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And so we come to April 2016, where Keiko, Alberto Fujimori’s daughter and
the inheritor of his party machine and rural support, makes her third attempt on the presidency. In the first round she wins 40% of the vote.
Pedro Pablo Kuckzynski, PPK, who campaigns with a giant guinea pig mascot, has a little over 20%. A 77 year old career banker and financier, largely based in the USA, he has also served as a Government Minister in Peru in the 1980s, and again between 2002 and 2006 under President Toledo.
Veronika Mendoza, standing as the representative of a new left wing alliance, Frente Amplio, comes in third with just under 20% of the vote. Unable to go forward to the second round run-off, she asks her supporters to transfer their votes to PPK.
In the weeks leading up to the second round, PPK mysteriously disappears from campaigning. He says he had to attend his daughter`s birthday party in the USA. A few days later, information about Joaquin Ramirez, Secretary General of Keiko Fujimori`s FP Party, appears in the Peruvian press. It appears to have come from the US DEA, Drugs Enforcement Administration.
An associate of the Secretary General, pilot Jesus Vasquez, had previously claimed that Joaquin Ramirez told him “Keiko asked me to launder $15 million…so I bought a chain of petrol stations.”
The new details suggest that the DEA has been investigating Ramirez for four years, and believe he is part of a network of cocaine exporters, using the University run by his uncle and brothers as a money-laundering front. The network includes private airlines and other businesses in Miami, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.
The DEA are said to be investigating his chain of petrol stations as well as another 18 businesses he manages, and also the businesses of his brother Osias, a Fuerza Popular Congressman.
In the lead up to the election this has an impact, and one TV station airs a tape of Jesus Vasquez saying “I was lying…”
The tape was given to the station by FP supporter and former Vice-Presidential Candidate Jose Climper, and aired by the station management without verification.
Vasquez explains that he said in another interview “They say I was lying, but it is all true. The tape, it turns out, is a cut and paste fake. Journalists resign.
On 31 March, less than a week before the election, I join twenty thousand people (some sources say thirty thousand, others seventy thousand) in the Plaza San Martin, the square of the Liberator, for a March organized by Keiko No Va, “Stop Keiko”. It is described in some press the next day as the largest public demonstration in twenty years.
Fernando “Poppy” Olivera, who has made a flamboyant career attacking corruption, addresses Keiko Fujimori on behalf of the crowd. “You personify abuse, you personify crime, you are the face of cynicism and narcotrafficking.” The next morning, La Republica puts drone photos of the march on its front page. El Comercio, the flagship newspaper of the Miro Garcia Quesada family, headlines with a story about the Venezuelan economy above a small photo and paragraph about the march. Nevertheless, on the following day it and other newspapers reveal the discovery of a mobile phone in Vladimir Montesinos` cell, brought to him by a guard; the implication is that he has been advising the FP on its tactics. There is a feeling that in these last few days, the broadly pro-Keiko press owned by Peruvian mining and construction moguls is at least shifting to back both horses.
On June 5th 2016, PPK edges through by 50.21% versus 49.88% for Keiko Fujimori, a margin of thirty-nine thousand votes out of eighteen million cast.
In the Congressional Elections Fuerza Popular have won 73 out of 130 seats, with a little more than 33% of the total vote.
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27 October 2016. Fuerza Popular uses its majority in Congress to nominate two of its supporters to the board of the BCR, the Central Reserve Bank. One is Jose Climper.
Jose Climper, of the faked tape, was Keiko´s vice-presidential candidate in 2016. He donated 222,000 Soles to Keiko´s campaign. He was minister of agriculture in the last three months of Alberto Fujimori´s government, when in November 2000 he passed the so-called Climper Law which reduced the rights of agricultural workers, eliminating the annual bonus, compensation for arbitrary dismissal and Compensation for Time of Service which workers in other industries have. Jose Chlimper was at the time President of the Board of the Sociedad Agricola Drokasa SA. In 2016 the company controls vast farms with 443 hectares of grapes, 731 hectares of asparagus, and 2010 hectares of avocado.
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8th December 2016. Education Minister Jaime Saavedra is called before Congress to answer questioning about his record, prior to a vote on whether to call for his removal.
The night before, Hector Becerril revealed that false email and Whatsapp accounts had been set up in the name of the Educational Infrastructure Programme to mislead regional governors and solicit funds from them.
His information came from an official Education Ministry announcement which also said that they had been alerting regional governors and mayors to the problem for over a year and had recently issued a denuncia penal for those responsible.
