Peru, The Fujimori Regime

Venezuela’s condition was worsened Carlos Andres Perez came to power in 1988. Unfortunately, he ended up leaving his original state-centered development model for unpopular neoliberal reforms that included privatization, trade liberalization, and deregulation. As transportation fares increased, Venezuelans mobilized to protest these new reforms. These protests were met with military violence and very little change in the new reforms. As a result of this, Venezuelans were left with a feeling of distrust and hostility towards these traditional parties and the old system, leading to increased support toward political independents and a new system of multiple polarized parties. Venezuelans were also looking for a positive change and very few

In Peru, the Fujimori regime gained an alarming amount of power and control over the country and those apart of the opposition failed to act against it. Now merely a sea of independents, the opposition became too politically weak to end Fujimori’s national repression. The opposition became accustomed to Fujimori’s political environment in which neither political parties nor democracy is valued. This made it difficult and nearly impossible for them to mobilize as for decades they previously operated corresponding with these values. Fujimori was able to continue to abuse his power as he ruled unopposed, downgrading the authority of the rule of law. Both horizontal and vertical accountability within the Peruvian government began to recede, allowing Fujimori increased control. As Peru’s electoral institutions no longer had transparency, the opposition lost all hope of protecting these institutions from corruption. It also became impossible for Peruvians to mobilize against government misconduct as they no longer had party structures to effectively organize an opposition. The opposition attempted to organize blocs to regain control, but they all failed miserably (Levitsky and Cameron 2003:

For example, after Peru’s party-system collapse, APRA failed in every national election. However, by continuously competing in subnational elections, APRA stayed in the public eye and managed to place second representing Alan Garcia ten years later. Although it was unable to reach the amount of national importance it held before, APRA still received multiple seats in Congress, enabling them to be a national influence once more (Cyr 2016: 139). Venezuela’s old parties shared a similar but different experience as the AD party remained second to Chavez during elections and therefore, became the leading party of the opposition. AD’s prominence in Peru carried the entire opposition as when they decided to boycott the parliamentary election in 2005, the rest of the opposition had no choice but to do so as well. APRA also saw much success throughout the 2000s to even 2011 (Cyr 2016: