Fujimori Urges Peruvians to Set Aside ‘Grudges’ After His Release

LIMA, Peru — In his first comments since being released from a hospital on a medical pardon that drew wide condemnation, former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru called on the country to set aside its “grudges” in order to unite.

Fujimori, 79, made the comments on Twitter on Saturday amid an unabating furor over President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s decision to free the former strongman, who had served 12 years of a 25-year prison sentence for graft and human rights crimes.

On Twitter, the former leader reflected on the new chapter in his life and urged Peruvians to come together to fight violence and crime.

“In the first hours of this new stage of my life, several dreams invade me constantly, and I would like to share them,” Fujimori said in a tweet. “I wish for a Peru without grudges, with all of us working toward a superior objective.”

Then, in an apparent appeal to his right-wing political base, he added: “We’ll be a country in which security is regained and violence is eliminated. We can fulfill these goals by setting aside special interests and opportunism. UNITED WE CAN ACHIEVE THEM!”

It was unclear if Fujimori’s remarks were a hint that he planned to play a more active role in Peruvian politics. But the message rippled across Peru, where Fujimori is a deeply divisive figure.

Though respected by some, he has been vilified for leading an administration that led a violent crackdown in the 1990s on the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, which had all but brought normal life in Peru to a standstill with bombing attacks and killings.

In 2009, Fujimori was sentenced for his role in two massacres that killed dozens of Peruvians in its effort to quash the Shining Path.

Peru, a country with an authoritarian past, had returned to democracy only 17 years ago. And critics denounced Kuczynski’s pardon as a blow to the fight against impunity and efforts to heal national wounds after Fujimori’s presidency.

Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and 238 other writers signed an open letter saying the decision covered the nation “in infamy and shame.” The letter said the pardon was not an act of compassion, as the government insisted, but “the most crude and cynical political calculus.”

But Prime Minister Mercedes Aráoz wrote an op-ed article published in the Lima daily El Comercio on Sunday defending Kuczynski’s decision to pardon Fujimori.

“Dear countrymen,” she wrote, “this pardon does not in any way mean impunity or oblivion; this is about starting to heal our wounds as a country.”

Kuczynski, 79, a former Wall Street banker who took office in July 2016, has been hanging on to power, having narrowly survived a motion in Congress last month to impeach him.

He had been accused of lying during an inquiry about possible ties to the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which was engulfed in a graft scandal. It was later revealed that a financial services company Kuczynski owned had received $782,000 from Odebrecht, a disclosure that sparked the impeachment effort.

Many had expected the vote to result in his removal, with the chamber dominated by the opposition Popular Force, a right-wing party founded by Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, who supported the effort to impeach Kuczynski.

But at the last minute, a faction of the Popular Force led by Alberto Fujimori’s younger son, Kenji, challenged his sister and swung the vote in Kuczynski’s favor.

Some lawmakers said that Alberto Fujimori had asked them to follow his son’s lead, and the pardon was widely seen as a quid pro quo with Kuczynski, charges the administration has denied.

In signs of a split in Popular Force, Kenji Fujimori has accused his sister of “conspiring” to keep his father imprisoned. He has asked that his father be named an aide to the family-run party.

“On the one hand, there’s Keiko and her bloc that directly opposes the government,” said Gilbert Violeta, a congressman who is president of Kuczynski’s party, Peruvians for Change. “On the other hand, there’s Kenji and the bloc that supports Alberto Fujimori.”

“We will only know the real effects of that confrontation in the following days, when Congress is back in session,” Violeta added.

Lawyers say there is no legal obstacle preventing Alberto Fujimori from seeking public office now that he has regained his freedom.

Before he was wheeled from the hospital, he asked for Peruvians’ forgiveness “with all my heart” in a Facebook video.

Since then, he has spent his days inside a rented house in a quiet suburb of the Peruvian capital, Lima, where his doctors say he is recovering from a heart condition.