Fujimori’s son says will back president, breaks with opposition
LIMA: The son of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori said on Wednesday that he would form a new political group to support the executive branch as President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and his center-right government grow increasingly isolated.
Kenji Fujimori, Fujimori’s youngest son whose popularity is surging, said he and nine other lawmakers had formally split from the right-wing opposition party led by his sister Keiko Fujimori, erasing the absolute majority in Congress it once used to oust ministers from Kuczynski’s government.
The division came after the faction broke party ranks last month to keep Kuczynski from being removed from office in the wake of a graft scandal. Kuczynski granted Alberto Fujimori a pardon three days later on medical grounds, helping Kenji fulfill a long- standing goal to free his father.
In his first news conference since the elder Fujimori was pardoned, Kenji, 37, unveiled a political pledge on Wednesday signed by the 10 dissident lawmakers, giving the first sign of concrete political support beyond Kuczynski’s party after anti-pardon street protests and resignations weakened his government.
“Thisisagovernableagreement,” Kenji said, holding up a document as he listed priorities that included helping Kuczynski address the needs of Peruvians and courting private investment.
Alberto Fujimori, who had been serving a 25-year prison sentence for graft and human rights crimes during his authoritarian decade in power, is a deeply divisive figure in Peru. Despite his downfall, his is admired by many who credit him with quashing a leftist insurgency and saving Peru from economic ruin.
In the past year, Fujimori has publicly sided with Kenji, not Keiko. In July, he issued a rare rebuke to the opposition party led by his daughter.
A former lawmaker, Keiko has spent a decade turning her father’s legacy into Peru’s most organised political party, Popular Force, but her leadership of the populist movement he started in the 1990s has been called into question.
She declined to seek Fujimori’s freedom, citing a 2016 campaign pledge to only use the courts and not political powers to seek his release.
She now runs behind him in polls on who is the current leader of the so- called Fujimoristas.
“We just witnessed the birth of the parliamentary group of Alberto Fujimori,” ruling party lawmaker Juan Sheput told local news channel Canal N after Kenji’s news conference.
Kenji told journalists, sometimes nervously, that Popular Force had ignored his calls for internal reform after Keiko lost two consecutive presidential elections, including a 2016 tight run- off vote with Kuczynski.
“The healthy thing would be to change the party leadership ... but that never happened,” he said, flanked by his fellow dissident lawmakers, whom he has dubbed ‘the Avengers’.
Kenji is expected to make a bid for the presidency in 2021 elections, when Kuczynski cannot run due to term limits.
Keiko’s spokesman and Kuczynski’s spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside of regular working hours. — Reuters