Fujimori holed up in Japan, to quit in 48 hrs

Fujimori holed up in Japan, to quit in 48 hrs
REUTERS

TOKYO, NOV 20: Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori went to ground on Monday in his ancestral homeland Japan, after saying he would resign within 48 hours but leaving his specific plans shrouded in mystery.

Fujimori’s decision late on Sunday to submit his resignation by letter to the President of Congress, acting far from strident charges at home of government corruption, ends a decade of hardline rule.

He had won praise for quashing leftist rebel violence, securing peace with Peru’s neighbours and curbing hyperinflation but criticism for having one of Latin America’s worst human rights records. His two vice presidents were next in line to succeed him at the helm of a transitional government but one has resigned and the other has only patchy support.

Ministers said they were ‘‘indignant’’ at Fujimori’s abrupt resignation announcement from abroad and quit en masse.

Keeping out of public view in his room in a plush Tokyo hotel and well-guarded by Japanese police, Fujimori, 62, left his people, his government and Japanese officials guessing as to his next move.

‘‘We do not know when he is leaving,’’ said a Japan Foreign Ministry spokesman.Fujimori arrived on Friday, apparently en route home from a brief appearance at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders in Brunei, but stayed on. ‘‘The embassy has told us they are praying for his health to recover,’’ the spokesman said. Japanese officials said they had been told he was staying longer because he had a cold.Back in Peru, few were willing to lay bets he would return any time soon despite exhortations from both Opposition and close supporters for him to return and resign in person.

In 1992, when Army generals mounted an unsuccessful coup months after he dissolved a bitterly divided Congress and awarded himself near dictatorial powers to crush leftist rebel violence, he briefly took refuge in the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, according to published reports.

Fujimori has been tight-lipped on whether he planned to seek political asylum in Japan. He issued a statement saying he would not speak to the press before he had submitted his resignation. Analysts said his wish may be to stay put. ‘‘Fujimori has no intention of coming back. ...I think he will seek Japanese citizenship,’’ said analyst Ernesto Velit in Lima.

Japanese regulations would allow him to apply for residency because his parents were born in Japan. Media reports in Peru officially denied have even said Fujimori was born there, which would have disqualified him from the presidency. Japanese officials said they had no knowledge of plans by Fujimori to stay.Fujimori, a supreme political player with inscrutable Oriental cool, is the first to admit his heritage.

‘‘I speak in Spanish but my silences are in Japanese,’’ he once told a senior Western diplomat.

Cornered by a corruption scandal involving his former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori had already announced in September he would slash his new five-year mandate to just one year and quit in July after early elections.However, Fujimori’s grip on power began to ebb rapidly after the Congress reverted to Opposition control on Thursday for the first time since his ‘‘self coup’’ in 1992. ‘‘It’s not just me but half of Peru who no longer believes a word he says,’’ Susana Higuchi, Fujimori’s ex-wife and an Opposition politician, said when asked if he would return.

Absalon Vasquez, a congressman who has been friends withFujimori for years, even though political relations with the President have frayed recently, sprang to his defence. ‘‘I have no doubt that in the next few days, he’s going to come back,’’ he told reporters in Peru.

Others were not so sure. ‘‘If he wanted to come back, he would have done it with his resignation letter in his pocket,’’ former Prime Minister Javier alle Riestra, a respected constitutionalist, said.

‘‘Fujimori hasn’t because he fears he’ll be subjected to political justice.’’