name utilized was Nippon 
Corporation S.A. This company was created in 1993 and 
represented by the Peruvian Jose Luis Aybar, an ex-tenant of 
the military tied with drug trafficking. Aybar in this 
business acted like a man of confidence with Fujimori and 
Montesinos. Nippon Corporation S.A. was the official provider 
of arms to the military and to the National Institute of 
Defense of Peru. The arms given to the Colombian guerillas 
were originally from Jordan, and it was subsequently declared 
by the government of Peru they were officially bought by 
government representatives of the country.

The personnel that participated in this trafficking scheme 
have declared in detail that the transport of arms from Jordan 
to the Colombian front was realized under the direction of an 
official and secret operation of the Peruvian military. Jose 
Luis Aybar declared that they were counting on an official 
guarantee and protection to purchase arms in Jordan, stop in 
Trinidad and Tobago and then from an Ilyushin 67 plane drop 
the cargo. According to the declaration of this military man 
he participated in the transport of weapons under the 
impression that he was acting in service to the country.

When Fujimori fell from grace

It began the twenty-fifth of last June, a month before the 
inauguration of Fujimori. That day the police of Trinidad and 
Tobago held back an Ilyushin 67 airplane that in appearance 
was carrying a large cargo of medicine for Peru. The 
suspicious merchandise made undercover Amerikan intelligence 
agents intervene. They discovered that the supposed cargo of 
medicine were land-air missiles, Kalashnikov rifles, and tons 
of ammunition. When realizing that he had been discovered 
Fujimori declared that in fact the cargo officially belonged 
to the Peruvian State and that the weapons were to "combat 
subversives" but he did not give a reason as to why the 
weapons had been camouflaged to look like medicines.

Afterwards, at the beginning of last August the CIA and 
government of Peru captured a few guerillas of the ARFC and 
the surprise was that the subversives utilized the Kalashnikov 
rifles. The rifles were sent to one of the Amerikan CIA bases 
to verify the origins of these. The surprise was immediate; 
the Kalashnikov rifles had been officially sold by the 
Jordanian government to the armed forces of Peru. Having been 
caught Fujimori and Montesinos planned their exit. On the 
twenty-first of August they surprisingly called a press 
conference in which they announced that they had dismantled a 
band of arms traffickers that negotiated with the Colombian 
guerillas. As a first order of business they indicated that 
the leader of the arms traffickers were identified and that 
they would be judged by the military. The conference leaders, 
one of whom was Montesinos who was usually never in, asked for 
continental recognition as a reward for having, according to 
them, dismantled a mafia that fed weapons to the Colombian 
guerillas.

The trick rendered no results. The twenty-fourth of August, 
four days after the press conference, the general Fernando 
Tapia, commander of the Armed Forces of Colombia, accused the 
Peruvian government of having a contract of weapons sale of 
ten thousand rifles to the ARFC. Under the same tone, Luis 
Fernando Ramirez, minister of Defense in Colombia, ratified 
the accusation that the Peruvian government was responsible 
for the sale of weapons to the guerillas of his country. On 
his behalf a representative of the Jordanian government stated 
that the weapons were legally sold on behalf of his country to 
the Peruvian government in 1998. Adding that high-ranking 
military officers of Peru were involved in the business deal. 
In the same manner, Luis Aybar Cancho, who participated as the 
principal personnel in the transporting of weapons from Jordan 
to Colombia, before turning himself in, made a public 
statement in which he identified Vladimiro Montesinos as the 
chief of the arms trafficking. Thomas Pickering, the 
Subsecratary of State for political affairs of the United 
States, was summoned and he signaled in the last week of 
August that the State Department was verifying the 
corresponding information regarding the weapons sold to the 
ARFC.

It is clear then that the fall of Fujimori, was related to the 
trafficking of ten thousand rifles, and to the loss of 
confidence of the Amerikans. The CIA oversaw crimes and the 
most abominable of actions to sustain Fujimori's regimen in 
power, however it did not pardon this attempted ploy against 
the interests of the United States that intended to provide 
one of the most active groups of guerillas in Latin America 
with weapons. It is yet to be known who is next to be 
protected by the CIA in Peru.