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- [Editor's note: This story was sent to me by Richard
Deegan, an American living in Peru. He contacted me in March of this year
after reading an article by Richard Malinowski on the NWO that I had sent
to Jeff Rense of Sightings.com. Deegan also sent me a report in March detailing
the efforts of The Carter Center (National Democratic Institute) in Peru
to attack vice presidential candidate Francisco Tudela for 'illuminating'
controlling activities of the NWO in his country.]
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- By Richard Petty Deegan <nyinstitute@computextos.net
5-1-00
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- April 29, 2000 Former World Bank employee and presidential
candidate for Peru Alejandro Toledo Manrique, who is rapidly losing support
in Peru, is finishing a whirlwind round of conferences and meetings in
New York and Washington (Toledo Manrique press release). On Wednesday,
April 26 and Thursday, April 27, Toledo Manrique attended a hastily-arranged
series of meetings which included representatives of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the Brookings Institute, the Carter &
Ford Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, & Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs.
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- Toledo Manrique described these conversations as extraordinarily
pleasing and productive as well as agreeable, stating that they were held
like an enormous symphony(April 26 press conference-Toledo Manrique).
In particular he indicated that his meeting with long-time friend Stanley
Fischer, whom he had known at Stanford University and who now is the interim
director of the International Fund, was particularly fruitful, as Fischer
promised to grant loans for Perus agricultural, tourism and construction
sectors if Toledo Manrique is elected. Toledo Manrique stated that Fischer
agreed on the urgent need to have the political will to attend to a long-postponed
social agenda (ibid.). Toledo Manrique soon revealed the first part
of the price to be paid for this support.
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- In a press conference in New York on Thursday, Toledo
Manrique indicated that his first priority as president would be to completely
change the judicial system and install new judges within thirty days.
An obvious consequence, according to Toledo Manrique would be a revision
of many closed cases, including necessarily convicted left-wing terrorist
Lori Berenson, an admitted organizer for the MRTA. Of course, he continued,
We cant base a policy on only one case; there would be many such cases
reviewed. The Clinton administration has long been seeking the release
of left wing Shining Path and MRTA terrorists, but has consistently been
refused by President Alberto Fujimori.
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- The Clinton Connection
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- Peru has been a thorn in the side of the Clinton administration
and the banking set for years. When Fujimori was elected in 1990, he
inherited a bankrupt country devastated by terrorist movements that had
killed over twenty thousand citizens, a drug-based economy, hyper (17,000%)
inflation and a legacy of decades, if not centuries, of corrupt governments
topped off by the APRA regime of Alan Garcia Perez, currently living in
Paris accused personally of grabbing at least $50,000,000 from the treasury.
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- Fujimore snubbed IMF and US Intervention The APRA regime
was famous for its inflation based on Carternomics. Instead of giving
in to demands that the international banking community intervene, and
US troops assist in the fight against drugs, Fujimori used Perus own resources
to motivate equitable foreign investment, jobs, expansion of security for
citizens and more. He was overwhelmingly elected in 1995, after making
substantial inroads against terrorists and inflation and reforming and
streamlining government (the previous Peruvian congress, if based on US
population would have had 3,000 members).
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- As the non-banking international business community
became aware of the improvement in Peru, investment money flooded in for
many projects in many sectors. Currently Peru has the most stable economy
in Latin America, tremendously reduced corruption (according to Transparence
the most-improved country in Latin America on its corruption index) a
secure environment and exploding tourism. Other Latin American countries
are flocking to invest in Peru, which is emerging as a beacon in the Third
World. To top it all, due to aggressive anti-drug measures Peru has fallen
dramatically from its former position as the worlds leading producer of
cocaine. Who could be upset?
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- MRTA The Revolutionary Movement Tupac Amaru (MRTA) along
with the Maoist Shining Path, were severely affected by Fujimoris campaigns
to end terrorism in Peru. Leaders were found, arrested, given trials and
many convicted. Car and businesses bombings stopped. The drug trade,
which had been the financial base for these groups, was attacked effectively.
Reduced in strength by the loss of leaders such as Ms. Berenson, MRTA
gathered all their resources and successfully attacked the Japanese embassy
in Lima on December 18, 1997. While the MRTA held many hostages, among
the first to be released in a Christmas gesture was Alejandro Toledo Manrique.
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- The following excerpt is from a dispatch filed December
23, 1997 by Ed McCulloch of the Associated Press, and published in the
New Standard:
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- Alejandro Toledo, a hostage who was freed earlier, said
he spoke Saturday with Japanese Foreign Minister Yukihiko Ikeda and with
Mr. Fujimoris designated troubleshooter, Domingo Palermo, the education
minister. All agree a peaceful settlement was the only way to rescue the
hostages, he said. Mr. Toledo, an economist and minor presidential candidate
in the 1995 elections who says the other hostages designated him to represent
them, also spoke with Mr. Cerpa.
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- The positions that were rigid at the beginning, on both
parts. ... I'm in a position to say that those extreme positions are walking
toward the center, and that considerable progress has been made for real
talks for a peaceful solution, he told the AP. What the Tupac Amaru
group really wants, Mr. Toledo said, is a Guatemala-style amnesty that
would allow its members to participate in public life, as has happened
in various Latin America countries including Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia
and Venezuela.
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- The country has the opportunity ... to enter in a process
that could end up in a peaceful accord similar to what has happened in
... El Salvador and Colombia, he said.
