Fujimori Takes On El Nino

ICA, Peru —  After climbing aboard a police helicopter bound for the next destination in his whirlwind crusade against El Nino, President Alberto Fujimori did what he often does at such moments.

He took a nap.

Fujimori donned earphones handed to him by a military aide, gestured and smiled at two passengers to make room for him on their bench seat and lay down. Using a green duffel bag as a pillow, he went instantly to sleep in front of journalists and bodyguards crowded into the deafening Russian-made helicopter.

A wide-awake Fujimori, dressed for action in boots, jeans and a windbreaker, hit the ground running in the flood-pounded southwestern town of Ica half an hour later. He strode through startled crowds at a market under reconstruction, promised irate housewives he would restore their water service and deployed shirt-sleeved Cabinet ministers to direct recovery tasks, all the while exhibiting a prodigious command of rainfall statistics, street names and other minutiae.

As his round-the-clock micro-managing and airborne catnaps during this recent trip suggest, Fujimori has a singular, solitary leadership style that thrives on crisis. Last year, it was the hostage drama in the Japanese ambassador’s residence that culminated in a globally televised commando rescue. This year, it’s the El Nino-driven storms drubbing Peru.

“I am accustomed to this kind of managing of problems. After [the hostage crisis], in fact, I was getting bored,” Fujimori said, cracking the smile that periodically creases his steely demeanor, as his pickup truck rolled through mud-caked streets where floods had peaked at chin level.

But critics say the notoriously hands-on president has hurt relief efforts by failing to delegate responsibility or communicate with local authorities.

“He can’t do it alone,” said Santiago Pedraglio, a political commentator. “A president is there for moral gestures, not to command in practical terms. He becomes the national, regional and provincial chief of civil defense. The whole system collapses. They can’t do anything until Fujimori arrives.”

The Fujimori vs. El Nino showdown is the latest chapter of Peru’s national drama. Because recent scandals have weakened him politically, and because he has so closely identified himself with the fight against an unpredictable meteorological force, this challenge could be the most formidable yet.

During two days in which a Times reporter accompanied him around the nation, Fujimori proved a curious combination of two personas: the pragmatic technocrat and the vintage Latin American political strongman.

Fujimori, 59, has an unorthodox, detail-obsessed approach to a job that consumes and enthralls him. He radiates confidence in his own judgment and responds with a blank look when asked if he has historical idols or political role models.

“No, I haven’t noticed,” he said. At the mention of Fidel Castro--a leader he has praised despite the obvious differences between the legendary Cuban Marxist and the right-leaning Peruvian--Fujimori offered this assessment: “Well, he’s undeniably a leader, no?”

After his upset election in 1990 put him in charge of a nation on the verge of chaos, Fujimori’s aggressive tactics produced victories and human and institutional casualties. His shock-treatment economic plan cut inflation and spurred growth and foreign investment, though everyday Peruvians are increasingly impatient about their lot. He dealt crushing blows to dangerous terrorist groups, using draconian laws and unleashing the military and intelligence services that are considered vital to his rule.

Critics call Fujimori a vindictive authoritarian who has weakened democracy by abusing power, first with a shutdown of Congress in 1992 and again last year, when his legislative majority ousted high court justices in the wake of a ruling that would make it more difficult for him to run for a third five-year term as president. His approval ratings sank to record lows--in the 20s--because of that scandal and others involving alleged persecution of opponents.

In a human rights report released in February, the U.S. State Department expressed concern about physical abuses and spying by security forces and the “perception of an organized campaign of intimidation” against the press.

But Fujimori’s response to El Nino’s devastation has been a breakneck marathon of trips to direct disaster prevention and relief that has driven his popularity back up to 45% in polls.

Fujimori is exploiting El Nino, opponents claim, to advance a third election bid in 2000. (He has yet to declare his candidacy.)

“The El Nino phenomenon has not paralyzed this race for reelection. In fact, the disaster is being taken advantage of for this very purpose,” lawmaker Anel Townsend said. “I think there is an awareness on the part of the population that could be a boomerang against the president.”

Fujimori retorted: “Let them keep talking.”

His defenders say he has always operated this way, barnstorming across the nation. They say he has to take charge because the presidency controls the power and the budget in centralized Peru. He has spent months warning about El Nino and enacting a $150-million infrastructure and preparedness program.

“I don’t see El Nino with the eyes of a president,” he said. “I see it with the eyes of an engineer. . . . That’s how I operate: with coldness, with logic, like an engineer.”

If El Nino can be compared to a giant gun firing off climatic chaos, Peru has the geographic misfortune of being at point-blank range. The recurring Pacific-based phenomenon has hammered Peru for centuries; it wiped out the Moche and Lambayeque pre-Hispanic civilizations a thousand years ago.

The toll this time so far: more than 200 dead, tens of thousands of damage victims, cities inundated by floods and landslides. Southern California has suffered despite its First World infrastructure, so imagine the plight of the impoverished citizens who make up about half of Peru’s population.

Fujimori has tried to shed the warlike image of the past year in favor of a more benign, depoliticized one: the former university president with rolled-up sleeves coming to the rescue. He draws both cheers and charges of grandstanding for behavior such as the televised incident in which he spotted a group of stranded flood victims from his helicopter, ordered the pilot to touch down and hoisted women and children aboard to safety.

“I am used to attending to details,” he said. “I believe that the concept of management applies at every level.”

Fujimori differs from most North and South American presidents, who spend their days inside concentric rings of advisors, political consultants, media handlers and schedule managers who plan and choreograph their leader’s every move.

