Along with his inseparable oxygen tank, Alberto Fujimori, 85, has made it clear that he is not willing to give up his leading role in the Peruvian political scene.
Until this week, his public appearances had been limited to errands (renewal of his identity card) and visits to health centers, with brief greetings.
But these days, just after three months in freedom, at 85 years old, he walked through one of the most iconic shopping centers in Lima, took some selfies with some young girls, and before the microphone of a television reporter confirmed what her daughter Keiko would never have dared to accept: that her Fuerza Popular party has an agreement with the Executive so that Dina Boluarte remains president of the country until 2026.
But he also did so by referring to Fujimorism as if it were a separate political group, with its own life: “Fuerza Popular and Fujimorism have agreed to this,” he said regarding the continuity of Boluarte, displaying immeasurable power, as if we were in the nineties.
The two main people involved, Keiko and Boluarte, did not respond.
The president, as usual, handed over the baton to her prime minister, Alberto Otárola, and the founder of the Orange party did the same through her congresswomen.
“We are absolute opposition,” said her spokesperson, Miguel Torres, with no other basis than her words.
For lawyer and journalist Rosa María Palacios, the former dictator's statements compromise her daughter's political group and are a false step regarding her aspirations in the next race.
“This pact means that Fuerza Popular has to assume the liabilities of this regime.
On the brink
of an election is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Especially if Dina Boluarte has 49 deaths above her and, in addition, is the most unpopular president in the history of Peru and Latin America since the popularity of presidents is measured.
"Who wants to hug Dina Boluarte in an electoral process?" She stated categorically in her digital program for the newspaper
La República
.
According to a survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), Boluarte's approval is 8%.
What is the purpose of such a trip beyond shaking public opinion?
Are these coordinated statements or egotistical impulses of the person who governed Peru for more than a decade?
The truth is that it was not the only statement that left Fuerza Popular in an advanced position.
Alberto Fujimori was lenient with Vladimiro Montesinos, his advisor, convicted of leading a series of massacres during his government.
“Every person makes their own mistakes, right?” He said, as if he were any citizen and not the former military man who orchestrated the largest corruption network in Peru.
The journalist and writer Renato Cisneros explains it: “This is one of the great defects of Fujimoriism: its inability to admit its proven crimes, passing them off as errors.
“Montesinos was not an erratic advisor who got
dizzy
with money, Mr. Fujimori, he was a corrupt criminal whom you indulged for years.”
Is Alberto Fujimori really the piece that the
Naranjas
were missing to reach the Palace or will he rather dedicate himself to giving fuel to the most reactionary anti-Fujimorism?
Be that as it may, he is prevented from trying for the Presidency.
A law, curiously promoted by Fuerza Popular, prohibits those convicted of corruption from running for representative public office.
Are his heirs, Keiko and Kenji, an option?
The patriarch of the dynasty has opted for ambiguity and preferred to laugh when asked if he would support his daughter in an eventual candidacy.
“He is still premature.
But Fujimorism will be present because there is an audience,” he said.
From the Executive, the head of the council of ministers, Alberto Otárola, sent him a warning between the lines: “What we would like is for you to continue taking care of your health.”
As recalled, Fujimori – sentenced to 25 years for crimes against humanity – was released from prison on December 7 thanks to a ruling by the Constitutional Court that revalidated the humanitarian pardon granted to him by former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Christmas Eve. 2017. That time a medical board determined that he suffers from a “serious non-terminal illness, which is progressive, degenerative and incurable” and that, therefore, the prison conditions meant a risk to his life.
Curiously, one of the members of the board was his private doctor, Juan Postigo Díaz.
As far as is known, Fujimori has been operated on several times for old tongue cancer, has registered an irregular heart rhythm called paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, and has presented other ailments typical of his age.
Seven years later, it seems that Fujimori's renewed vigor has become a huge problem for the Boluarte government.
If the main argument for his second release was once again his failing health, the fact that he goes
shopping
and gives his opinion on the political situation, as a spokesperson, makes the decision lose ground.
A questioned decision that contravened an express order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and for which the Peruvian State must respond in March.
Strong allegations will be needed to justify the contempt.
In January 2019, shortly before returning to prison and being forced to leave a clinic where he remained for more than a hundred days, Fujimori wrote a letter, typical of a dying man.
“The end of my life is near.
I have been in prison for almost 12 years and today they are taking me back to prison.
Isn't that enough?
I tell my children and grandchildren that I am sure that the judgment of history will be more fair than the judgment of my political enemies,” he said as a farewell that was not consummated.
A caricature by Carlos Tovar,
Carlín
, illustrates this coming and going of the former autocrat: Alberto Fujimori, two-headed, next to his oxygen cylinder, holds two papers.
In one he says: “Please don't kill me!
If they returned me to prison my heart would not resist it.
That?
No, this is the thing from last time.”
He then hurries to read the other: “Ah, this is the one from now: Dina continues until 2026, and Fujimorism will be present in those elections.”
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