On October 16, 2006, the former president of Peru, Valentin Paniagua, died at a Lima hospital from respiratory complications. It was a sad day for Peruvians. While Paniagua's curriculum vitae was quite extensive, he is best remembered for rebuilding Peru's shattered democracy after the disclosure of incriminatory videotapes, a blatant expose of Alberto Fujimori's 10 year corrupt-ridden militaristic regime that met its humiliating demise in September 2000. As a 21-year-old Peruvian with an international upbringing living in Ukraine for 3 months, I cannot help but draw parallels with the events that took place in September 2000 in Peru to those surrounding Kuchmagate (2001) and the electoral fraud that sparked the Orange Revolution in 2004.
Corruption and informal networks are not just an Eastern European thing or restricted to those places where former Communist Party members remain in some of the highest positions. In fact, as Transparency International's Global Corruption Report for 2003 put it "South America is one of the most -- if not the most -- corruption-plagued regions in the world."
Peru's tape scandal, commonly referred to as the "Vladivideos," is a story of what happens when controlling, undemocratic, militaristic governments dig their own graves with their own microphones and video cameras.
The main villainous actor in the affair was Vlademiro Lenin Montesinos, the son of two fervent Peruvian communists, as his name suggests. Discharged from the military after forging a signature on an official document, he became an unscrupulous lawyer, representing those charged with tax fraud as well as drug dealers; his cooperation with the CIA fighting drug lords should not suggest otherwise.
Montesinos rose to power in 1990 when Fujimori was elected President of Peru. As chief of the Peruvian Intelligence, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN), with strong links to the military, Montesinos was the center of the power base during the Fujimori regime. Using bribes and intimidation, this so-called Black Monk built an intricate network of loyalists bonded by corruption.
In special rooms located in SIN headquarters (a very suitable abbreviation), Montesinos frequently video-taped corrupt transactions. This was done to manipulate both allies and enemies. Montesinos foolishly stored the videos for future use, probably for blackmail.
All this backfired on the evening of September 14, 2000, when a video displaying Montesinos giving a $15,000 bribe to an opposition congressman was broadcast on Channel N, Peru's equivalent to Ukraine's Channel Five, the only Peruvian channel that Montesinos did not control.
This was the first of many "Vladivideos," dubbed Peru's blockbuster of corruption, where a seemingly endless stream of eminent, high-profile personalities from Peruvian society could be seen receiving bribes for their loyalties. Politicians, congressmen, political party leaders, businessmen and entrepreneurs, media owners, even judges and prosecutors. Montesinos, the Untouchable Black Monk had given bribes to them all.
Most importantly, the videos brought into question the so-called democratic process in which Fujimori was re-elected for an unconstitutional third term. It became clear that Montesinos had cheated the Peruvian people during the campaigns leading up to the April 2000 Presidential elections. Sound familiar? Montesinos set to work, starting with the media, a popular tool of corrupt regimes.
During campaigns leading up to the April 2000 Presidential elections, Montesinos wielded the media for his own ends, thereby getting Fujimori unconstitutionally re-elected. He paid off 3 prominent Peruvian television channels to refuse any help to candidates opposed to Fujimori. In one of the "Vladivideos," a television station owner was shown receiving a U.S. $1.8 million bribe.
Legally, a popular referendum backing Fujimori, or an amendment to the Constitution, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Peruvian congress, were the only means by which Fujimori could be eligible to serve a third term in office.
In June 2000, hundreds of thousands of Peruvian marched in the center of Lima, protesting Fujimori's proposed third term. The most memorable protestors that captured the spirit of the time were the men and women from the Colectivo Sociedad Civil who religiously washed the Peruvian flag with the soap brand "Bolivar," an allusion to the 19th century liberator. In order to overcome the mass anti-Fujimori protests and avoid a national referendum opposing a third term, Montesinos bribed the National Elections Jury that then voted to comply with his wishes. Again, Montesinos used bribery to achieve his corrupt intentions to allow Fujimori a third term.
To pass the law to amend the Constitution, however, a two-thirds majority was needed, which meant Montesinos/Fujimori needed the votes of 80 congressmen, out of which Montesinos was sure he would get 67. Montesinos' seemingly bottomless pockets again came into play as he handed out bribes to opposition congressmen, as some videotapes blatantly demonstrated. It was later learned that Montesinos was making $600,000 annually, a much higher figure than his meager official salary of $18,000 a year. It was also found that Montesinos had a whopping $48 million secreted in Swiss banks.
The contents of the "Vladivideos" galvanized Peruvians into action. Massive protests ensued, and by February 2001, 21 people were jailed for corruption, and dozens put under house arrest, including 4 army generals and a major district mayor.
Fujimori, born in Peru of Japanese parents, took advantage of his dual citizenship and fled to Japan, seeking asylum. His regime ended in the most peculiar way imaginable; he resigned as president of Peru via a fax message from Tokyo. There he remained until an abortive attempt last year to return to Peru. Instead, he was arrested in Chile, where he remains in custody awaiting possible extradition to Peru for trial.
In the meantime, Montesinos fled to Venezuela at the onset of the scandal, but was captured 8 months later, extradited back to Peru, and is to this day imprisoned in the Callao maximum-security naval prison that was built under his orders. Montesinos' fate is considered one of the great ironies of the whole sordid affair.
Both the Vladivideos and Kuchmagate tapes were examples of private data collection that became public displays of corruption and led to immense public outcries in both countries, almost simultaneously. Peruvians and Ukrainians were singing the same chorus at once, resembling each other immensely. Nevertheless, the outcome could hardly have been different.
Whereas Peruvians were able to send not all, but a fair number of their "bandits" to prison, Ukraine is stuck in what Taras Kuzio fittingly and wittily calls "Groundhog Day politics."
This is because the late and much-loved Valentin Paniagua took significant steps towards the restoration of democracy in his brief time as the country's caretaker president from November 2000 to July 2001.
Paniagua set up a solid accountable system for wrongdoers. He assembled a team of notables under Javier Perez de Cuellar, the former United Nations Secretary General, which lifted the morale of Peruvians. He established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the killings and human rights abuses that had been rampant during the Fujimori regime.
Paniagua also ordered the public showing of the videos, and the prosecution of all those with "a case to answer," which meant that for the first time in Peruvian history congressmen, ministers, prominent business figures, media bosses, generals, and judges were arrested and put on trial.
Finally, in order to demonstrate that the Peruvian state was endorsing democratic traditions, Paniagua held new elections in April 2001, the same timetable as the previous year. Alejandro Toledo, Peru's first indigenous President rightly took office in July 2001 and Paniagua left office with 70 percent popularity ratings.
Yet, Peru like Ukraine is not safe from vicious cycles. The government from the 1980s presided over by Alan Garcia and his APRA party is back in power, elected democratically in April of this year. Ukrainians and Peruvians are obviously suffering from long-term memory loss.
However, Peruvians are encouraged by the fact that Montesinos, the Black Monk, the most corrupt of all Peruvians, remains behind bars to this day, facing 67 separate trials ranging for embezzlement, human rights violations, drug and weapon trafficking to masterminding gruesome death squads.
Currently, Peru mourns the death of Valentin Paniagua, "the man who brought tranquility and order to Peru" while Ukraine waits for her next messiah.
Marcela Torres-Muga, a Peruvian national, is a recent graduate of Franklin College in Switzerland with a major in International Relations and a minor in Economics. Her senior thesis was entitled, "Ukraine's Post Communist Transition as a 'Hybrid' State: Tracing its Historical Relations with Russia and the Obstacles to Democratization."
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