With his popularity near rock bottom, President Alejandro Toledo of Peru is embroiled in a corruption scandal so debilitating that a recent opinion poll indicated that half of Peruvians thought he would not finish out the remaining two years of his five-year term
Corruption scandal has leader on brink
By Juan Forero
The New York Times
Posted August 10 2004
With his popularity near rock bottom, President Alejandro Toledo of Peru is embroiled in a corruption scandal so debilitating that a recent opinion poll indicated that half of Peruvians thought he would not finish out the remaining two years of his five-year term.
The media and political analysts say Toledo might be critically weakened. In the face of the new scandal, which involves accusations that the president took a $5 million bribe, his approval rating plummeted to 8 percent in one poll, the lowest of any president in a region of unpopular leaders, before rising to 13 percent 10 days ago.
Toledo's party lost its leadership of Congress after opposition deputy Antero Flores was chosen on July 26 to head the single-chamber legislature.
The change could give Toledo's adversaries a more solid stage from which to remove him as president, as some of his critics in Congress have threatened.
Toledo, a onetime shoeshine boy, began his presidency as a reformer who many Peruvians thought would clean up a country battered by the 10-year, graft-ridden rule of Alberto Fujimori.
Within months he was plagued by personal scandals, including revelations about extravagant spending and a daughter born out of wedlock, that provided ample fodder for a media still controlled by allies of the former president.
Peruvians have become restless, using street protests to show their disappointment with the government's inability to improve their lives even as the economy chalked up strong growth applauded by international lenders and Wall Street.
Now, some analysts are saying, a final straw may be the fresh torrent of criticism directed at the president.
It began a few weeks ago when a leading magazine, Caretas, reported that a former aide, Cesar Almeyda, who is in jail on corruption charges, said Toledo had taken a $5 million bribe to favor a Colombian brewer in its purchase of a Peruvian beer maker.
There also have been allegations that Toledo's party forged signatures to register for the 2000 election, which Fujimori stole.
Toledo, 58, has denied all of the allegations, and no proof has been presented against him.
But opinion polls show that most Peruvians do not believe him and instead see their president as incapable and deceitful.
His problems do not end there.
Toledo's wife, Eliane Karp, who was born in Belgium and who has a popularity rating lower than the president's, is accused of placing money from her consulting work in a bank account in Panama.
Opposition leaders wonder why the account was in the name of Almeyda, the aide who Caretas said had accused Toledo of taking the bribe.
Karp, like her husband, has worked for the World Bank, and the Peruvian authorities are investigating whether she misused money from a World Bank loan, possibly to help finance the salaries of friends. She has not commented on the investigation, but the president offered to open her personal bank accounts to public scrutiny to show that there had been no wrongdoing.
The scandals, though limited compared to the crimes and abuses of the Fujimori era, have been particularly damaging because they mirror some of the corruption that many thought Toledo would correct.
Fujimori's administration was rife with bribe-taking, prosecutors in Lima charge, and his use of fraudulent signatures in the 2000 election helped lead to his downfall when Congress voted him unfit to govern.
"It's the same racket and the same kind of people, moving more or less the same kind of business," said Mirko Lauer, a political columnist at La Republica, a Lima newspaper.
Toledo won some ground when, in his state of the nation address on July 28, Toldedo he pledged to open his own bank accounts to public disclosure and said he would support reforms to Peru's constitution. But the gain may be short-lived, and he remains vulnerable, analysts say.
"The risks that the government had remain," said Augusto Alvarez, a political commentator and editor of the newspaper Peru 21.
"The risk is that things will go out of control if something else comes up."
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