After a decade leading Peru's fragile democracy, Alberto Fujimori left the presidency on November 20, 2000, amid a political maelstrom that engulfed his administration and the country's governmental institutions.

Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's most trusted advisor and director of the reviled National Intelligence Service (whose acronym in Spanish is, ironically, SIN), was caught on video making bribes. He may have embezzled US$50 million from government coffers, and investigations are ongoing. Fujimori resigned and chose exile in his parents' home country of Japan over returning to face an enraged Congress.

In his 10 years of increasingly authoritarian rule, Fujimori dismantled Peru's already tenuous democracy by systematically undermining popularly elected political organs through voter fraud and constitutional manipulation. While Peru was hardly a model democracy prior to Fujimori's election, after his time in office it remains nothing more than a chaotic political landscape. Peru under Fujimori is a case study in how strongman politics can stifle nascent democracy and undermine a country's prospects for future democratic growth.

In April 1992, after being in office for a mere two years, Fujimori dissolved Congress and suspended the constitution, purportedly because lawmakers "blocked reforms and weakened the war on leftist rebels," as USA Today reported. Such an egregious act discredited Peru's claim to be a legitimate democracy. Fujimori manipulated Congress again in 1997 when legislators voted 52-33 to dismiss three members of the Constitutional Court who had ruled that Fujimori could not seek a third term as president. As Anne Manuel, Deputy Director for Human Rights Watch, stated at the time, Fujimori "so thoroughly controls the Congress that he can get them to do whatever he wants, and now dismissing these judges clearly demonstrates that his government won't tolerate an independent judiciary." Under his administration, the legislative and judicial authorities were fused with that of the presidency, creating a dictatorship in all but name.

Fujimori's disrespect for democracy transformed Peru's constitution. After suspending the constitution in 1992, Fujimori ordered the new Congress to amend it in order to allow him to seek a second term. The 1990 constitution under which he was elected forbade reelection, but rather than abide by the country's laws, he defied them and wrote new ones. Before Fujimori's resignation, only Fidel Castro had been a Latin American head of state for longer. Fujimori's repeated betrayal of the principles of presidential democracy sent the message that, while Fujimori was in power, Peruvian politics had to be played by his rules.

Members of Fujimori's political party, Cambio (Change) 90, and certain factions of the military, however, still argue that a strong leader was desperately needed to bring stability to what was then an anarchic Peru. They claim that both inflation and the civil war with the Shining Path rebels were not brought under control until after Fujimori first suspended the constitution in 1992. Close analysis of the situation, however, yields a more complete picture. While inflation has been brought under control, further privatization of state industries has not benefited the vast majority of Peruvians, instead increasing inequality. This trend, coupled with Peru's 10.3 percent unemployment rate, only serves to exacerbate the already wide income gap. It reflects poorly on a political system intended to serve the people if the few receive the vast majority of the material benefits while the rest live without adequate access to health care and education.

Furthermore, in the wake of Fujimori's crackdown on leftist rebels, the military has gained oppressive power, leading to "anti-terrorism" laws that make Peru the only country in the Western hemisphere, other than Cuba, where human-rights monitors are prosecuted for their work. Human-rights advocates have been stripped of habeas corpus and detained in police camps where they endure secret trials on trivial charges such as "provoking anxiety" or "apologizing for terrorism." Such laws have been used to detain US activist Lori Berenson, a New York City native who in 1995 was convicted of conspiring with terrorists under the secrecy of a closed-door military trial in Peru. The US State Department is requesting that the Peruvian government retry her in an open civilian court, and the legal case remains undecided.

Supporters of Fujimori also argue that Peruvians freely embraced his authoritarian stance, as evidenced by his support at the polls during re-elections and by the public backing of Cambio 90. However, in addition to the unconstitutionality of both of Fujimori's reelections, Cambio 90's 1992 victory was assisted by an election boycott by Peru's major opposition parties. Both the Popular Action and Aprista parties chose not to participate, stating that they "should not be accomplices in this comedy." With a boycott by the country's two largest opposition parties, Fujimori enjoyed a substantial advantage. In fact, the only surprise in the election was the ambivalence of the populace toward Cambio 90, indicated by the party's lackluster polling of only 38.3 percent when the people had essentially no credible alternatives. Moreover, after Fujimori declared his candidacy for a third consecutive term in 2000, tens of thousands protested in Lima. Brandishing placards reading "Democracy, yes! Dictatorship, no!" the people showed clearly that they did not condone Fujimori's utter disregard for governmental institutions.

Peru's democratic future looks bleak. A corrupt military, an enervated constitution, an impotent judiciary, and a fractious Congress are all that remain of whatever legacy Fujimori hoped to leave behind. Some observers point out that the situation mirrors the circumstances of Fujimori's rise to power. Peru's democratic institutions have always been weak, but at least now inflation is under control and the government appears to have triumphed in a civil war once deemed "unwinnable:' The difference is that then democracy was seen as the possible savior for all of the ills that accompanied military dictatorship. Whatever successes Peru has now are the results of authoritarian rule. Is strongman politics the only effective way to rule the country? And if not, how long will it take until democracy puts an end to the political graft and corruption and improves the life of the average Peruvian? Popular support for democracy, a prerequisite for a successful democratic transition, will only be around for a limited time, and without it there is a distinct possibility that Peru may fall prey to yet another military dictatorship.