Cablegate: Party Registration Scandal Continues to Hound
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 LIMA 001375
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/09/2015
TAGS: PGOV KCRM PE
SUBJECT: PARTY REGISTRATION SCANDAL CONTINUES TO HOUND
PRESIDENT TOLEDO
Classified By: D/Polcoun Art Muirhead for Reason 1.4 (B, D)
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SUMMARY
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1. (U) Congress President Antero Flores-Araoz' mediation
seems to have defused a potential constitutional crisis over
a Congressional committee's demand to question President
Toledo; the committee is investigating accusations that
Toledo's Peru Posible party forged signatures in its effort
to register for the 2000 elections. Still, this case will
continue to shape the political environment in important ways
probably through the end of Toledo's term. Among the
consequences we see:
-- While opposition party heavyweights tell us they want
Toledo to finish his term, many of the same people have
publicly held out the threat of an impeachment process. We
think impeachment is improbable, but expect the opposition to
continue alluding to it as a way of keeping Toledo on the
defensive.
-- President Toledo's already low credibility has taken a
further hit from clumsy efforts to cover up the scandal by
party loyalists. Opinion polls show that an overwhelming
majority of Peruvians think the President was involved in
signature fraud; this is handicapping his already faltering
efforts to shift public focus to his accomplishments.
-- The "hard wing" of Peru Posible is exploiting Toledo's
heightened sense of insecurity to increase his dependence on
them. This happens at a time when Toledo is pondering who
will replace Carlos Ferrero as Prime Minister. It makes it
more than likely that the President will fall back on his
ever-narrowing base rather than - as some of his advisors
have urged - naming a respected non-political or "friendly
opposition figure.
-- Opposition parties have their own signature fraud
problems, which will give them an incentive to slow-walk an
investigation. The next government, however, is likely to
pursue criminal charges against Toledo and members of his
Administration over the issue. END SUMMARY.
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A MINI-CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
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2. (U) Thanks to the active mediation of Congress President
Antero Flores-Araoz, a potential constitutional crisis
between the executive and legislative branches seems to have
been averted. The crisis developed after President Toledo
announced in late February that he was prepared to meet with
the Congressional Special Investigative Committee (Villanueva
Committee) looking into allegations that parties, including
the President's Peru Posible (then Pais Posible), forged
signatures to meet registration requirements for the 2000
elections. Toledo characterized the meeting as a
Presidential audience for Committee members only. The
Committee, led by its Chairman Edgar Villanueva (of the
opposition Peru Ahora), responded by demanding that the
meeting be considered an ordinary committee session, that
other legislators be permitted to attend and that it be
recorded. The President rejected these conditions,
particularly the demand that the meeting be recorded , but
then arranged for a nationally-televised interview with a
prominent journalist, in which he denied the allegations
against his party and himself.
3. (U) The televised interview with Toledo, which
effectively undercut the President's objection to being
recorded, coupled with Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero's
aggressive denunciations of the Villanueva Committee and
forceful assertion that the matter was closed, led to threats
by Villanueva and other committee members to subpoena the
President and seek to vacate the presidency should Toledo
refuse to testify. Politicians and constitutional experts
weighed in with their differing analyses as to whether a
congressional committee has the authority to interrogate the
President: the Constitution does not directly address this
issue, but it does provide that a serving President can only
be accused of treason, impeding elections, unlawfully
dissolving Congress, and impeding the functioning of
electoral institutions. Meanwhile, Flores-Araoz initiated
direct discussions with the President, and on 3/17 announced
that a tentative agreement had been reached under which
Toledo would meet with the Committee, written notes would be
taken of their discussions, and then all participants would
sign off on the minutes. The Villanueva Committee accepted
this arrangement and the meeting with the President has
tentatively been set for 3/24.
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THE FALSE SIGNATURE CASE
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4. (U) The concurrent criminal and congressional
investigations into the false signature charges have
considered testimony and documentary evidence indicating that
in 1997-98 electoral officials illegally supplied Pais
Posible with copies of the electoral rolls, including the
names/signatures of registered voters. Using this
information, President Toledo, Margarita Toledo and other
Pais Posible leaders allegedly operated "signature
factories," where up to 20 workers at a time forged the
signatures of registered voters on forms listing these voters
as members of Pais Posible in order to meet the electoral
code requirement that new parties have 496,847 registered
members in order to present candidates in the 2000 elections.
During the inscription period, Pais Posible presented
1,390,213 signatures, of which 463,539 were invalidated.
5. (U) The President and his sister have denied the
accusations against them, and GOP and party officials have
questioned the motives of several witnesses. The evidence
against the President appears to be weak, consisting of the
rather vague testimony of several self-confessed workers at
the "signature factories" that he visited the "factory," knew
what was going on there, threw a party for the workers, and
even forged a few signatures himself. These witnesses,
however, have tended to contradict themselves or each other,
and/or have provided different accounts at the various stages
of the investigation process. The testimony against
Margarita seems to be more substantial, and Judge Saul Pena,
who is heading up the criminal investigation, has placed her
under house arrest and embargoed her property.
6. (U) While it seems clear that Peru Posible and other
parties submitted forged registration lists, providing
conclusive evidence of criminal responsibility may be very
difficult. Many parties hired canvassers to gather
signatures and shift the blame for misconduct to them. In
deed, the Office of National Electoral Processes (ONPE) only
recognized three million signatures as valid out of more than
18,712,000 submitted by all parties seeking to register for
the 2000 elections. New ONPE director Magdalena Chu has
offered to develop new software (costing USD 55,000 and
taking 3-6 months to finalize) that could compare the
signatures on the 2000 electoral rolls with those on Pais
Posible registration forms, but she emphasized that this
would not be definitive proof of forgery. While the National
Police has experts in detecting forgery, they reportedly have
the capability of examining a maximum of 16 signatures per
day.
