Alvaro Vargas Llosa: Can Peru Keep Itself From Taking Revenge on Its Ex-President? (Fujimori on Trial)
[Alvaro Vargas Llosa is the director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute and the author of Liberty for Latin America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).]
The recent extradition of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to face charges of human rights violations and corruption is a welcome development. It is also a monumental challenge to the institutions of a country that has not been able to establish the rule of law as successfully as it has been able to generate economic growth in recent years.
Among other charges, Fujimori, who was extradited to Lima by Chilean authorities, will be tried in relation to two civilian massacres at the hands of a military death squad active during his regime. His political organization--mostly a collection of relatives and cronies--is using its 13 members of Congress to pressure the government and the magistrates to set him free.
Some Peruvians rationalize the human rights violations and the corruption of the Fujimori years with the argument that the country was at war with the Maoist terrorist organization known as Shining Path and that his government spurred the economic recovery of the last decade.
The greatest challenge in the upcoming trials will not be political pressure on judges or the publicity of a highly charged case at a time when global financial institutions are on the verge of granting Peru an investment grade, the highest economic rating. The greatest challenge will be testing the Peruvian people's capacity to decouple in their minds their personal views of Fujimori's government from the moral and legal implications of the crimes for which he will be tried.
The capacity or incapacity to make that distinction will tell us whether Peru has gone from being a society that puts institutions and moral principles at the mercy of political necessity--the mark of underdevelopment--to a society that embraces the principle that the law is an impersonal set of rules over and above personal preference, political convenience or sheer passion.
Because many Peruvians were not ready to make that distinction in the 1990s, Fujimori's government was able to concentrate colossal amounts of power with popular support--hence the crimes and the corruption for which dozens of his former collaborators have gone to jail....
Read entire article at New Republic
The recent extradition of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to face charges of human rights violations and corruption is a welcome development. It is also a monumental challenge to the institutions of a country that has not been able to establish the rule of law as successfully as it has been able to generate economic growth in recent years.
Among other charges, Fujimori, who was extradited to Lima by Chilean authorities, will be tried in relation to two civilian massacres at the hands of a military death squad active during his regime. His political organization--mostly a collection of relatives and cronies--is using its 13 members of Congress to pressure the government and the magistrates to set him free.
Some Peruvians rationalize the human rights violations and the corruption of the Fujimori years with the argument that the country was at war with the Maoist terrorist organization known as Shining Path and that his government spurred the economic recovery of the last decade.
The greatest challenge in the upcoming trials will not be political pressure on judges or the publicity of a highly charged case at a time when global financial institutions are on the verge of granting Peru an investment grade, the highest economic rating. The greatest challenge will be testing the Peruvian people's capacity to decouple in their minds their personal views of Fujimori's government from the moral and legal implications of the crimes for which he will be tried.
The capacity or incapacity to make that distinction will tell us whether Peru has gone from being a society that puts institutions and moral principles at the mercy of political necessity--the mark of underdevelopment--to a society that embraces the principle that the law is an impersonal set of rules over and above personal preference, political convenience or sheer passion.
Because many Peruvians were not ready to make that distinction in the 1990s, Fujimori's government was able to concentrate colossal amounts of power with popular support--hence the crimes and the corruption for which dozens of his former collaborators have gone to jail....