MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peru bans ex-president's election bid

Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori, fighting extradition from a Chilean jail on charges of graft and involvement in murder, is barred from running for president because congress banned him from holding office, election officials ruled.

The decision of Peru's electoral board, published yesterday in the state gazette El Peruano, derails Fujimori's plan to seek a fourth term, which he pledged to do after arriving in Chile Nov. 7 from five years of exile in Japan. Chilean authorities arrested and jailed Fujimori, 73, while considering Peru's request that he be turned over for trial.

Fujimori's backers will appeal the ruling, said Martha Chavez, general secretary of Fujimori's New Majority party. Chavez, 52, registered her own candidacy this week with Fujimori's brother Santiago as running mate and his daughter Keiko Sofia as a congressional candidate. They will run in the event the appeal is rejected, Chavez said.

''We're sending a message: this isn't the end of Fujimori,'' Chavez said in a phone interview.

The government last week asked Chile to turn over Fujimori so he can be tried on charges of bribery and responsibility for the deaths of 25 people during his presidency from 1990 to 2000.

Fujimori fled to Japan in November 2000 and was banned from holding public office for 10 years by Congress in 2001. Even so, he was in third place with 15 percent of voter support in a nationwide survey of 1,618 people by Lima-based polling firm Apoyo Opinion y Mercado between Nov. 10 and 11.

Fujimori says he is being persecuted for political reasons. His lawyer, Cesar Nakazaki, said last week that there is no evidence to link Fujimori to the crimes.

Fujimori, who defeated the Shining Path insurgency movement and ended hyperinflation, fled Peru after a video was released showing his adviser Vladimiro Montesinos bribing a congressman. Japan refused Peru's requests to extradite Fujimori on the grounds he holds both Japanese and Peruvian passports.

A record 24 parties registered presidential candidacies, seven of them just before yesterday's midnight deadline, state news agency Andina reported.