One of Jaime Saavedra´s achievements has been the introduction of the PISA test to Peru.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international survey run by the OECD which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students from all member countries on the same scale. 72 countries and economies took part in 2015.
Peru joined PISA in 2009 and in a comparison with 65 countries was third from the bottom in reading, third from bottom in mathematics, and and second from bottom, above Kyrgyzstan, in science.
Its scores were 370, 365 and 369 respectively, against OECD averages of 493, 496 and 501.
In 2012, Peru had the worst PISA scores of the 65 countries. The Peru scores in reading maths and science (with OECD mean scores in brackets) were 384 (496), 368 (494) , 373 (501).
In 2015 Peru was placed above Lebanon, Tunisia, Kosovo, Macedonia and the Dominican Republic, with scores of 398 in reading (mean 493), 387 in maths (mean 490) and 397 in science (OECD mean 493). There had been a clear improvement.
In the proceedings in Congress to oust Jaime Saavedra, FP member Segundo Tapia said the only reason that Peru had risen in the PISA rankings was because five new African countries had joined the international tests. These countries, he continued, are Algeria, Macedonia, Panama, Georgia and Moldavia. Another congresista said Jaime Saavedra had paid the OECD to give better results. A third FP member, who sits on the Congressional Education Committee, raised his concern about “a disease called Alzheimers’ which is caused by excessive studying and reading”.
22nd December 2016. The Congress votes to oust Jaame Saavedra with the 70 votes from Fuerza Popular and 10 from Apra, plus three others.
” The Economist” called the move by Fuerza Popular “A small act of national suicide by Peru”.
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March 7th 2017. Úrsula Letona y Alejandra Aramayo of Fuerza Popular propose the introduction of a law that those condemned or investigated for crimes of corruption can not occupy high positions in the national media.
Alejandra Aramayo is from Puno but was elected a Congresista for the first time in 2016 representing FP in Arequipa. She has been accused by several Puno businesses of running an extortion racket with her father Jorge Aramayo, threatening bad publicity through their TV channel if they did not pay up.
16th March 2017. It is announced that Jaame Saavedra, the Peru Ministry of Education ousted by a Congress vote, will be the next head of Global Education Practice at the World Bank.
22nd May 2017. Martin Vizcarra, Vice-President and Minister of Transport and Communications, resigns after being called before Congress to account for the promotion of a new airport in Chincheros, near Cuzco.
21 June 2017. Alfredo Thorne, Minister of the Economy and Finance, another Minister of the highest academic and professional credentials, fails to convince Congress to back him with a vote of confidence and resigns.
8th September 2017. Marilu Martens, Minister of Education who replaced Jaame Saavedra, is called before Congress to answer questions about the teacher´s strike, which is now over. Spokespeople for FP and have said they have already decided to support a motion to censure her, which will force her dismissal if passed.
13th September 2017. A motion to censure Marilu Martens is passed. In response, the President calls for a vote of confidence. If Congress opposes a motion of confidence against the Executive twice, the President can dissolve Congress and call new elections.
15th September 2017. The Executive fails the motion of confidence and the President has to appoint a new cabinet.
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10 November 2017. Keiko´s lawyer accuses the Editor of El Comercio of making false assertions “Odebrecht confirms that he financed Keiko´s campaign” and asks for a written correction within seven days -“Your timely rectification will contribute to a correct formation of public opinion” – whilst reserving the option of a civil suit for damages or a legal suit for wounding Keiko´s honour.
The newspaper replies “your letter asks us to rectify two allegations. That “Marcelo Odebrecht confirms that he financed the campaign of Senora Keiko Fujimori Higuchi” and that the same Odebrecht sustained that “I gave 500 thousand dollars to the Senora Keiko Fujimori Higuchi.”
“It would be difficult to rectify the second allegation since we did not make it. With regard to the first, we have said that Odebrecht confirmed that he “financed the campaign of Keiko” and specified that “you would have to check the details with Jorge Barata. “
“We have checked this affirmation and now we will make it again. Odebrecht said his business gave financial support to all the leading presidential candidates in 2011 and said that he noted in his diary the name of Keiko Fujimori with regard to support because be had a specific conversation about the matter with Senor Barata.”
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14 November 2017. Daniel Salaverry presents a formal Denuncia Constitutional against the Fiscal de la Nation, Pablo Sanchez, for “grave omission in the fight against corruption”. The Denunciation will be heard by theCongressional Subcommission on Constitutional Accusations. The 15 members of the subcommission include 8 party members of the FP, plus the President who is FP congressista Milagros Takayama.
