With Montesinos behind bars, the populist president-elect can now focus on his forward-looking message at this month’s inauguration. Toledo must pull the economy out of a prolonged recession. But he has also promised his countrymen a new way of doing business. He has vowed to stamp out corruption and establish a truth commission that will investigate human-rights abuses committed during the 10-year rule of exiled president Alberto Fujimori. That has raised hopes of a possible overhaul of Peru’s discredited armed forces and the intelligence services under their control. He also promises to respect the law–including in the Montesinos case. “I don’t have a sense of revenge [or] persecution,” Toledo said last week on the eve of a 12-day tour of the United States and Western Europe. “Let’s wait for justice to be done.”
That will take a while. Montesinos attained his heights as de facto chief of the country’s National Intelligence Service under Fujimori, who took office in 1990 as a popular reformer in his own right, cracking down on a potent leftist guerrilla movement and imposing market-economy reforms. Over time, of course, Fujimori’s iron hand of reform evolved into the familiar Latin American despotism, supported largely by the intrigues of Montesinos. The head spook acquired total control over the intelligence-gathering units of the Army, Navy, Air Force and police with the approval and complicity of the top brass, and by the time of his ouster in September millions of Peruvians openly wondered whether Montesinos exercised greater power than the president himself.
Fujimori resigned in November, after a videotape emerged apparently showing the spy chief bribing a congressman. Fujimori now lives in exile in Japan–while Montesinos is ensnared in more than 50 pending criminal cases ranging from money laundering and drug trafficking to possible involvement in a number of notorious massacres dating back to the early 1990s. During an initial round of interrogations, Montesinos reportedly promised to turn over another 30,000 videos of meetings he held with various cabinet ministers, judges, senior security officials and other influential Peruvians. The incriminating evidence could even extend to the CIA, which allegedly obtained secret documents from Montesinos in the mid-1970s, when he was an Army captain serving in the prime minister’s office of a leftist military dictatorship.
The unfolding corruption cases will strengthen calls to reform Peru’s intelligence services. At a minimum, says one key Toledo aide, the Ministries of Defense and Interior, along with Montesinos’s National Intelligence Service, must be brought under direct civilian control to avoid a repeat of past abuses. “That change is indispensable,” argues Fernando Rospigliosi, a prominent journalist who is advising the president-elect. “The intelligence services have always been controlled by the armed forces, and now that the military finds itself in a state of complete impotence Toledo has to choose between the status quo and a radical change that creates a civilian-led intelligence service.”
From his concrete cellblock on a Peruvian naval base, Montesinos is still in a position to sully the reputations of the rich and powerful. That became evident last week when the Peruvian press reported that Montesinos had fingered Fujimori’s daughter Keiko for leaking the infamous bribery video that marked the beginning of the end for her father. Friends and foes alike concur that no one should underestimate the disgraced spymaster. “He’s scared and nervous, and I know he’s suffering right now,” says a retired Army colonel who has known Montesinos for more than 30 years. “But he will not stay that way, and soon he will adapt and start to defend himself.” Others are convinced that Montesinos will have no scruples about taking down some former colleagues. “He’s still a dangerous individual, and he’s already creating the right conditions to screw Fujimori,” says Rospigliosi. “He likes being the star who sets the agenda from his prison cell.” Peruvians will stay tuned for many years to come.
