Alan Garcia was the charismatic chameleon of Peruvian politics, once popular enough to be elected president twice. But his terms were filled with ups and downs and he eventually became caught up in the Odebrecht bribery scandal that rocked Latin America.
LIMA (Reuters) – Alan Garcia was the charismatic chameleon of Peruvian politics, once popular enough to be elected president twice. But his terms were filled with ups and downs and he eventually became caught up in the Odebrecht bribery scandal that rocked Latin America.
Garcia, 69,fatally shot himself in the head on Wednesday at his home in Lima as police waited in another room to arrest him in the Odebrecht case, which has ensnared three other former Peruvian presidents.
Garcia had denied the corruption allegations that had long dogged him until the end, saying he was victim of political persecution.
“Others might sell out, not me,” he told journalists in some of his last public comments on Tuesday, repeating a phrase he used often as his foes became ensnared in the bribery investigation into Brazilian builder Odebrecht in recent years.
The son of an accountant and a schoolteacher, Garcia became one of Latin America’s greatest orators and governed Peru as a firebrand leftist from 1985-1990. He remade himself as a champion of foreign investment and free trade to win another five-year term in 2006.
Garcia benefited from his family’s connections with Victor Raul Haya de La Torre, the founder of Apra, which was once Peru’s largest and most powerful political party.