The denunciation came a week after Salaverry had objected to the decision of the Fiscal to reopen the case againgst the leader of Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the disgraced dictator Alberto Fujimori, for organized crime. And said “some Fiscals seem to be the political operators of anti Fujimorismo”
If the Denunciation is accepted by the Subcommission, the Congress can remove the Fiscal from his post by a majority vote. Salaverry, who is the spokesman for the Fuerza Popular, said the Denunciation was a personal initiative and he would inform his party about it at their next meeting.
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15th November 2017. APRA Congressman Mauricio Mulder proposes a law to stop the State advertising in private newspapers and TV.
This is the tenth law proposing some form of regulation of the national media since the 2016 elections.
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15th November 2017. The Congressional Subcommission on Constitutional Accusations has been asked to review the position of four judges, members of the Constitutional Tribunal. The accusation was entered by a group of ex-marines who objected that the Tribunal “changed their minds” from a 2013 decision in the El Fronton case.
The Constitutional Tribunal had declared that the crimes were “lese humanidad”, crimes against humanity, correcting an earlier decision which had been made without a full majority vote. Such crimes were governed by international human right treaties and so can not, for example, be pardoned or otherwise mitigated.
Congress was seeking to remove four of the seven members of the Constitutional Tribunal. They can agree to move this forward by a majority vote in the FP controlled Sub-Committee, and then seek to remove the members by a vote in the FP controlled Constitutional Committee.
Except, by law, politicians can not sack judges because they do not like their decisions.
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F. 16 Nov 2017
F., a former BBC correspondent in Peru during the 1990s explains Keiko Fujimori to me. “This woman, who has never had a job beyond leading her father´s party, has the country in her hands. She controls her congress majority like puppets and now seeks to sack judges who want to investigate her campaign funds. She can do this because the constitution was written by her father.”
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December 7th 2017. The fiscal (state prosecutor) enters and searches two locales, party offices, of Fuerza Popular. Several computers and files are removed for examination. In the following hours the response of the FP spokesmen is prominent in the news and on the web.
Javier Velasquez Quesquen of Fuerza Popular says “we are living in a stellar moment of destruction of institutionality”.
“This is a total abuse” said Daniel Salaverrry, “We have never been in government. Where are the raids on those that have been in government all these years?”
“It is a violation of human rights” says Lourdes Alcorta, Fuerza Popular member.
Four members of the political party were photographed by the press arriving at the Surco party office shortly after the investigator´s raid began. They were Rosa Bartra, Daniel Salaverry, Luz Salgado and Jose Chlimper.
Rosa Bartra was put on the defensive by calls for her resignation from the Congressional Committee investigating Lava Jato. “As president of the Lava Jato Committee she should not be interfering in the Fiscal´s investigation”. She later explained that she had been called to a meeting and did not know the fiscals were present.
Keiko herself spoke to the press late at night and said there had been an “abusive” and “vengeful” attitude from the public ministry. “I reject the outrage that the fiscal has done”.
El Comercio dedicated its front page to a photo of the FP press conference which featured Keiko Fujimori in front with thirty members of her party standing ranked behind her, with selected quotes from the party spokesmen about the “outrage” and “abusos”.
The fiscal explained that the Judge Concepcion had given written consent for the raid as there was evidence of double book-keeping. The party had resisted handing over its books despite repeated requests and had finally presented legalized copies but not the originals on 11th October.
The legalized copies did not match the originals which the fiscal had inspected on 24 November. A legal notary recorded 14 books of accounting records, whereas the party had only supplied eight books.
Columnist Augusto Alvarez Rodrich writes in his column in La Republica, “Peru has become a Roman circus that will end badly. This farce called Peru is in a march of madness that is going to get worse before improving and that can explode at any time.”
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N. says on 10th December 2017.
The strategy has been one of domestication of the Peruvian people, to make them easy to control. But what puzzles me is that, farmers normally want to choose their livestock to be of the best quality, to breed in the best features. But here in Peru, domestication is directed towards the lowest standards of ignorance. Why would they want to do that?
N. was on the Black List of the Senderoso Luminoso terrorists. “One morning I opened the newspaper to see my name on the list of people the SL were intending to assassinate.”
This was because she worked with overseas aid agencies (ONGs).
She had previously been sought out and questioned by government investigators who suspected her of being involved in supporting and financing terrorism.
This was because she worked with overseas aid agencies (ONGs).
