Alberto Fujimori in Congress passed a law of "authentic interpretation" which effectively allowed him to run for another term in 2000. A 1998 effort to repeal this law by referendum failed. In late 1999, Fujimori announced that he would run for a third term. Peruvian electoral bodies, which were politically sympathetic to Fujimori, accepted his argument that the two-term restriction did not apply to him, as it was enacted while he was already in office. Exit polls showed Fujimori fell short of the 50% required to avoid an electoral runoff, but the first official results showed him with 49.6% of the vote,
Alberto Fujimori issue appeared to have died down among Peruvians after the Japanese government announced in 2000 that "Fujimori's parents had registered his birth in the Japanese consulate in Lima". Fujimori obtained his early education at the Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Merced and La Rectora. Fujimori's parents were Buddhists, but he was baptised and raised as a Roman Catholic. While he spoke mainly Japanese at home, Fujimori also learned to become a proficient Spanish speaker during his years at school. In 1956, Fujimori graduated from La gran unidad escolar Alfonso Ugarte in Lima. He went on to undergraduate studies at the