General elections were held in
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
on 9 April 2000, with a run-off of the presidential election on 28 May.
Dieter Nohlen
Dieter Nohlen (born 6 November 1939) is a German academic and political scientist. He currently holds the position of Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Heidelberg. An ex ...
(2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume II'', p454 The elections were highly controversial and widely considered to have been fraudulent. Incumbent
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
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*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film and television
*'' Præsident ...
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Kenji Fujimori Fujimori (26 July 1938 – 11 September 2024) was a Peruvian politician, professor, and engineer who served as the 54th president of Peru from 1990 to 2000.*
*
*
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* Born in Lima, Fujimori was the country's fir ...
was re-elected for a third term with almost three-quarters of the vote. However, the elections were tainted with allegations of unconstitutionality, bribery, structural bias, and outright
electoral fraud
Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share o ...
.
Alejandro Toledo
Alejandro Celestino Toledo Manrique (; born 28 March 1946) is a Peruvian former politician who served as President of Peru, from 2001 to 2006. He gained international prominence after leading the opposition against president Alberto Fujimori, w ...
boycotted the second round of the presidential election, in which over 30% of ballots were declared invalid. Fujimori subsequently called for new elections after his scandal, fled
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
, and faxed in his resignation from a hotel in
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
.
Constitutional issues
The
Constitution of Peru specifically limited presidents to two terms, and Fujimori relied on the legally questionable theory that the restriction did not apply to him in 2000 because the 1993 Constitution was written after
he nullified the previous constitution, at which time he was already in power. The electoral bodies, the
National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) and
National Jury of Elections (Peru) (JNE), were staffed at the time with Fujimori supporters who were considered by many to be corrupt. These bodies accepted Fujimori's argument.
Structural bias
Many observers believed that the government structures were set up in a way that gave Fujimori's re-election bid an unfair advantage. For example, the
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...
noted that generals of the
Peruvian Army
The Peruvian Army (, abbreviated EP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with safeguarding the independence, sovereignty and integrity of national territory on land through military force. Additional missions include assistance in s ...
were removed from their positions if anti-Fujimori protests occurred in their jurisdiction, providing the army with an incentive to crack down on anti-government protesters. A cable from the American embassy to Peru noted that "gigantic pro-Fujimori slogans appeared on the sides of hills within some military reservations and bases. Mostly at night but sometimes in broad daylight, troops have been sighted from
Tacna
Tacna, officially known as San Pedro de Tacna, is a city in southern Peru and the regional capital of the Tacna Region. A very commercially active city, it is located only north of the border with Arica y Parinacota Region from Chile, inland f ...
to
Tumbes painting pro-Fujimori slogans and blacking out the slogans of opposition candidates. Military vehicles have been made available to government candidates to transport supplies and people at no charge" and that "routine public works projects" were arranged "to maximize electoral impact."
Fraud
The elections were also marred with accusations of outright fraud. During the campaign,
El Comercio broke a story about a "''fábrica de firmas''" (signature factory) in which many people worked signing a petition to register a pro-Fujimori political party. Several of the people involved admitted to their part in this scheme. Perhaps most damning, they had copied the signatures of voters from official ONPE voter-registration lists, which were provided to them.
Shortly before the election, several people, including JNE workers, were arrested for their part in the theft of ballots. They were caught with the ballots, many of which had been filled out. The plurality of these ballots was filled out with votes for Fujimori and his electoral allies.
[Conaghan, Catherine M. (2005). ''Fujimori's Peru: Deception in the Public Sphere''. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 96.]
Boycott
After Fujimori was declared the victor of the first round, Alejandro Toledo called for a boycott of the second round. Fujimori responded by reminding voters that Peruvian law makes voting obligatory, and that anyone boycotting the election could be fined. Toledo then suggested that his supporters to cast spoiled ballots. The result was that while votes for Toledo declined from 40.24% of the valid votes cast in the first round to 25.67% of the valid votes in the second round, invalid votes jumped from 2.25% in of the total votes cast in the first round to 29.93% of total votes in the second round. That such a large percentage of votes were thrown out as invalid shows that many Peruvians took Toledo's advice and deliberately spoiled their ballots.
OAS process
Following the election, the
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States (OAS or OEA; ; ; ) is an international organization founded on 30 April 1948 to promote cooperation among its member states within the Americas.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, the OAS is ...
(OAS) established a "mesa" dialogue process (''Mesa de Dialogo''). The Mesa "filled the institutional vacuum caused by the polarization of political forces in Peru following the May 2000 elections. It became the locus of authoritative decisionmaking power during the final days of the Fujimori government, preparing the way for the Peruvian opposition to win control of the congress and to form an interim government."
[Andrew F. Cooper, and Thomas Legler (2005), "A Tale of Two Mesas: The OAS Defense of Democracy in Peru and Venezuela," ''Global Governance'' 11(4)] The dialogue was facilitated by a former foreign minister from the
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...
,
Eduardo Latorre, supported by a small OAS secretariat.
[ The Mesa had eighteen participants and "deliberately incorporated three key sets of actors: government ministers, progovernment and opposition members of congress, and civil society representatives."][
Alejandro Toledo and his ]Possible Peru
Possible Peru () was a Peruvian political party. It was founded in 1994 by Alejandro Toledo with the original name of Possible Country ().
History
Possible Peru has its roots in an earlier political party, Possible Country, which was founded ...
political party were initially reluctant to engage in the Mesa, initially considering the OAS mission an attempt to prop up the Fujimori regime. Not wanting to either engage fully with the OAS mission or be isolated from the Mesa completely, Toledo remained at the edge of the process, allowing others to be directly involved in the negotiations, including Luis Solari. Toledo focused instead on international media appearances and organizing large demonstrations.[
In the latter part of 2000 a series of dramatic events brought the dialogue potential of the Mesa into the foreground. On 14 September a videotape was broadcast showing security chief ]Vladimiro Montesinos
Vladimiro Lenin Ilich Montesinos Torres (; born May 20, 1945) is a Peruvian former intelligence officer and lawyer, most notorious for his role as the head of Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN) during the presidency of Alberto Fujimor ...
bribing opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to join Fujimori's congressional coalition (Peru 2000). This prompted Fujimori to announce new elections and dismiss Montesinos. Further shocks followed, with Montesinos appearing in Panama to seek asylum, and then returning to Peru on 23 October, "creating fear of an imminent coup."[ Finally, on 20 November Fujimori faxed his resignation from Japan.][
]As these events unfolded, the mesa became increasingly prominent as a parallel congress with de facto political decision making power. In the institutional void created by congressional deadlock and political power struggles, few other nonviolent choices existed. As events during September and October led increasingly to a showdown between Fujimori and Montesinos, the former displayed a greater willingness to agree to political reforms in exchange for support from the OAS and the Peruvian political representatives assembled at the mesa. Despite all of the suspicions harbored by the opposition, the mesa remained a useful fallback option and a buffer against the threat of military disruption."
Results
President
Congress
References
{{Peruvian elections
Parliamentary elections in Peru
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
2000 in Peru
Presidential elections in Peru
Election
An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office.
Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...
Annulled elections
Electoral fraud