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December 10th 2017. video of the allanamiento reveals several Fujimorista congressmen in the building with the fiscals. Ursula Letona and Ariana Aramayo follow the fiscals round the building filming on their i-phones, Luz Delgado is heard to say “you don´t know who you are messing with”.
December 13th 2017. Rosa Bartra presents to the press a declaration from Odebrecht representative in Peru that the company paid $700,000 to Pedro Pablo Kuckzinski´s company Westfield Capital, for consultancy services, to seven individuals, between 2004 and 2008.
December 15th 2017. The Fiscal reports nine Fujimorista congressmen for “violence against authority by impeding the fiscal in the execution of his duty” saying there were “constant acts of intimidation”. They include Rosa Bartra, Luz Salgado, and Hector Becerril.
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December 15th 2017. Congress discussed a motion of “Vacancy” of the Presidency, on grounds of “moral incapacity”.
The notice of the introduction of the motion was posted at 1 pm and the debate was scehduled for 4 pm. The motion was passed at 10 pm.
Congress can remove the President íf 87 members vote for vacancia. 93 members – 71 from Fuerza Popular, 9 from Accion Popular, 5 from Apra, 10 from Frente Amplio, supported the move to debate the vacancia and the president will have 60 minutes to present his defence, the following Thursday.
December 17th 2017. The International Court of Human Rights orders the suspension of the process against members of the Constitutional Tribunal.
December 17th 2017. At 8 pm the President invites five journalists to the palace to interview him live on TV for 40 minutes. He says he was in effect the owner of a bank where other people did various financing activities on which he took a commission. He did not oversee nor was responsible for exactly what they did and his commision was of the order of 5 or 6%. One journalist asked repeatedly how he could prove that he had not profited from Odebrecht activities. “This is what people want to know”.
December 18th2017. Press coverage of the overnight interview is largely negative. Several papers have headlines such as “the dream is over”…”He is on the way out”….
December 19th2017. The President´s lawyers ask Congress to state what he is being accused of. The Defendor of the People says that due process and legal rights to a fair trial apply equally to trial by congress as trial by a judge. Several commentators talk of “due process” and “innocence until proven guilty. “
Hector Becerril says Fuerza Popular has already decided to vote for vacancia and does not need to hear any more. Spokesmen for Apra and Accion Popular says they will vote for vacancia.
Luz Salgado is outraged by the interference of the International Court of Human Rights in Peru´s internal affairs. “ Who do they think they are? We´ll show them fried garlic!”
December 21 2017. The vote to impeach the President must be taken by two thirds of Congress, 87 votes out of 130. Fuerza Popular which has called for him to go has 81 votes, and its informal allies in Apra have a further 5. Accion Popular has promised its five votes for impeachment. Several other parties have indicated they intend to oust the President. There is a long debate, most noteworthy for the intellectually and morally rigorous defence of the President by lawyer Alberto Borea. For the most part calm, this sixty year old man nevertheless shook with fury as he described some of the abuses of the 1990s, such as when he had himself fought to stop the illegal third term of Fujimori. The opposition for their part But to general surprise Kenji Fujimori, brother of Keiko and at time her open rival, led a rebellion of ten FP Congresistas who abstained. PPK survived the impeachment by a handful of votes.
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December 24th2017. At 6pm as most Lima families are preparing to eat together, President Pedro Pablo Kucynski announces that he has given an indulto, a pardon, to the imprisoned former President and ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori. A recommendation on the basis that he suffered from a “grave, worsening, illness” came from the panel of three doctors.
That night, towards midnight, a crowd gathers in the Plaza de San Martin, the Liberator, the traditional gathering point for demonstrations.
25 December 2017. Alberto Belaunde, who had said the previous day that he would resign if there was a pardon for Fujimori Senior, announces his resignation.
Vice-President Mercedes Araoz had said during the debate on the motion for vacancia, “We do not negotiate on a pardon.”
Meanwhile, it would appear, ten FJ members voted against the vacancia because they had been promised a pardon.
If PPK has successfully defended himself against a charge of “permanent moral incapacity”, it only took him less than 72 hours to demonstrate to his remaining supporters that he was in fact, guilty, in releasing after only ten years the man who Transparencia International listed at the 7th most corrupt dictator of his decade, who had stolen an estimated $600 million from Peru, and had been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment after trial for only a few sample crimes with several other cases pending.
Alberto Borrea, the lawyer who defended PPK, declared that he had no knowledge of the coming pardon and the subject had never been raised.
Former Minister Pedro Cateriano says “I am profoundly sorry and condemn the treachery against democracy and human rights committed by the President. The pardon for the dictator is not a humanitarian act, is is an appalling political deal.”
