Via the Miami Herald: Fujimori returned, jailed

Under heavy guard on a police airplane, former President Alberto Fujimori returned Saturday in disgrace to Peru, extradited from Chile after a two-year legal battle. He was immediately jailed at a police base as dozens of his supporters blocked traffic in protest.

[…]

The man who was elected in 1990 and subsequently ruled Peru with an iron fist for 10 years potentially faces spending the rest of his life in prison.

I must say, I have my doubts about this:

Fujimori added that his political movement Fujimorismo would endure, either through him or his 32-year-old daughter Keiko, who was the single highest vote-getter in last year’s congressional elections. However, at age 69 — and the next presidential election not until 2024 — Fujimori’s political career in Peru seems over.

The notion that a long-standing political movement has been built by Fujimori is a dubious one.

Keiko Fujimori ran under the label “Alianza por el Futuro” (Alliance for the Future) has 13 of the 120 seats in the Peruvian legislature and won 1,408,069 out of 14,624,880. Better than nothing, but not exactly a huge presence. Further, it seems to me that the votes are driven as much by the last name and lingering personalism than any lasting ideological position. Another of the Alianza’s candidates was Alberto Fujimori’s younger brother, Santiago Fujimori, again underscoring the personalism linked to the party.

What support Fujimori has comes from the amazing amount of spending he engaged in in the mid-to-late 1990s that was designed specifically to blster his political support. As the piece notes:

‘’He has a strong core of support among poor people who remember a road he built, a school that he built, who received milk from his government, who have running water thanks to him, who say that he was the only politician who ever did anything for them,'’ Torrado said.

However:

But about 60 percent of Peruvians reject Fujimori, Torrado added, because they believe he’s corrupt and that he illegally repressed his opponents. Fujimori lost further support when he ran for the Japanese Senate from Chile earlier this year and lost badly.