By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service

LIMA, Peru, Sept. 17 –– President Alberto Fujimori, South America's most enigmatic leader, is leaving power as unexpectedly as he came to it. Perhaps it couldn't
have happened any other way for a man who defined himself by his forceful but almost always unpredictable nature.

During a decade in power, Fujimori's shrewd instincts served him well as he crushed two guerrilla movements, fought drug traffickers, dug Peru out of economic
chaos and fought a dirty divorce during which he banished his wife from the presidential palace.

Those close to Fujimori, 62, say his instincts served him again following the broadcast of a videotape that showed his shadowy intelligence chief and close adviser,
Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing an opposition congressman to support Fujimori.

"I have governed Peru for 10 years," Fujimori said in his bombshell announcement to the nation Saturday night. "Even my detractors must recognize my fundamental
accomplishments, which I will not name. You all know what they are. These accomplishments are my great satisfaction and tangible proof of the dedication and love I
have put in my labor in government."

Vice President Francisco Tudela said Fujimori told his cabinet of his decision shortly before he told the rest of the country.

"He told us that the country was shocked by the video and that a moral crisis deserved a moral response, just as a military crisis during the [guerrilla war] of the
1990s demanded a military response," Tudela said in an interview today. "He felt it was the right thing to do at a time when the country is in a crisis of confidence."

Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, came out of nowhere in 1990 to beat famed writer Mario Vargas Llosa and become Peru's first elected president from
outside the European-descended elite. In 1995, Fujimori dealt another blow to the Peruvian establishment by beating former U. N. secretary general Javier Perez de
Cuellar, perhaps the only Peruvian better known than Vargas Llosa outside this country.

When Fujimori was first elected, powerful leftist guerrillas thought the awkward academic with Asian-accented Spanish would be a pushover, but they soon
discovered otherwise, as Fujimori shut down Congress in 1992 and launched a successful crusade to stamp out the guerrillas and bring order to Peru.

After the sensational December 1992 capture of Abimael Guzman, the leader of the powerful Shining Path guerrilla movement, Fujimori delighted in parading him
before the media in chains. After Fujimori ordered a daring storming of the Japanese ambassador's residence here in 1997 to rescue a Who's Who of diplomats and
high government officials captured by Tupac Amaru guerrillas during a Christmas party, Fujimori smiled for the cameras as he stepped over the bodies of terrorists
mowed down by his special forces.

"I act after thinking things through," Fujimori said in an interview during the presidential election campaign in May. "It may sometimes seem like these decisions come
from the air, but that is only because people are not aware of what has been going through my mind previously. I always think things out."

But Fujimori has always been surprising. He is the kind of leader who would wake government ministers at 3 a.m. to answer a question, or order official trips on an
hour's notice because he suddenly felt the urge to visit the countryside.

Fujimori's actions often provoked the wrath of human rights and opposition leaders in Peru. To seek his third term in office, Fujimori removed three judges from a
constitutional court who had said he could not run again. With the help of intelligence chief Montesinos, Fujimori moved to silence press criticism and wage espionage
campaigns against opponents.

"He has turned into a monster," Susana Higuchi, Fujimori's ex-wife, once said. After Fujimori ejected Higuchi from the presidential palace in 1994, he used his
influence with the courts to get out of paying millions of dollars he allegedly owed her.

Fujimori blended what he called his "Eastern sensibility" with a profoundly Latin American sense of bravura. His style gave birth to a new school of Latin American
strongmen--"elected authoritarians"--who ignored the rule of law in search of political stability, personal power or both. Today, "the Fujimori effect" can be seen in
such presidents as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has run roughshod over opponents and rewritten the constitution to consolidate his grip on power.

Fujimori's actions often brought swift rebukes from Washington--the strongest during this year's election when opposition leader Alejandro Toledo accused Fujimori
of trying to manipulate the results electronically. But Fujimori's dedication to fighting drug traffickers, and his gutsy style, also won him a measure of reluctant
admiration.

"Look at all the nations around Peru," said one U.S. diplomat in Washington, who asked not to be identified. "They are plagued by economic or social unrest, but
Fujimori has been a stabilizing factor. He's done a lot of things wrong, but you have to give him that."

Fujimori has an almost religious sense of efficiency, pragmatism and micro-managing. In 1997, he was credited with saving lives and millions of dollars in potential
damage from the destructive El Nino weather pattern after he personally took charge of the national operation to improve flood systems and handle food relief. On a
trip to flooded Ica, south of Lima, Fujimori jumped into a potato truck and started helping workers distribute food.

"I am not the president of Peru," Fujimori, a U.S.-trained engineer, once said in an interview. "I am its manager."

Despite his feared intelligence network, Fujimori seemed to have a strong connection with the Peruvian people--especially the poor and indigenous who dubbed him
"El Chino"--which means Chinese in Spanish. A poll last week showed Fujimori with greater support than any of Peru's opposition leaders.

Fujimori was often viewed by mixed-blood Peruvians as being more "like them" then the European elites that had ruled modern Peru. He would don a poncho and
cap on trips to villages and make locals laugh when he answered in Japanese questions posed in native languages. During his reelection campaign in areas where
guerrilla movements had been strong, "El Chino" would receive a hero's welcome, with women screaming and waving Peruvian flags.

Fujimori navigated out of more than one tight spot, though none was ever quite as severe as the scandals he has faced in recent days. Among these earlier events
were allegations printed in a local magazine in 1997 that his birth certificate was false and that he was in fact born in Japan--which would have made him ineligible to
be president. That was settled when his mother publicly swore Fujimori was born in Peru--and in a land where a mother's word is gospel, that essentially closed the
matter.