Sheput of the PPK party Peru for Change says that the party was not involved in the decision to pardon Fujimori. “We came to the palace to be told of PPK´s decision. We were not consulted and we are not responsible.”
And a Happy Christmas to Peru – looking forward to the New Year?
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21 March 2018. Having survived the December impeachment vote after a defection led by Kenji Fujimori, PPK faces a second impeachment vote on 22nd March. He vows to fight it but on the day before the hearing, a video is released showing Kenji Fujimori and government representatives negotiating the vote of congressmen against the impeachment in return for construction projects.
The video has been taken by FP Congresista Mamani, who is the one being solicited to defect. Mamani runs 32 companies. Some of them sell security equipment including video cameras hidden in pens. He is under investigation for money laundering, with seven million soles in assets of uncertain origin.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigns and Martin Vizcarra is sworn in as the new President.
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7th July 2018. News Agency IDL-Reports releases the first of a series of compromising tapes of phone conversations in Callao and the CNM, the National Magistrates Council.
The so-called CNM audios feature various lawyers, judges, businessmen, politicians and fiscals (prosecutors) trading privileges.
Prosecutors initially recorded the calls of the drug-running mafia that controls the port of Callao. A senior judge in Callao was the receiver of many calls from the mafia, so they bugged the judge.
The judge is Cesar Hinostroza, who was president of the High Court in Callao. He is heard on the tapes asking someone accused of raping an eleven year old if he wanted to be found not guilty or get a reduced sentence.
Others tapes record him arranging a meeting with a politican to discuss who to elect as the top prosecutor, and asking a businessman if he could get tickets to the world cup for him and his wife, from the President of the Peruvian Football Federation,
The President of the Peruvian Football Federation is Edwin Oviedo, who is under investigation for leading a gang dedicated to extortion and assassination in the Tumán sugar works In Lambayeque. Two union leaders in the workforce were assassinated, allegedly on Ovideo`s orders, in 2012 and 2015.
When Oviedo took control of the Tumán Plant he appointed Antonio Becerril, brother of Fuerza Popular Congressman Hector Becerril, as manager.
Oviedo was due to retire as Football Federation President in November 2018, but a law introduced by Fuerza Popular in 2017 extended his term for two more years.
Edwin Oviedo made payments of cash, football tickets and other benefits with several thousand soles to Cesar Hinostraza and his wife.
Hector Becerril is on the CNM audios seeking to arrange the appointment of the .
The congressman is the spokesman for the FP, the party led by the daughter of the disgraced dictator.
The daughter´s brother was also a leading politician in congress, until his sister had him suspended for trading votes to save the former President from removal, in return for
granting a release “on medical grounds” to the former Dictator.
Because the daughter wanted to keep her father in jail.
The tapes revealed a network of corruption involving members of the CNM, the National Council of Magistrates, office administrators in Callao who processed the paperwork, senior judges and through to the businessmen and politicians who paid for services. These services could include delaying or archiving cases, reduced sentences or not guilty findings.
To date, 11 people from the Cuellos Blancos of the port have been put behind bars for three years (they may face trial at some indeterminate date in the future), and the President insisted that the Congress, majority controlled by Fuerza Popular in Alliance with Apra, shut down the CNM for 60 days as an emergency measure.
In the middle of all this, the previous Chief Prosecutor, or Fiscal, was replaced at the end of his term by Pedro Chavarry. To enable this, the CNM changed his marks on a formal evaluation so that he qualified for promotion. His academic qualifications include a Masters in Penal Law at a Peruvian University where 292 of the 356 paragraphs were copied from another source without referencing. After two years investigation by other fiscals the case was archived.
In the 1990s Chavarry was the defence lawyer for an arms dealer working with Vladimir Montesinos, dictator Fujimori´s right hand man, Keiko Fujimori’s Uncle Vlad.
Tapes were released of Cesar Hinostraza arranging with Pedro Chavarry to meet with journalists to promote his election to the position of Chief Prosecutor.
The new Fiscal has to be elected by the five members of the Junta de Fiscales Supremos. Two abstained, and three voted for Chavarry on 7th June for him to hold the post from 2018 to 2021. One of the three was Chavarry himself, whose taped conversations with former Callao judge Cesar Hinostraza had already been aired.
The Fiscal is the Chief Prosecutor, the man who decides what cases to prioritise and what judges will consider them.
