Accountability Is the Cure for an Ailing Democracy
The United States should follow the examples of other nations that were brave enough to make their despotic leaders face justice.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
In the early 2000s, Peruvians faced a difficult choice.
Their outgoing president, Alberto Fujimori, had been democratically elected as a
populist only to preside over a regime of corruption, repression, and personal
megalomania. Early in his first term, he orchestrated an
autogolpe, or
self-coup, in which he shut down congress and took over the judiciary with the
assistance of the military and Peruvian elites.
Though Fujimori nominally restored democratic institutions