PARTY REGISTRATION SCANDAL CONTINUES TO HOUND

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) -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶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. -------------- A MINI-CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS -------------- ¶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. -------------- THE FALSE SIGNATURE CASE -------------- ¶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. -------------- THE COVER-UP ALLEGATIONS -------------- ¶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. -------------- THE CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION -------------- ¶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. -------------- COMMENT -------------- ¶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