He was identified as part of a criminal gang, the Cuellos Blancos del Puerto, the White Collars of the Port, by the investigating prosecutor. However he has not authorised any investigation against himself.
On Monday Chavarry called a meeting of all 33 regional fiscals and presented them with a motion supporting him. Only three were willing to sign. The fiscals unanimously signed a declaration against the continuing corruption in the judiciary.
On Wednesday Chavarry sacked, moved or accepted the resignation of 43 fiscals.
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28 July 2018. President Vizcarra announces a referendum to reform the justice system and the constitution. It has four points, of which the most powerful is that no present member of Congress can serve another term. It represents a fresh start, a complete rejection of the entire Congress, and it is warmly received by the public.
Other points are restrictions on funding of political campaigns, a reform of the CNM, National Council of Magistrates, which appoints judges and prosecutors, and a move to a two chamber legislature.
Vizcarra walks with the papers in his hand the short distance from the Presidential Palace to the Congress buildings, accompanied by press and camera crews, in a neat visualisation of his symbolic alliance with the ordinary people of Peru who have had enough of corruption.
The proposal has to be passed by Congress: they can progress a bill which will put them out of work in 2021, or they can delay or refuse. In the latter case, Vizcarra can choose to dissolve Congress and call elections. The governing majority parties in Congress, Fuerza Popular in alliance with APRA, now have national approval levels in the polls down to 15%, and disapproval over 80%, so they can expect to either lose their jobs in 2019 or in 2021.
They pass the referendum, though not without delays and changes. Vizcarra asks people not to support the two chamber proposal, as Congress had tacked on to it a reduction of the powers of the president to dissolve Congress.
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October 3 2018. Alberto Fujimori`s Pardon is reversed by the Supreme Court. Fujimori is rushed to hospital.
Monday 7 October
Congress approves the last of the four questions for the referendum. More than two months after they were submitted.
10 October 2018. Keiko Fujimori is detained by police as part of an investigation surrounding the Odebrecht scandal and money laundering allegations that involved her 2011 presidential campaign. She is released from detention a week later on appeal. However, a new request for detention by the prosecutor was enforced and on 31 October 2018, Fujimori was sentenced to 36 months in preventative custody, applicable in cases of organized crime groups where there is consider to be a danger of the accused either fleeing the country or interfering with the investigation.
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Thursday 11 October 2018. Congress debates a new law to free elderly people from jail. A special dispensation is signed by three Congresistas at 9.50 in the morning to enable the law to proceed direct to final debate without any previous discussion at committee stage. The law was passed on a first and second vote at 17.50 pm.
At 11 pm, Apra congresistas introduced a motion to revoke the the second two
Friday 12 October 2018. Fiscal Pedro Chavarry sacks on of the lead prosecutors working with Domingo Perez on the Conteles case against Keilo Fujimori. Erika Delgado was investigating the case as it pertained for former president Alan Garcia.
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17 October 2018. Minister of the Interior announced that Hinostrozo has fled the country, fifteen days after the Congress Committee declared him. It appears that the paperwork was not forwarded to the fiscal until , after independent Congresista had asked the president of Congress to clarify
Cesar Hinostraza left the country through a remote border crossing into Ecuador. The security camera at the border post shows a man walk up to the counter and talk to the immigration officer. Hinostraza then enters looking nervous whilst the first man keeps watch. The officer looks at his passport but does not enter the number. This would have set off an alarm, as the order to stop his leaving the country has been implemented on the national control system. It later emerges that the officer enters her own identification number, and then deletes it.
The officer had been moved to the control point from an office desk job the day before Hinostraza`s arrival. The manager who moved her is the wife of a Fuerza Popular Congressman.
The immigration officer who let Hinostraza leave the country had similarly allowed a multiple murderer to leave the country a year earlier. The twenty year old Columbian had killed and robbed three money changers on the streets of Lima in the space of a few weeks. He was imprisoned but released three years later and he passed through the same border crossing into Ecuador in 2017.
19 October 2018. Fleeing ex-Magistrate Cesay Hinostraza is detained north of Madrid. He is jailed in the Soto del Real until his extradition to Lima.
The same day, conversations in a whatsapp group of leading Fuerza Popular members called “La Botica” are revealed on Twitter. “Keiko tells President of Congress Daniel Salaverry “send message to the group saying Chavarry is a correct guy and the caviars are making mountainous accusations…” OK says Daniel.
Keiko`s adviser Pier Figari says of the Fiscal Domingo Perez, who heads up the investigation of campaign financing of FP, “with the doc in hand we`ll give interviews and fuck him, delegitimise him, show he was acting out of hate and without any real investigative aim.”
