Andean Group - 8 February 2005

Less than two weeks after he presided over the arrest of Antauro Humala, the leader of the ultra-nationalist group that stormed a police station in southern Peru (see RA-05-01), the chief of police, Félix Murazzo, became the new interior minister on 14 January. The opposition was not satisfied; it nearly pushed through congress a motion of censure against the prime minister, Carlos Ferrero, and the defence minister, RobertoChiabra, for the government's mishandling of the revolt, which left six dead, and is demanding a complete overhaul of the cabinet.

President Alejandro Toledo will reshuffle his cabinet on 15 February. When Toledo steps down at the end of his mandate in 2006, if he makes it that far, he will have rung the changes in his cabinet at least once for every year he has served in a bid to recover some of his lost popularity. 

The position of prime minister has changed hands four times in as many years: Roberto Dañino filled the position when Toledo was inaugurated in July 2001; Luis Solari de la Fuente in July 2002; Beatriz Merino in June 2003, and Ferrero in February 2004. 

Ferrero is expected to keep his position even though he has now faced two votes of no confidence and narrowly survived. The first one was in November 2004 when he was accused of failing to do enough to offset the effects of high world oil prices on fuel costs and reneging on the government's electoral promise to alleviate poverty in Peru. 

It is Toledo's failure to convert Peru's stellar economic performance (see below) into tangible benefits for Peru's poor which has ensured that he has spent much of his mandate as the least popular head of state in Latin America. 

Media war
The government did itself no favours when, in its efforts to deflect criticism from the opposition, it claimed that there was a "plot against democracy" in Peru led by businessmen, politicians and media connected with the government of fugitive former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). 

The government claimed, for instance, that the "Fujimori mafia" was responsible for stirring up allegations that the now-ruling Perú Posible (PP) managed to get itself registered on the strength of forged signatures for the 2000 presidential elections. Toledo's sister, Margarita, and his brother-in-law, Guillermo Sánchez, were placed under house arrest on 11 January in connection with the signature-forging ring. 

Toledo's credibility has also been called into question over allegations that his former intelligence chief, friend and legal adviser, César Almeyda, took a US$2m bribe in 2002, of which US$1m was destined for Toledo, from the Colombian beer company Bavaria to clear the way for its purchase of Peru's only brewer, Unión de Cervecerias Peruanas Backus & Johnston. 

The person who claims to have discovered the "plot against democracy" is Germán Barrera, known as "El Patriota" because he made public the first of the corruption videos that brought down Fujimori in September 2000. The PP and its legislative ally Frente Independiente Moralizador immediately tried to force a motion through congress to create a congressional commission to investigate the "plot". The motion was defeated by the opposition in congress on the grounds that it was a threat to press freedom. 

Further embarrassment for Toledo came when Barrera made a public statement in Miami saying that he was merely testing a hypothesis and that "there is no evidence or proof whatsoever" behind the claims.

The principal witness in the signature-forging case is Carmen Burga, one of 24 people being investigated for involvement in falsifying the signatures. She fled Peru in July 2004 shortly after making her claims and issued a videotaped apology to Toledo. 

However, she returned in late December making wild claims that she and her family were kidnapped by eight men wearing ski masks who threatened to harm her husband and children if she refused to make the videotaped disclaimer. She says that they were all provided with passports and visas, flown out of Peru and forced to stay in hotels paid for by their captors across Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

• Will Peru ever get a bicameral legislature?
  The bill to return Peru to a bicameral legislature after the next general election has been postponed until March after the PP conditioned its votes on the opposition's support of the motion to set up a commission to look into the "plot against democracy". The opposition refused to play ball. The Toledo government is prevaricating over constitutional reform: the reintroduction of a bicameral legislature was approved by congress in April 2003 but never got any further. The current proposal was approved on 7 December 2004 by a congressional commission and should have gone before the full congress later that month. Under the new proposal, the chamber of deputies would be enlarged from 120 to 150 representatives and the upper chamber would be composed of 50 senators. In April 1992 former President Alberto Fujimori staged an autogolpe ('self-inflicted coup'), suspending the 1979 constitution and dissolving congress before drafting a new constitution adopting a unicameral system.