LONDON -- Alejandro Toledo, the man who would have won the Peruvian election last spring if President Alberto Fujimori had not cheated at every stage of the process, got it exactly right: "Alberto Fujimori's government will be illegitimate, a source of permanent instability, and I don't think it can last more than six to 12 months."
Only six months after he dragged Peru through a huge political crisis in order to win an illegal third term as president, Fujimori has phoned home from Japan to say that he has resigned. In fact, he is probably going to stay in Japan. If he went home, he might end up in jail.
Fujimori is not a nice man, but he was not your classic Latin American strongman, either. The son of Japanese immigrants to Peru, he came out of nowhere to win the presidency in the 1990 election -- and took over a country reeling from the twin scourges of hyperinflation and a savage guerrilla insurgency.