“Absolutely its a brilliant opportunity” replies Hector Becerril.
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22 October 2018. Fiscal Lourdes Tellez calls Domingo Perez to present himself at 24 hours notice to explain the appointment of his wife in 2017 to a position as Director of a department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
He replies that she should ask his wife.
The same Fiscal, seven days previously, had asked Domingo Perez to present himself and justify his speech to a conference on corruption in Mexico.
Domingo Perez is in the process of preparing a briefing against twelve alleged members of the criminal network within Fuerza Popular and their lawyers, due Wednesday morning. On Sunday the presiding judge on asked for specific cases to be presented against each rather than one broad case against the network.
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23 October 2018. President of Congress and former FP spokesman Daniel Salaverry asks to have a temporary leave of absence from the party “to protect the independence of the position.” Three other representatives offer their resignation.
24 October 2018. It is revealed that FP Secretary General Jose Climper has also resigned, a week after the investigation into the faked tape he supplied to was re-opened. The investigation had previously been archived by a judge in May 2018. On the same day, Fiscal Perez says that Odebrecht witnesses stated that Chlimper was given $210,000 in cash to support FPs election campaign. He paid $210,000 also in cash to the Director of TV news channel RPP in May 2011.
KF pledges a new dialogue with the country,
The next morning Rosa Bartra threatens to sue the fiscal, whilst Keiko says that the fiscal has presented a series of lies that have been demolished by her lawyer.
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26 October 2018. Early Monday morning, as the hearing continues into its fifth day, I fly with a school group to Puerto Maldonado, at the southern end of the Peruvian rainforest. The plane departure is delayed in Lima for forty minutes, and then again at the stopover in Cusco as we are told of heavy rain making the runway unsafe. We finally land on the still damp concrete and take an hour to travel jolting along muddy tracks to the riverside jetty on the banks of the Tambopata, a stair of wooden plank steps leading down to a long flat narrowboat with a diesel shaft propeller. We head upriver, the students seated along benches along either side and the luggage piled in the centre. Initial low forest and banana plantations can be seen close to the shore on either bank, where canoes with outboard motors are tied to tree stumps. As we head further up the sinuous river, the trees grow taller, occasional herons are seen standing alert on sandbanks, and hawks circle overhead.
To get a phone signal I have to go to the to the top of the wooden steps leading down to the river landing stage. Standing here looking out over the water in the early morning, with squawking blue and yellow macaws fly from their roosts across the river, I learn that after seven days of hearings, Judge Richard Concepcion Carhuanco has dictated 36 months of preventive imprisonment for Keiko Fujimori.
The following day she is taken to the Women’s Prison Annex in Chorrillos. The prison was opened by her father on 5th April 1992, the day when the Army on his orders drove tanks through the streets of Lima to shut Congress.
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3 December 2018. Two time president Alan Garcia`s request for political asylum in Uruguay because of “political persecution” is rejected. He has been in hiding in the Uruguay Embassy in Lima since late November, after he returned from his home in Madrid for a court hearing and was forbidden leave the country. In 1992, after his first Presidential term, he had sought asylum in the Columbian embassy and then fled the country, only returning when the statute of limitations freed him from accusations of corruption in the handling of public money.
9 December 2018. The constitutional referendum takes place the same day as the local and regional elections. Vizcarra asks people not to support the two chamber proposal he had made, as Congress has tacked on to it a reduction of the powers of the president to dissolve Congress. The public votes Yes-Yes-Yes-No as Vizcarra requests, with greater that 85% approval.
December 31 2018. A few hours before midnight, the Fiscal of the Nation Pedro Chavarry announces he is removing Fiscals Domingo Perez and Vela from their Lava Joto investigations. The following day marches are organized in Trujillo, Cajamarca, Arequipa, Chimbote and Cusco under banners such as “Fuera Chavarry – Rata Maldita!” I join the gathering crowd in Lima’s Plaza San Martin late in the afternoon and follow the march to the Public Ministry, where the two fiscals have arranged a press conference at 8.30 pm.
Marches in the city centre are usually treated with indifference, but this time the passing taxi drivers and the private cars sound their horns in support. Even the police, in heavy body armour and carrying guns, seem supportive.
The next day, January 2nd, Chavarry announces the Fiscal’s reinstatement.
23 January 2019. Alberto Fujimori is taken from hospital where he has spent the last three months, and returned to jail. A government medical panel has found there was no reason for him to stay in hospital.
