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Alberto Kenyo Fujimori Fujimori (born July 28, 1938) was president of Peru from July 28, 1990, to November 17, 2000, when he fled to Japan as allegations of far-reaching corruption in his administration began to emerge.
From Japan, he submitted his resignation by fax, but the Peruvian Congress rejected his resignation and removed him from office.
1 Early years
Fujimori was born in Lima to Japanese parents, natives of Kumamoto who moved to Peru in 1934. His parents applied to the Japanese consulate to keep the baby's Japanese citizenship.
He was trained as an agricultural engineer. Before being elected president, he was rector of La Molina National University and then later president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors (Asamblea Nacional de Rectores), a position that he held twice.
A dark horse candidate, Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election with his new party Cambio 90, beating the world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with the previous president of Peru, Alan García and his APRAThe American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), today officially known as Partido Aprista Peruano (Peruvian Aprist Party) is Peru's oldest and only well-institutionalized political party. It was originally founded by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre in Me party. He also exploited distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment and distrust of his carefully-reasoned campaign promises for neoliberalNeoliberalism is a political philosophy and a political-economic movement beginning in the 1970s and increasingly prominent since 1980 that de-emphasizes or rejects positive government intervention in the economy, focusing instead on achieving progress an economic reform. Since the campaign, he was affectionately nicknamed el chino ("the Chinky"). Most observers believe his Japanese descent benefited Fujimori as much of the population is of Native AmericanNative Americans (also Indians Aboriginal Peoples American Indians First Nations Alaskan Natives or Indigenous Peoples of America are the indigenous inhabitants of Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. This term compri-descent, and his ethnicity helped set him apart from the SpanishThe Kingdom of Spain is a country located in the southwest of Europe. It shares the Iberian Peninsula with Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra. To the northeast, along the Pyrenees mountain range, it borders France and the tiny principality of Andorra. It inc-dominated political elites.
2 First term
During his first term in office, Fujimori's economic strategy, which Peruvians dubbed Fujishock, bore no resemblance to the vague, populist program set out during the campaign under the slogan "Work, technology, honesty".
Under close tutelage of the IMF, Fujimori embarked upon tough and wide-ranging economic reforms — far more drastic than anything Vargas Llosa had proposed — resulting in Peru's much-needed reinsertion in the global economy, from which it had become estranged during the García administration.
Spurred on by the IMF, Fujimori went on a privatizationPrivatization (sometimes: denationalization privatisation or — especially in India — disinvestment is the economic process of transferring property, from public ownership to private ownership. An opposite process is nationalization. In theory, privatizati binge, selling off hundreds of state-owned enterprises, many in hasty and badly-organized privatizations. Of the estimated USD $9 billion raised in the process, only a small part ever benefited the Peruvian people; much of the money raised disappeared in Fujimori's patronage machine.
Although Fujishock brought macroeconomic stability and a brief upturn in the mid 1990s (economic growth exceeded 12% in 1994), it did so at tremendous social cost; it generated massive poverty and pushed Peru's economy into a deep recession from which it has yet to recover.
