Terrible Person Leaves Planet

I had Alberto Fujimori on my obituary list, but I never got around to writing it. Too bad, but now he’s dead and any decent person should say this–good.

When several Supreme Court justices held that he could not seek a third term, his allies in Congress fired them, arguing that he was entitled to run for re-election since his first term had started during a previous Constitution. After a Lima television station revealed that the government had wiretapped the phones of prominent citizens and journalists, the government revoked the citizenship of the station’s owner, a native of Israel who had become a naturalized Peruvian citizen.

By the time Mr. Fujimori formally announced his re-election campaign in 1999, Peru’s swing toward authoritarianism had been widely deplored. Mr. Fujimori’s ex-wife, Susana Higuchi — who in 1994 accused him of having a mistress and locking her out of the palace, preventing her from seeing their children and even plotting to kidnap her — ran for Congress and denounced him as a dictator. (She was blocked from running for president against her husband in 1995 but won a congressional seat in 2000.)

In April 2000, Mr. Fujimori placed first in an election marred by accusations of fraud, though not by a margin large enough to avoid a runoff against his nearest rival, Alejandro Toledo, a former business-school professor who, like Mr. Fujimori, came from humble roots.

Mr. Toledo, citing what he called vote fraud and campaign irregularities, urged his voters to abstain, and international election observers withdrew in disgust. Mr. Fujimori declared victory, but it was a hollow one: As he was sworn in for the third time, police officers fired water cannons and tear gas at protesters.

Mr. Fujimori’s downfall came swiftly. Seven weeks into his new term, on Sept. 14, 2000, a cable television channel transmitted a 58-minute videotape that showed Mr. Montesinos handing $15,000 to an opposition politician, Alberto Kouri, hoping to entice him to defect to Mr. Fujimori’s party.

More tapes showing bribes emerged. It was later revealed that Mr. Montesinos, imprisoned since 2003, had orchestrated not only political repression but also a lucrative series of embezzlement, influence-peddling and graft schemes. He had recorded many of his meetings, if not all of them, for potential blackmail; the tapes would go on to become Exhibit A in scores of corruption trials after Mr. Fujimori’s resignation.

The scandal prompted Mr. Fujimori to announce that he would call new elections and not seek a new term. He also said he would dismantle the feared intelligence service that Mr. Montesinos had led.

Ostensibly to shore up support for a political transition, Mr. Fujimori visited Washington and then Tokyo; from there, he submitted his resignation. In a final slap at him, the Peruvian Congress refused the resignation but declared the presidency vacant, saying that he was “morally unfit” to serve.

Allowed to settle in Japan — he was eligible for citizenship through his parents — Mr. Fujimori tried to style himself as a commentator on terrorism. He mused about running for Parliament in Japan and about making a political comeback in Peru. As Peru’s government spent years trying unsuccessfully to have Mr. Fujimori extradited, a government-appointed truth commission concluded that 69,000 people had died between 1980 and 2000 in conflicts between rebels and the government.

While the commission concluded that Shining Path was responsible for most of the deaths, it also accused Mr. Fujimori and two predecessors, Fernando Belaúnde and Alan García, of widespread abuses. It found that three in four victims who died were Quechua speakers, most of them innocent civilians caught in the fighting.

No one needs to apologize for the Shining Path to note that Fujimori was a truly terrible murderous human being.

If you really want the dirt, read the Amnesty International report about Fujimori’s terrible crimes.