Showdown In Peru

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For years people have accused Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori of running a brutal and authoritarian government right out of a dictator's textbook. But last week Fujimori's regime morphed from a monolith into a weird, militarized soap opera, and it seemed no one, perhaps not even Fujimori, understood how the plot was unfolding. Was the President still running the show? Was he resigning, as he suddenly promised? Would he, as he declared, really clean up the thuggish security apparatus that had done so much to blacken his administration's name? Would the nation's powerful military back him or revolt?

Fujimori tried to cast himself as the hero of the drama, which began with an explosive power play against his shadowy secret police chief, Vladimiro Montesinos Torres, after the latter was caught red-handed paying a bribe. But despite the jaunty posture Fujimori struck during the crisis, it looked as if his presidency had become terminally entangled in the web of intimidation, bribery and other criminal activity swirling around his erstwhile ally, Montesinos.

Fujimori and Montesinos, head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), have been virtually inseparable since 1992, when the President abruptly dissolved Congress for eight months and took near absolute power in order to fight--successfully, as it turned out--a Maoist insurgency that had brought the country to chaos. Ever since, charges of torture, fraud in last April's presidential election, and gunrunning have been leveled against SIN. They culminated two weeks ago with the broadcast of a videotape, apparently leaked from Montesinos' headquarters, showing the spy chief handing over a thick packet of cash to persuade an opposition legislator to switch his allegiance to Fujimori, which he did.

Watching this evidence of his comrade's skulduggery at the same time the nation did, Fujimori "must have felt like he was hit by a missile in the face," says a friend. His challenge then was to strike out at Montesinos without destroying himself. Two days later, the President chose to self-inflict a wound. On national TV, he announced that just months after winning a third term in an election international observers described as unfair, he was ordering new elections in which he would not stand. Fujimori startled Peruvians further by stating that he would disband the SIN, one of the main props of his rule.

By failing to act on his pledge as of late last week, however, Fujimori raised doubts about his resolve on that or other undertakings. With Montesinos holed up in his apartment at the top of SIN's downtown headquarters, guarded by 800 of his agents, the President made no moves against him. And congressman Alberto Kouri, the compromised opposition member, was not so much as questioned by police.