7. (U) Politically the signature fraud scandal has been a
disaster for Toledo. In polls, over two-thirds of
respondents indicate that they believe he was involved in a
massive signature fraud. The President's public relations
case was greatly undercut by the release of a video (said to
be from 1997 or 1998) showing President Toledo, with his wife
Eliane Karp at his side, at a lunch where Toledo saluted his
sister Margarita for her work in directing the collection of
signatures to register his party. The presence of Karp and
the recognition of Margarita as director of effort
contradicted GOP and Peru Posible officials' previous claims
that Karp had been out of the country during the period in
question and that Margarita had no connection with the
party's registration efforts. In addition, the December
2004/January 2005 replacement of Ad Hoc Anti-Corruption State
Attorney Luis Vargas Valdivia and his team, who were actively
investigating the signature fraud scandal, has been widely
interpreted as a GOP effort to sidetrack the inquiry.
8. (C) On the other hand, Toledo has been helped by the
fact that his chief accuser, opposition Unidad Nacional
alliance Congressman Rafael Rey, is also under investigation
for directing an even greater signature forgery operation.
Rey, who heads up the minuscule Code-Renovacion alliance,
presented 2,270,000 signatures to register his party in 2000,
of which only 479,000 were validated by ONPE. Furthermore,
Rey's notorious close links to associates of former President
Alberto Fujimori and Fujimori's intelligence advisor
Vladimiro Montesinos, have lent credence to Toledo defenders'
charges that the allegations against the President and his
party are politically motivated.
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THE COVER-UP ALLEGATIONS
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9. (U) The investigation into charges that GOP and Peru
Posible officials engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct the
judicial inquiry into the signature fraud allegations appears
to be heading toward the criminal prosecution of several
former government and party figures. The testimony and
evidence to date indicates that Immigration Service officials
conspired in the irregular after-hours issuance of passports
to Carmen Burga and her family. Burga was the key witness
who first made the fraudulent signature allegations against
Toledo in July 2004. Soon after she made a video recanting
her allegations, which was publicized by GOP officials, and
disappeared from Peru. The Burgas were then escorted by a
Peruvian Airports and Commercial Aviation Corporation
(CORPAC) official and two employees of Peru Posible
activist/businessman Dante Matos across the Ecuadorian border
and into temporary exile in Colombia and Venezuela, where
they lived for several months on funds provided by Matos.
10. (U) The prosecutor handling the case, Arturo Chalco, in
December filed criminal charges against six former
Immigration Service officials, including ex-Director Pedro
Torres, accusing them of committing irregularities in the
issuance of the passports to the Burgas. Chalco also filed
charges against then-Immigration Service Director Diomendes
Diaz, accusing him of attempting to cover-up his
predecessor's actions; Diaz subsequently resigned. In
addition, Chalco reportedly is considering charging former
CORPAC Director Freddy Otarola with arranging the Burgas'
flight to Ecuador and Dante Matos for facilitating the
Burgos' travel and then providing the funds to sustain their
stay abroad.
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THE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION
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11. (C) The opposition-controlled Congress has shown
surprising restraint in its investigation of the signature
fraud and cover-up allegations. Although Carmen Burga's
charges were first brought in July 2004, followed quickly by
her temporary recantation and disappearance into exile, the
five-member Special Investigative Committee was not formed
until late October and did not commence substantive hearings
until January 2005. At the GOP's request, the Committee's
mandate was expanded from investigating the Peru Posible
charges to an investigating the registration of all parties
for the 2000 elections. Opposition APRA and Unidad Nacional
congressmen (with the exception of Rey) have told Emboffs
repeatedly that their parties have no/no interest in pursuing
these scandals at the present time. APRA's Mauricio Mulder,
who serves as the party's hatchet man, told Poloffs that
while he believes that there is solid evidence of fraud, APRA
will not/not seek to use the scandal to remove Toledo. APRA
legislative bloc leader Cesar Zumaeta reiterated this to
Polcouns on 3/17, emphasizing that his party supports Toledo
finishing his mandate in 2006.
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COMMENT
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12. (C) The signature fraud/cover-up scandals may be a
political nightmare for the Toledo Administration,
contributing to the President's continued low popularity, but
they do not/not appear to threaten his removal from office.
In the current political environment, the major parties and
their presidential hopefuls favor the political and economic
stability that Toledo completing his term of office will
provide.
13. (C) The President and other high-level GOP and Peru
Posible officials implicated in the scandals probably have
more reason to be concerned that they will be the subject of
criminal prosecutions after Toledo leaves office in July
2006. It is a tradition in Peruvian politics that an
incoming government supports criminal investigations of a
hostile outgoing government, as the Fujimori regime did with
respect to Alan Garcia's APRA administration, and as the
Toledo Government has done with respect to Fujimori and his
followers. In that respect, it is somewhat ironic that one
of the chief criminal prosecutions promoted by the Toledo
Government has been the forgery of signatures by Fujimori's
"Peru 2000" party in its efforts to register for the
elections that year.
14. (C) Some Palace insiders tell us that the President's
concern over the scandals reportedly is being fed by Prime
Minister Ferrero, Peru Posible co-Secretary General and
Congressman Jesus Alvarado, Labor Minister Juan Sheput and
other members of the "hard wing" ("ala dura") faction of the
ruling Peru Posible party, who then employ their strident
public defense of Toledo to maintain and solidify their
dominant influence in the administration. Self-defense may
also be involved, as members of the Hard Wing faction are
themselves primary suspects in the scandals. But hard-nosed
politics also plays a role at a time when Toledo is weighing
who should replace Prime Minister Ferrero. END COMMENT.
STRUBLE