MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peru confirms April elections.

With the legal publication this week in the official gazette, Peruvian presidential and congressional elections are now confirmed for next April 8th, cutting short Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's third contentious mandate.

The official announcement should help unblock a country that has practically come to a standstill amid a growing corruption scandal that condemned Fujimori's ten years rule, following the appearance in a leaked video of the president's main advisor bribing an opposition Congress member.

The video of Vladimiro Montesinos, former Army officer, and spy master of Fujimori's regime, forced the president's decision to resign last mid September.

Fujimori won a third five year term last May in an election marred by allegations of fraud and vote rigging that apparently were engineered by Montesinos.

The president's former ally then fled to Panama but is now back in Peru and in spite of an arrest warrant and Fujimori's attempts to catch him, he's still in the loose apparently under protection from friendly military officers.

Alejandro Toledo head of the opposition who led the protests against Fujimori's third term election and the likeliest winner next April, is also demanding a congressional inquiry into Montesinos who was found to have 50 million US dollars stashed in secret accounts in Swiss banks.

The ten years of Fujimori have been marked by the defeat of the bloodiest guerrilla movement in Latinamerica, an open market and stable economy after years of stagnation but also the worst record in human rights violations.