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El Fronton and Lurigancho
135 prisoners were killed in June 1986 by the Peruvian Army and Navy in retaking the El Fronton prison on an island off the coast of Lima. Three members of the Armed Forces and a hostage also died. Prisoners had taken control of the both prisons.
On the same day, 125 prisoners were killed at Lurigancho Prison in Lima, 90 of them executed by being shot in the neck, according to a later government report.
The case was archived and 111 Marines absolved of responsibility by a military court between 1987 and 1989. In 2000 the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights ordered the State to investigate the case and bring to justice those responsible.
A judicial investigation was opened against eleven marines in 2005 and a further 22 in 2009. The case was finally brought against the 33 marines in 2012.
More than 80 witnesses were interviewed including 35 survivors of the massacre and 8 Navy witnesses. 34 former members of the Marine Infantry and Special Forces were accused of extra-judicial execution.
In September the judgement came on the extrajudicial executions of more than a hundred and thirty-three prisoners in El Fronton, for which the fiscal was asking for penalties of 25 to 27 years in jail for 34 ex members of the Naval Infantry and Special Forces.
Retired Vice Admiral Jorge Montaya said the judicial process was the culmination of 30 years of bullying against the Naval personnel who just “did what they had to do”.“The dead died in combat” he added, “they were not assassinated”, pointing out that four marines died also.
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In 2017 El Contralor, the man responsible for heading up the department whose job is to investigate government contracts and highlight irregularities, is under pressure for various irregularities of his own. He has risen very rapidly to the highest position.
He has been running a car import business although forbidden to operate any independent business whilst in the post, he has been revealed to have arranged a financial settlement with a former girlfriend in the department of several year´s salary, he has leaned on an auditor to take no action against him “for the sake of our friendship”. His qualification for the post has also been invalidated by the University which had formally awarded it, now saying he never fulfilled the requirements for the Master´s Degree.
Edgar Alarcon was appointed by the previous government and his post was extended by the new congress, majority controlled by the party of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, now serving 35 years in prison for human rights and corruption crimes. The party is now headed up by his daughter, who was First Lady as a teenager whilst he created his control structure in the 1990s replacing independent judges and presecutors with his own people, buying up the support of the media and other members of congress. In return for supporting his constitutional amendments and judicial manouverings, congresistas were rewarded with monthly salaries of ten of thousands of dollars plus houses and lucrative government contracts, paid through government slush funds from pay-offs from contractors on government infrastructure projects, diverted army budgets and most likely drug running profits.
Whilst a congressional subcommision controlled by a 4-3 majority by the Fujimoristas evaluated whether he should be removed from his post, he used an interview in one of the less rigorous daily newspapers to launch an attack on the government in general and the president in particular. The president knows about all the irregularities in the country, he said, but does not want an independent Contralor. Strong power groups and businesses were financing a media campaign against him.
Various ministers, he said, had tried to pressurise him to support a new airport project.
This was was fronted by a consortium with little experience and no funding whose members included wives and sisters of government ministers. Supporters as well as opponents of the President saw the backing for the project as shameless opportunism and cronyism.
“ I never taped them like they did with me” said Alarcon.
A tape was leaked to a TV network of a meeting between the Minister of the Economy and Alarcon which was the basis for Congress firing the Minister. On the tape the minister discusses both the airport contract, and a proposed increased budget for the Contralor´s department of several million dollars. The controller asks several times if the two are linked, and is repeatedly told that they are not.
The Minister says he never tapes meetings and asks all present to leave their phones outside, but on this occasion because of back to back meetings this was not done. It is widely assumed that the Contralor or his advisers taped the meeting and fed it to the press.
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Alberto Fujimori´s indulto is reversed by the Tribunal Constitutional, the Judges voting six to one that the pardon was politically motivated, the medical evidence was
In regional and local elections,
5 April 2019. Hector Becerril announces he will retire from politics. He is one of five Congressmen said to have links to organised crime in Chiclayo, according to the Prosecutor of that region. The criminal organization was headed up by the Mayor of Chiclayo. Hector’s brother Wilfredo fled the country in December 2018 when his arrest was ordered. Hector`s brother Antonio, who was a Congressman in Alberto Fujimori`s third term of office, has turned state witness.
At a press conference Hector Becerril says “I am not a delinquent, I have spent seven years in Congress.”
17 April 2019. Alan Garcia shoots himself, when the police come to his home to arrest him. A suicide note is found, which he had written weeks earlier, where he writes “I leave my body as a sign of my contempt for my enemies…”