POLITICS-PERU: Fujimori’s Abrupt About-Turns

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, May 14 1998 (IPS) - Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s supporters consider his abrupt shifts in direction a sign of “democratic sensitivity.” But his critics say they are proof that he governs with one eye on the polls, with thoughts of reelection uppermost in his mind.

Fujimori once again showed his quick reflexes in the past few weeks by overturning, four days after its approval, a decree limiting the right of parents to choose their children’s names, which had drawn fire from all sides.

Three days later, he made an abrupt shift in his strategy to tackle the lack of public safety in urban areas, one of today’s most pressing concerns.

Fujimori and his Minister of Labour and Social Promotion, Jorge Gonzalez, also announced this week that they planned to introduce changes in laws designed to fight labour instability in the companies to which the government sub-contracts out.

Just four days after issuing a controversial decree that established regulations for the names inscribed in the register office, Fujimori said his government was willing to correct errors “that sometimes go unnoticed in the draft laws submitted by the ministers.

“The public was right in protesting. The government cannot tell parents what names they should or should not give their children. According to that law, my children could not have been registered as Keiko and Kenyi,” he added.

At his side, Justice Minister Alfredo Quispe made a gesture indicating his support for the president’s decision to modify the controversial decree, despite statements he made the day before in support of the law, which he said was based on Italian, Spanish and Argentine legislation.

Enrique Zileri, editor of the opposition political weekly Caretas, wrote that Quispe “forgot to mention that those laws were passed under the dictatorships of Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Domingo Peron.”

Fujimori staged another about-face with respect to law enforcement efforts, announcing on May 2 that he would submit a package of measures to Congress designed to tackle the growing wave of crime and tremendous expansion of organised crime.

In the past few weeks, 12 moneychangers working on the streets were killed by groups of gunmen armed with AKM or FAL rifles and dressed in clothing resembling police uniforms.

Criminal gangs, in which some of the 300 police kicked off the force since January 1997 for misdemeanours or corruption are suspected to take part, have kidnapped dozens of executives, some of whom have paid ransom without turning to authorities.

Small-time criminals and even young people without criminal records are imitating the successful tactics of organised crime, by staging “lightning” kidnappings in poor or middle class neighbourhoods, demanding that the victims buy their freedom for an average sum of 500 dollars, according to police reports.

Public safety has become the top concern among Peruvians, displacing terrorism and unemployment.

But in a surprise move only three days after submitting the package of draft laws to Congress, Fujimori decided not to leave the responsibility for emergency measures against the spread of violent crime in the hands of the legislature, and announced that he would ask for legislative faculties to enact them himself.

“This legislation is urgently needed. If we commend it to Congress, the issue will be politicised, the opposition will take advantage of the opportunity to criticise the Intelligence Service and the police, and the discussions will be endless. In order to win time and efficacy, the executive branch will enact the needed measures,” the president said.

Fujimori’s critics say his about-turns reveal his interest in improving his chances in a coming referendum, which the opposition has sponsored to cut off his possibilities of running for a third consecutive term.

“Fujimori has not yet announced his candidacy, but we all know that it is his main obsession,” said opposition parliamentary Deputy Fernando Olivera. “In spite of the fact that the constitution prohibits a second consecutive reelection, Fujimori will force things in order to run again.”

Sociologist Elena Moran said the president was governing with one eye on the opinion polls, “in which support for his administration rises and drops quickly, in an almost immediate reflex to the problems facing his administration and his initiatives to resolve them.”

According to the results of the latest poll released in Lima, conducted by the private polling firm Datum, 39 percent of the population approved of the president in late April, seven percent down from the March level.

“Especially when he’s in trouble, Fujimori has a sharp instinct regarding what to do, say or not say when it comes to his image, which we already saw when he defeated his first major rival in the 1990 elections, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa,” Moran added.

Independent analyst Francisco Loayza said that “since last year, Fujimori has been taking advantage of everything he can to improve his image before the elections…With the El Nino weather phenomenon, he tried to singlehandedly assume control” of emergency assistance.

“When critics began to contend that his excessive personalisation was stemming the efficacy of the support measures, he quickly decentralised decision-making and brought in the army,” Loayza added. “But he always tried to be seen at the head of the government’s efforts.”

TV commentator Federico Salazar, a staunch critic of Fujimori, said the president’s erratic form of governing “turns him into a ‘fire fighter president’, who addresses problems as they arise.”

Fujimori “tends to be seen as the head of an authoritarian and police regime,” he remarked.

“The advantage of such methods is their celerity and the attention given by subordinates to each concrete case. But the disadvantage is that when the president does not take up a specific case or abandons it, the level of attention drops, or the issue simply falls by the wayside.”