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Alan García, the president who avoided tensions with Ecuador
Posted On 18 Apr 2019
Ecuadornews:
From very turbulent waters to the quietest ones. Alan García led Peru at a time when the relationship with Ecuador was at one extreme and the other. Despite the different scenarios, there is no record of an outburst that the now deceased Peruvian president, who yesterday made the decision to commit suicide, has starred with Ecuador.
There are more moments that stand out in relation to the country, beyond the accusations of corruption in the Odebrecht case that would have pushed him to the fateful decision.
1989. The tension was so great because of the border impasse on the southern border that no Peruvian president, after decades of neighborhood history, had visited Ecuador. Garcia was the first. This is included in the Ecuadorian Encyclopedia of the historian Efrén Avilés Pino, and was confirmed to EXPRES0 by former President Rodrigo Borja, who invited him and had to yield to a condition of his pair to visit Ecuador: not to deal with border issues. The Ecuadorian former president accepted. “It was a meeting in Galapagos of the Andean Integration Group.
We discussed economic issues that we were pushing to open up to a much faster development of the Andean countries … It was a very friendly meeting, it was not tense, “recalls former President Borja, who does not dare to interpret the fatal decision of his former counterpart.
Blasco Peñaherrera was vice president of Ecuador during the first years of García’s term in Peru. He qualifies the relationship with the then President León Febres-Cordero as normal and civilized. He does not remember frictions or moments that have marked the management of the Peruvian former president with Ecuador, in spite of the tension in the border. “Former President Alan García is and has been an important figure in continental politics.”
The wars ended. The signing of the peace was a fact. The relationship with Ecuador during his second term was friendlier and was reflected in the relationship with former President Rafael Correa. He visited the country several times for binational cabinets. He was the first Peruvian president to be decorated with the General Eloy Alfaro medal of the Assembly, and with the National Order of Merit in the Grand Collar Degree, by the Executive.
The ex-president Lucio Gutiérrez, who left the power by a coup d’etat, was isolated and then returned to be imprisoned, believes that Garcia had to go through a real crossroads to make that decision. “When you fall into the temptations of corruption you can reach terrible and fatal decisions like these,” interprets the former head of state.
Beyond the interpretations, Gutiérrez believes that it is necessary to reflect on the number of former presidents arrested for corruption “so that this does not happen again in our region.”
THE PHRASE
No document mentions me and no indication reaches me. I never sold myself and it’s proven.
THE DETAIL
Two periods Alan García governed Peru for the first time at age 36 between 1985 and 1990. He returned to the Presidency in 2006 until 2011.
COMPILATION
The tragic death of former Peruvian President Alan García, who shot himself in the head when he was to be arrested, charged with the crime of money laundering in the Odebrecht case, was the last and desperate act of a politician accustomed to dramatic maneuvers.
Accusations, escapes, political asylums, exiles, trials, scandals and persecutions marked his political vicissitude since he assumed power for the first time in 1985, in a series of actions that reached their final point yesterday.
One of the episodes was after his first presidential term when he faced investigations for alleged illicit enrichment. He fled across the neighboring rooftops and hid for several weeks before entering the Colombian Embassy in Lima, the country that granted him asylum. Then he applied for asylum in France, fleeing Fujimorismo.
In 2016, ten years after assuming his second term, Marcelo Odebrecht confessed that for years he paid millions of dollars to senior Peruvian officials to win public works, including senior officials of the Garcia Administration. The Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would be investigated for aggravated collusion and money laundering, which starts the former president debacle, who was treated yesterday at the Casimiro Ulloa hospital after the shooting and where he suffered three cardiorespiratory arrests before dying.
FUNERAL
3 day duel, but without honors
García’s personal secretary, Ricardo Pinedo, announced that the funeral will be celebrated this Good Friday at noon, after his mortal remains have been veiled for a day and a half at the ‘Casa del Pueblo, the headquarters of the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) that the former president was leading.
The president of Peru, Martín Vizcarra, declared three days of national mourning and awarded him funeral honors. The family rejected that official gesture. (I)