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- An attempt to rescue hostages by force would be 'insane,'
Mr. Toledo said, because rebels were 'armed to the teeth.' Rooms in the
two-story building are mined, he claimed, as is the roof. He said the rebels
had anti-tank guns and wore backpacks filled with explosives that could
be set off by pulling a cord on their chests. (AP)
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- Despite Toledo Manriques expectations, no settlement
was possible with these terrorists. They remained intransigent in their
demand that all MRTA members in prison be released. As international attention
focused on this scenario, the US President continuously offered the services
of the US Delta Force to mount a mission to release the hostages. Fujimori
was consistent in his refusal to allow armed US troops to assist in this
matter. Eventually an all-Peruvian SWAT team attacked the premises and
released the hostages, practically all unharmed. The anti-tank weapons
cited by Toledo Manrique were never found. Nor could any of the hostages
recall having made Toledo Manrique their spokesman.
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- With the effective elimination of MRTA, the cause of
releasing terrorists from Peruvian prisons received a new champion. On
several occasions US President Clinton spoke out for their release, particularly
for Berenson. All such demands were rejected by Fujimori.
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- Finally late in 1999, shortly after releasing convicted
Puerto Rican terrorists (to assist his wifes campaign in NY- NY Post) President
Clinton made a strong demand for release of the MRTA and Shining Path
terrorists. When this demand also was summarily rejected by Perus Fujimori,
there was a sudden change in US Ambassadors to Peru. Ambassador Dennis
Jett (like most US ambassadors a State Department outsider) was replaced
by a career State employee, John Hamilton. Relations with Fujimori were
sharply curtailed.
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- Toledo Manrique filed in the waning hours of the deadline
to run for president (along with nine other candidates who had been campaigning
for months), and the Peruvian group Transparencia received an unprecedented
donation of at least $750,000 from the US government to assist in and monitor
the elections. Although this group was to be supposedly impartial, photos
in various papers, including Expreso (expreso.com.pe) of April 11, showed
this group celebrating what they thought was a Toledo Manrique victory.
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- Who is Toledo Manrique? Described by the New York Times
(and subsequently CNN and others) as a former shoe-shine boy who made
good, Toledo Manrique must have carefully husbanded his tips. He emerged
as a millionaire from the terrorist- and drug-infested regions of Peru
in the early 1980s and left to live in Europe and the United States. He
studied economics at Stanford University and later Harvard, and styles
himself oxymoronically as a Harvard economist.
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- While touring Europe in the mid-80s he married Elaine
Karp, who later worked for several years for the United States Agency for
International Development. She divorced him in 1992 in Washington DC after
tiring of his escapades with other women.
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- Toledo Manrique, during his Harvard days, invested some
of his millions in a Peruvian Ponzi scheme CRAE, run by one Ricardo Manrique
(Toledo claims no relation- Manrique is as common a name in Peru as, say,
Eisenhower or Kissinger is in the US). Toledo Manrique and his brother
received the return of their investment, some $4,000,000, days before
the collapse of CRAE. When CRAE collapsed, there was little left to pay
its depositors.
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- Unlike 1995, when Toledo Manrique ran for president
this time, he had plenty of campaign money and was able to place large
billboards and posters all over Peru. Although he only started his campaign
in January 2000 (Lima mayor Andrade had been running since November 1998
and Casteñeda Lossio since May 1999), he was able to place fourth
in initial polling; due to his long absence from Peru and life-long disinvolvement
with the countrys affairs, nobody knew who he was or what he wanted, but
he was new and different.
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- As more questions were raised regarding the circumstances
of the disappearance of millions of dollars from the Fishermans Saving
Bank under Casteñedas custodianship, and Andrade suffered from a
total lack of ideas (despite much TV and press exposure), Toledo Manrique
began to rise in the polls, although Fujimori, even when not campaigning,
never fell below 40%.
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- More and more international NGOs became involved in
the Peruvian elections, to make sure that a proper result was achieved.
The finally two weeks of the campaign (Fujimori started his campaign
22 days before the April 9 election) the polls consistently showed Fujimori
at around 48% with Toledo Manrique between 36-39%. With the involvement
of the international NGOs came coverage from the New York Times, followed
by CNN and others, all writing about the shoeshine boy as a giant-killer.
While given extensive coverage to Toledo Manrique they consistently decried
the lack of coverage. This despite the fact that the two largest circulation
newspapers in Peru, El Comercio and LaRepublica were overboard in their
support for Toledo Manrique. El Comercio even broke a story from confidential
sources on massive voter registration and petition fraud (still believed
by some media and international groups).
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- The "sources" turned out to be a multiple
convicted drug dealer and his girl friend, who were soon flown to the US
by El Comercio and given $5,000. The same reporter the year before had
broken a story (later proven completely unfounded) that the owners of
Frecuencia Latin, the Winter brothers, were being investigated by the
DEA for drug trafficking.
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- The election results were consistent with normally conducted
polls, with Fujimori missing reelection by .16%. Unlike the US, where
the current president was elected with about 43% of the vote, Peru requires
50% + 1.
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- It seems that Toledo Manrique is convinced of his eventual
rejection by the Peruvian people as they learn more about him, his background
and his economic ideas. For this reason, he has spent most of his time
lately visiting the US, including Easter week when he is reported to
have spent some time with the family of convicted MRTA terrorist Lori
Berenson (Miami Herald).
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- It is a disgrace that an independent country like Peru,
which has made great strides against drugs and has fostered human rights,
should be severely threatened by the Clinton Administration (Resolution
#43 signed by Clinton April 25) for wanting to have the president of their
choice at a time when Clinton is doing all he can to grant favors to a
country like China, with democratic ideals from the Stone Age. Too bad
Fujimori didnt contribute to the 1996 US campaign.
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- Nobody wants Fujimori but the Peruvians
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