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Fujimori's third term: protests at home, isolation abroad |
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July 29, 2000
LIMA,(AP) - President Alberto Fujimori defied raucous protests at home and growing isolation abroad as he pushed ahead with plans to be sworn in Friday, embarking on an unprecedented third term after a tainted re-election victory. More than 15,000 opponents of Fujimori staged one of the biggest protests of his decade in power, a downtown rally that was to culminate with a march on Congress in a bid to spoil the inaugural ceremony. Workers, students, and Peruvians from many backgrounds united Thursday evening to open the street demonstrations with a raucous, torch-lit rally as drums pounded loudly on the night air. "Democracy, yes! Dictatorship, no!" the demonstrators chanted on a large plaza fronting the Palace of Justice, lofting a huge red banner emblazoned with the word "DEMOCRACIA." Alejandro Toledo, who forced Fujimori into a second round, and then boycotted the May 28 final ballot after crying fraud, vowed to discredit Friday's inauguration by marching tens of thousands of people in an outpouring of "peaceful resistance." "We come here to say: `No to the dictatorship!" the opposition leader said in a fiery speech like those he used to galvanize voters and leap from obscurity during the campaign. "We are going to rescue liberty and democracy from the clutches of the dictator." Riot police stayed away from the marathon rally. During his one-hour speech, Toledo declared: "Mr. Fujimori: Peruvians who love their country will not allow you to remain five more years in power!" He said Peruvians had mobilized from across the country and praised them for joining the protest dubbed the "March of the Four Suyos" - an allusion to the four corners of the ancient Incan empire. "This march will not end until the dictatorship falls!" he vowed. For days, demonstrators had seeped into Lima aboard trucks and buses from the countryside, sleeping in open-air tent camps and eating from communal stewpots. Toledo organizers had promised to put at least 200,000 people into the streets, which would be the largest gathering in more than two decades. But by late Thursday, he mustered barely a fraction of that. A Stanford-educated economist, Toledo, 54, said democracy meant meeting unrequited demands for social and economic change in this South American country of 26 million - creating jobs and helping the poor. In the crowd, one toddler held up a crudely penciled portrait of Fujimori attached to the body of a rat. Others carried flaming torches, the rainbow-colored flag of the ancient Inca empire, even a makeshift black coffin meant to symbolize democracy's demise. "Nobody here voted for Mr. Fujimori. His was a fraudulent victory and we demand a new vote," said one demonstrator, Rosario Sanchez. Fujimori, whose autocratic style is seen by critics as a throwback to the Latin American dictatorships of old, has ordered as many as 40,000 police on alert, tear gas launchers at the ready. While he said the rights of all citizens would be respected, Fujimori warned he would not permit "outbreaks against public order." International monitors have said the May 28 election did not meet minimum standards of fairness, and they refused to lend it legitimacy by overseeing it. In what critics here interpreted as a regionwide snub to Fujimori, only two Latin American presidents accepted invitations to Friday's swearing-in, compared to nine at his second inaugural in 1995. Toledo charged that Fujimori, a bespectacled former university rector first elected in 1990, has carried this South American country into a personal dictatorship with another five-year term. And he suggested the pro-democracy movement was now unstoppable. "Not one step back! The struggle will continue!" many chanted. Fujimori had wide popular support in 1992 when he suspended the constitution and shuttered Congress, saying strong medicine was necessary to carry out free-market economic reforms and defeat the bloody Maoist Shining Path insurgency. Three years later, he was re-elected by a landslide. In recent years, however, Fujimori's popularity has sagged, as his economic policies failed to provide jobs and the fading threat of leftist rebels ceased to justify his disregard for democratic checks and balances. Many said they were fed up. Elizabeth Humphrey was among thousands of women dressed in black to "mourn" Peru's "murdered democracy." Beckoning to fellow protesters all about her, she said, "If Fujimori wants to know what democracy is, this is democracy!"
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