His travels are typically wild rides with minimal pomp and circumstance. He picks destinations on a moment’s notice. His bodyguards and flight attendants, whom he selects, are on 24-hour call and often have no idea where they will spend the night.

And the president has a lean traveling entourage headed by a military aide-de-camp--these days a strapping navy commander in battle fatigues named Alan Burns--who glides alongside like a shadow, anticipating the president’s monosyllabic orders.

His security team consists of crew-cut plainclothes officers armed with short Israeli-made machine guns. They scramble frantically into crowds behind Fujimori, who appears remarkably unconcerned about being a target.

Otherwise, there is little buffer between Fujimori and the public or the traveling press corps. A rare civilian advisor accompanying the president on the recent trip was former Agriculture Minister Absalon Vasquez, one of the few presidential confidants.

“I’m an engineer too, so I know how he thinks,” Vasquez said. Despite his unassuming manner, commentators describe Vasquez as a top strategist for Fujimori’s widely anticipated third candidacy.

Vasquez said he is used to the idiosyncrasies of a president who labors late into the night, arises shortly after dawn and naps seemingly at will. “I asked him how he can just go to sleep like that. And he told me, ‘I have a clear conscience.’ ”

Fujimori’s meticulousness has even led him to assign his military aides the task of supervising the distribution of thousands of blankets and emergency kits.

“If it is not done in an organized fashion, there are people who might get five bundles and others who get nothing,” he explained.

In Trujillo, Peru’s third-largest city, Fujimori personally supervised the unloading of crates from his plane containing 100 collapsible containers for potable water, ordered from a New Jersey company.

Then the president climbed behind the wheel of a red sport-utility vehicle and sped away from the airport. Citizens standing in bedraggled streets like survivors of a bombardment did double takes and shouted familiar greetings: “Fuji!” “Engineer!” “Alberto!” and “Chino!” (Spanish for Chinese, a common term here even for Japanese Peruvians like the president.)

The entourage struggled to keep up while heeding curt presidential admonitions not to make too much noise or block traffic. When Fujimori stopped and waded into crowds to shake hands, the bodyguards tumbled out of pickup trucks to accompany him, then leaped aboard the backs of police motorcycles to catch up when he drove away.

Asked where Fujimori was headed, Burns, jouncing along in a vehicle behind the president, grinned with resignation and said, “I don’t know.”

Fujimori visited a swarming ridge-top slum where flood waters had engulfed an adjoining cemetery and emptied 123 graves, subjecting the people of Trujillo to a real-life apparition: their dead relatives floating down the street in the suits and Sunday dresses in which they had been buried.

The president gave a short speech promising loans to rebuild damaged homes. His listeners reacted appreciatively. But slum dwellers such as Berta Mendoza expressed wait-and-see sentiments. Mendoza stood on the edge of the crowd with her daughter, a girl with a beautiful face and open sores on her bare feet.

“People support him,” Mendoza said softly. “But they want to see what he is going to do. Even before the floods, we don’t have anything. Look how we live here.”

It is difficult to evaluate the administration’s response to El Nino because the debate is so politicized. Some local officials declare that the president has ignored their valuable input, such as technical studies.

“We worked day and night, at 100 kilometers an hour, to present our mitigation plan,” Jose Guevara, an engineering advisor to the Ica emergency response center, complained in the magazine Caretas. “[The authorities] told us [their] hands were tied because the approval and the budget came from the presidential palace.”

On the other hand, Ica’s mayor lauded the president and condemned his adversaries during an airport news conference. Fujimori beamed behind him.

“I want to deny what has been said by journalists and some congressmen who take advantage of Ica’s pain to play politics,” said Mayor Carlos Ramos, who belongs to an anti-Fujimori political party. “When we invited some of the congressmen into the damaged houses to see how the residents were, they declined because they said it smelled bad, and then they left.”

In his private cabin in the presidential jet, Fujimori talked enthusiastically about Peru’s nonstop challenges, such as El Nino and last year’s hostage crisis. As he talked, he sipped Lychee, an Asian fruit liqueur. He drinks little, according to his entourage, but sometimes serves whiskey during in-flight meetings with ministers.

Fujimori recalled the buildup to last year’s spectacular commando operation, which used high-tech eavesdropping equipment and underground tunnels to free 71 hostages. One hostage, two commandos and all 14 leftist hostage-takers died.

He repeated an assertion that has caused friction with top military brass. He said he devised the plan with a handful of others: his secretive and controversial intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, and three army colonels.

“I was involved in the plan to the most minimal detail,” he said, describing how he recommended an adjustment in the amount of explosives used to blow holes in the floor of the mansion. “I had my brother being held hostage in there . . . my ministers, but I was not worried. I knew that the plan could not fail.”

And he relived the decisive moment when, with most of the rebels distracted playing soccer on the first floor, he gave the order by phone for the commandos to attack.

“I told Dr. Montesinos, ‘Proceed!’ ” Fujimori said. “At that moment, I was living intensely.”

Fujimori is divorced. His grown children study in the United States. By most accounts, he has few outside interests. Not a man given to flights of eloquence, he tried to express why he likes being president so much.

“The job is fascinating because of the problems it poses and the solutions you can come up with,” he said, repeating words he had used before: “I live intensely.”

Fujimori steadfastly declined to say whether he plans to seek another five-year term in 2000. But asked what he imagines himself being in 10 years, he answered with a chuckle and a single word: “President.”