LIMA, PERU — He's back, and Peru is going to have to learn to deal with it.
The arrival of former President Alberto Fujimori on Saturday, seven years after he left in disgrace, poses a difficult challenge for the government of President Alan Garcia, which faces competing demands from supporters and critics.
"The extradition is a test by fire" for the government, sociologist and historian Nelson Manrique told the newspaper El Comercio.
Few Peruvians are neutral about the former agronomist who was elected president seemingly out of nowhere in 1990. Fujimori dissolved Congress in 1992 and brought Peru back from the brink of chaos as he presided autocratically over a painful economic recovery and an abuse-ridden military crackdown on leftist guerrillas.
"The shadow of Alberto Fujimori, murky and ambiguous as his entire biography, returns to project itself above our nation," journalist Gustavo Gorriti wrote in the news weekly Caretas.
Fujimori and his devotees did their best to spin the former president's extradition from neighboring Chile as a triumphant homecoming. Fujimori declared that all had gone according to "plan," though few bought it.
He was whisked away to hotel-like quarters at a police base, reportedly equipped with a telephone, television, computer and a view of the pool. A special cell is under construction.
"Privileges don't exist in this process," Interior Minister Luis Alva said. "The treatment is what corresponds to an ex-president."
But the unorthodox lockup and the elaborate security surrounding Fujimori's arrival highlight the difficult path facing Garcia.
Keiko Fujimori, a congresswoman, warned the administration against judging her father prematurely and allowing his return to degenerate into a circus. The former leader's many detractors were equally adamant about not giving him a platform from which to rally support.
Although he left Peru amid accusations of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori was widely credited with corralling the nation's runaway inflation and guerrilla violence.
Die-hard fujimoristas hardly got a glimpse of their hero, despite live television coverage of every step of his return.
It was widely assumed here that Garcia would have preferred Fujimori had stayed in Japan, where he lived for five years after his fall from grace. But Fujimori opted to leave to seek a new presidential term in Peru, a comeback frustrated by his arrest in Chile in 2005.
