Toledo must rebuild the people's trust in government and resolve the scandals left in the wake of Fujimori and Montesinos.
Economic
- Peru continues to be burdened by an international debt of more than $21 billion.
- Although Fujimori was able to slow inflation, prices and unemployment rates skyrocketed. The country has been in a recession since 1997.
For ten years President Alberto Fujimori ruled Peru with an ironclad hold on power. On July 28, 2000, he was inaugurated for an unprecedented third presidential term and, despite protests of election fraud, it appeared as though Fujimori remained firmly in control. During his administration the Peruvian economy, at the edge of total collapse in 1990, had been salvaged and the revolutionary groups Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement; MRTA) had been brought under control. Having established a stable—albeit not completely healthy—economic and political system, no one could predict that before the end of the year, Fujimori would call for new elections, flee the country, resign from office, be denounced by the Peruvian Congress, and come under a variety of political and criminal charges.
The soap opera-like series of events were set into motion on September 14, 2000, when Lima's only independent television station, Channel N, aired a tape of Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's long-time close adviser and head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), offering a US$15,000 bribe to Luis Alberto Kouri, an opposition member of Congress, in return for his support of the president.
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