2023-04-24 07:12:51
Alexander Toledo He arrived in Peru head down and with the signs of defeat drawn on his body. They extradited him from United States after almost five years of judicial efforts. The ‘Cholo’, as he was known, will pass 18 months in jail by court order. The former president is expected to occupy a cell in the Barbadillo prison in the Ate district, some 40 kilometers from Lima, in the next few hours. In that penitentiary unit, the Peruvian institutional weakness is staged. Toledo is not the first head of state to find himself behind its high walls. There is the great antagonist of him 23 years ago, the autocrat Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for his responsibility in crimes against humanity. He has also been preemptively assigned Pedro Castillothe last democratically elected president and dismissed by Congress, last year.
The presence of three executive authorities behind bars is something more than a political anomaly in that country. The former president was also temporarily detained there ollanta humalawho in 2000 took up arms against Fujimori when he was a lieutenant in the Army.
A group of protesters in favor of former President Toledo approached the outside of the prison, claiming his innocence, just a small remnant of the crowds that he knew how to summon in times of consensual leadership. Toledo led the fight against Fujimori in April 2000. He took office in 2001 exhibiting those scrolls. They soon faded away. He accuses him of having received some 35 million dollars from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for benefiting it in the concession of the Interoceanic highway.
“It’s up to me to sustain the accusation and prove that Alejandro Toledo is guilty”said prosecutor José Domingo Pérez, who received the former president at the headquarters of the National Directorate of the Air Police (DIPA) at the Jorge Chávez airport. And he added: “I think this is a positive result for the administration of justice in the country, which shows that the Special Team led by prosecutor José Vela Barba has always acted in an orderly, firm and highly responsible manner.”
repercussions
The former leader of Perú Posible had turned himself in to the US justice last Friday after a long process marked by evasions, elusions, which went beyond the cunning of his lawyers to have picaresque edges. “We hope that the presence of Toledo before the court will serve so that corrupt practices are fully known from power so that an exemplary work is achieved that avoids these bad practices and a sanction to those responsible who participated and benefited from these illegal payments,” said the newspaper ‘La República’ in its Sunday editorial.
“In Peru those who lie meet with those who want to be lied to. Illegitimate children come from these marriages, who sometimes become president. Toledo is a case, but not the only one,” said Federico Salazar, a columnist for the Lima newspaper ‘El Comercio’. The newspaper ‘Perú21’ For his part, he drew a parallel between the destinies of Toledo and Castillo. “Just as the first indigenous president was sworn in before the apus (spirits) in Machu Picchu, Cusco, the first peasant leader had a symbolic ceremony in the Pampa de la Quinua, Ayacucho. Both candidates told a good story. The humble shoeshine boy who studied in Harvard and came back to save the country from dictatorship. The wild teacher who gave up raising chickens to end poverty in a rich country. And yet, it was always known that both presidents would be tragic disappointments.”
institutional weakness
They have not been the only ones. Since Fujimori’s fall, all the presidents who gained access to the Pizarro Palace through elections accumulated more than one judicial file. Peter Paul Kuczynski He was a collaborator of “El Cholo” and governed between 2016 and 2018, when he was forced to resign so as not to be dismissed by Congress. He is being investigated for irregular contributions during his electoral campaign. Alan Garcia, Fujimori’s other staunch enemy, was Toledo’s rival in the 2001 elections. “They call me Peru,” he sang on the electoral campaign. His gravelly voice was not enough for him to win in the second round. He had to wait until 2006. The Aprista leader was also plagued by corruption. He decided to take his own life with a shot to the head when the police knocked on the door of his house to arrest him.
The same day that Toledo landed, the social security president, In Boluarte, four ministers of State were sworn in, including Justice Daniel Maurate. Boluarte’s fate hangs by a thin thread that can be cut at any time. According to the portal ‘Hildebrandt en sus trece’, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is preparing to disclose its conclusions on the repression of protests against the interim government that left dozens dead. His authorities will be accused “of a disproportionate use of lethal force. It will be a hard blow for Boluarte and his allies.”
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