The death of Alberto Fujimori should mark the beginning of a new political era in our country, one that will finally put an end to polarization and hatred and allow us to focus on looking to the future and rebuilding Peru.
On July 28, 1990, Alberto Fujimori took office in a collapsed country. In economic terms, Peru was not sustainable: hyperinflation, insolvent public companies – a legacy of the military dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado – in all productive sectors and scarce tax revenues. A failed country, part of whose territory was controlled by two terrorist groups: Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA, and a very high incidence of poverty and abandonment.
Fujimori laid the foundations for the country’s economic growth. Whether he believed in the proposals or not, his pragmatic vision allowed him to delegate economic reforms to a large team of economists and public policy experts who changed the destiny of the country. Not only was hyperinflation controlled and public companies privatized, but Peru was reinserted in the international market and opened up to international trade, the free movement of capital, and national and foreign investment. These foundations were later consolidated with the 1993 Constitution.
The reformist spirit of the 1990s is undeniable. Fujimori took on the political decisions that had to be made to transform the country and he did so without hesitation. Thanks to this, our country achieved an impressive reduction in poverty and an expansion of the middle class, which led to what was later known as the Peruvian economic miracle. The titling of informal property was a milestone that marked the opening of economic rights for those who were traditionally excluded. Fujimori managed to pacify the country.
His detractors have been unfair at times – and in many cases built a political career on their hatred of Fujimori and the myths they built about him. The false public policy of forced sterilizations, the alleged theft of US$6 billion from privatization and the murder of Pedro Huilca by the military, to mention just a few. And we Peruvians, not given to confronting, remained silent. Since his fall, a constant effort was established in Peru to distort the facts with the intention of making everything debatable and, many times, punishable. It was a constant effort to rewrite history for political reasons.
The end of his government, marked by corruption, the power of a dark advisor, authoritarianism, the attempt to control the press and democratic institutions (such as the Constitutional Court, Congress and the Judiciary), his candidacy for an unconstitutional third term and his resignation from Japan, overshadowed his legacy.
Alberto Fujimori’s departure should allow us to begin to build a country leaving behind the binary logic of Fujimorism-anti-Fujimorism. Peru has been going through a social, political and economic crisis for years. Nine out of ten Peruvians are not satisfied with the functioning of democracy in the country and 68% consider that Peruvian society is broken (Ipsos Global). Political polarization worsens the crisis. It is time to focus on pending reforms, on building a better political class that responds to the interests of citizens and focuses on promoting the development of the country.
*El Comercio opens its pages to the exchange of ideas and reflections. In this plural framework, the newspaper does not necessarily agree with the opinions of the authors who write them, although it always respects them.
