The National Intelligence Service Chief Vladimir Montesino’s snooping personality dismantled his corruption apparatus brewing in the heart of a much-questioned government. A video shot by him and leaked to the opposition depicted him bribing a congressman to switch sides and gather majority, and proved what many refused to believe. Hence, the power of the image he carefully protected caught him red-handed in abject misery.

The political turmoil has knocked other buildings down too. The truth is that the before-scheduled election ballyhooed by Alberto Fujimori omens the government’s collapse. A government does not fail just because one official is caught red-handed in a corruption act. The government falls because this person has been accompanied by the government from the beginning. In other words, Montesinos embodies a power allied with President Fujimori and sectors of the Armed Forces that combined crumble to dust.

This power built on antidemocratic and corrupt mechanisms, had been eager since the 1992 coup to prevail as an end in itself. However, this goal was achieved by misusing democratic institutions, emptying their content and tying them up to the Executive, thus reaching power concentration. To defend this scheme against any opposition it was necessary to create a political police which was the NIS headed by Montesinos.

The presidential re-election became the essential mechanism to fulfill governmental goals and so occurred in the first re-election of 1995 and repeated this year. To attain these goals the problem was that relevant sectors of society –perhaps the most dynamic ones- opposed. To beat them, they had to mount a highly-questioned campaign and elections. Fujimori’s Phyrric victory last April occurred that way for a government that rises from a questioned election lacks legitimacy, which is only granted by the people who freely accept a term. This was not the case.

In fact, Fujimori’s third term was weak due to its origin –though it looked quite the contrary. A government assumed to last for 60 months endured the rejection of a considerable sector of society in just a month and a half as well as the fight among sectors to gain power. The problem was that the overall government was weak and its creeping corruption proliferated.

The announcement of the election has sparked a proportion crisis and even now nobody is in total control of power. Despite the nationwide demand for Montesinos’ trial and imprisonment, the accused has shut himself in the NIS’s premises and refuses to surrender under non-negotiable conditions. Fujimori, Montesinos and the Armed Forces are all embroiled in this struggle waiting for the end.

Fujimori has the advantage of having predicted the collapse of the government in the shortest term. Montesinos has no other choice but fight to survive. Fujimori could impose himself by handing Montesinos over to be tried. The problem is that the more he discloses of him, the deeper he’ll be compromised since hardly any politician spends ten years in power without stumbling or entangling into cumbersome matters. Moreover, this stands as Montesino’s alleged blackmail weapon.

In the meantime, transition remains the pending issue. Many questions abound. If the election is held as almost everyone agrees around April next year and power is handed in on July 28 2001, who is going to head the transition?, under what conditions?. Answers are lacking. The government wants a controlled and protected transition. Hence the political fight opens up several endings that put Peru’s future at stake.