Had to spend 17 days since the former president Alan García was admitted to hiding in the embassy of Uruguay to request diplomatic asylum, until the government of Tabaré Vasquez announced that he was in denial. Two and a half weeks that crippled the public opinion in peru and that led to the failure more strident in the career of one of the biggest political animals in the continent.
During the last four decades, Alan Garcia knew how to move like a magician on the slippery terrain of politics. The two times president of Peru already had been evicted in 1990, when his first government was concluded leaving a country in ruins, with a dying economy, a situation of uncertainty for the national advancement of the terrorist groups Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, and serious allegations of corruption that were aimed directly.
Garcia was able to recover thanks to an unexpected ally. The April 5, 1992, Alberto Fujimori, his successor, a coup d’etat by which he closed the Congress, left open the constitutional guarantees and embarked on a witch-hunt against its major opponents. Its main objective was the own president, who managed to escape in the face of their persecutors, and took refuge in the Colombian embassy, where he sought asylum. This was granted by the Government of César Gaviria, which allowed him to go to Bogotá and then to Paris.
While in Lima piled up the accusations of illicit enrichment and continued requests for extradition —which were denied one after the other, considering them to be part of a political persecution—, Garcia lived with slack in his elegant apartment in District 7, whose acquisition has never been able to explain. Opted for the low profile and had enough patience to wait until the year 2001, when a resolution of the Supreme Court of Justice established that the crimes that occurred during his first term were prescribed. Then he returned to Peru, where the government fujimorista just collapse.
Their arrival was tremendous. Nothing more leaving the airport Jorge Chavez in Callao and headed to the Plaza San Martin in downtown Lima, where they expected an ocean of people inflamed. There offered a much-discussed a rally that would mark his re-entry into peruvian politics, as well as the beginning of his campaign for the presidential elections to be held two months later. Although she didn’t win —this time he was elected Alejandro Toledo, who had led the opposition to the Fujimori— managed to sneak into the second round and losing by a margin of nearly six points, something amazing for one who did very little was considered a real plague political.
The miracle would obrarse in 2016, when he came to tempt the presidency. Again managed to outperform the forecast and achieve scraping the second round, in which he faced the nationalist Ollanta Humala. The fear of seeing Peru become a satellite of chavez, with his nationalizations, and his authoritarianism, he pushed Garcia to his second term.
It was very different to the first. We opted for economic pragmatism and encouraging the initiatives of private enterprise. Helped by the explosion of the prices of the raw materials that happened to the admission of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001, Peru registered growth rates amazing.
once he finishes his term, he returned to leave Peru. This time he chose to live in Madrid, where he remained for almost seven years, that was interrupted to participate in new elections, in 2016, in which he earned a meager 6% of the vote. Seemed to live a retirement dorada in Spain, until the tide of the case Lava Jato took to roll. Soon he met the accusation-winning businessman Marcelo Odebrecht, who admitted Fenomenbet to having distributed bribes to change works in three governments in peru, among which was the second of Alan García.
In the past months, we opened an investigation for influence peddling in the granting of Line 1 of the Lima Metro, the company acknowledged that it had obtained thanks to the disbursement of the bribe. On the same day that I landed in Lima to provide a statement to the prosecutor José Domingo Pérez, the portal of research journalist IDL-Reporters published a report which revealed that a brazilian lawyer had lent his name to regularise the payment of $ 100,000 for a lecture by Garcia in Brazil, which, everything indicates, would come from the funds of the own construction in brazil.
As a result, the prosecutor Perez asked for an extension of the research and a warrant of impediment of departure of the country for 18 months, which was accepted. Alan Garcia has decided not to appeal the measure and said in a series of posts on Twitter, the social network most used: “We will obey lest anyone think that we hide something. And for me it is not a sanction to be 18 months in my homeland and to support the Aprismo,” he wrote in one of them.
Soon his words would be belied by their actions. Only a few hours after receiving the mandate of arraignment, Garcia was led to the embassy of Uruguay in Lima, where he presented a request for asylum by claiming to be a victim of political persecution. His central argument was that in Peru are not living in a democracy and that the courts were an instrument of the Executive to take down their opponents.
The peruvian Government reacted immediately, requesting his right to present his own version of the facts, to allow the uruguayan authorities to take a more informed decision. Faced with this uncomfortable situation, the president Tabaré Vásquez said: “We will take the time necessary, because it is not stipulated a time for the country to receive a political refugee —that this is the current status of Alan Garcia— has that issue”.
at The beginning it was taken for granted that the asylum would be granted ex officio (it was thought that Garcia would have taken his precautions before taking a step as dramatic), but this delay began to reverse their luck. Except for some rare cases, the public opinion peruvian was unanimous in considering that it was not a persecuted politician, who for the first time, the investigating justice that is not bent before his power and sought to take advantage of the institution of asylum in order to evade their criminal responsibility. This stream is joined by several pronouncements as the ambassador of the united States, Krishna Urs, and his colleague from the European Union, Diego Mellado, who stated that Peru was a democracy and that there was no evidence of a persimplementation policy against Garcia
The wait ended on the 3rd of November, when Uruguay reported that he will not grant asylum. To explain the arguments that led him to this conclusion, the president, Vasquez said: “In Peru operate autonomously and freely the three powers of the State, especially the Judiciary, which is taking forward the investigations of possible economic crimes of former president [García]. For these strictly legal considerations and legal requirements, we do not grant political asylum”.
In this response weighed several factors. The first, the proximity of the electoral process, uruguayan, of which you will be the successor of Vasquez. An asylum Alan García could mean a setback for the Broad Front, which seeks to stay in power, because what would have made it appear as an accomplice in the escape of a involved in the process against corruption the greatest in the history of the region. Second, the imminence of the signing of an agreement between the prosecutor’s office of Lima and Odebrecht where, in exchange for immunity, the builder has agreed to provide all the information that you have on Peru. The negative result has been near-unanimous support to Tabaré Vásquez.
Garcia, in contrast, lives its darkest hours. Has lost the aura of invincibility that surrounded him, with his request for asylum has struck the little credibility he had left (it is the politician most rejected of Peru, with an 87 percent disapproval citizen) and has thrown the APRA —the historic party to which he belongs— in a crisis with a guarded prognosis. On the contrary, the pronouncement of Uruguay is a strong backing for the government of Martín Vizcarra, but especially for the peruvian chapter of the investigations in the case Lava Jato, that this week it might take you an extra boost with the signing of the agreement of collaboration between the justice and Odebrecht.
