Hours after President Alberto Fujimori of Peru dismissed his once-key ally, the military chief, Gen Nicolas Hermoza, the arrival of four armoured cars in Lima's main square sent a frisson through the capital.
The tanks turned out to be friendly ones requested by the president himself, but the incident was an uncomfortable reminder that Peru is one of the few remaining Latin American countries where unscheduled tank movements can still send political signals.
Although President Fujimori has won two democratic elections since 1990 and has his sights trained on a third five-year term, many Peruvians are sceptical about how strongly democracy has taken grip.
Like the presidents of Argentina, Panama and Brazil, Mr Fujimori has spearheaded moves to change the constitution in order to stay in power. Unlike his counterparts who remain tied to two terms or less, the Peruvian president seems on course to achieve a third election in the year 2000 that would make him one of the longest-serving elected presidents in the region.
In July Argentina's President Carlos Menem gave up his bid to try for a third term when faced with public indignation.
News last week that the pro-Fujimori congress had blocked a referendum on the president's right to stand in the year 2000 again raised the question of how Mr Fujimori's reelection bid is weakening the country's institutions. When a possible Fujimori candidacy was vetoed last year by three Constitutional Court judges, Congress tried and sacked them.
Mr Lourdes Flores MP, a leading pro-referendum campaigner, protested that "An autocracy behind the facade of legality is far worse than an outright autocracy." Mr Alberto Borea, a referendum campaign leader, said the institutions in place at the moment, such as the electoral board and the courts, offer no guarantee that elections in the year 2000 will be fair.
Always a shrewd political operator, President Fujimori knows that he has several cards up his sleeve. Although referendum campaigners immediately called for the start of a campaign of civil disobedience, protests are unlikely to spread far beyond students and political activists and even less to the rural provinces where the struggle to get by is all-consuming.
Lack of employment remains the main worry in a country where half of the population is classed as poor. no current and the fallout from the Asian crisis meant Economic growth was negligible in the first half of the year. With the referendum challenge written off, Mr Fujimori is likely to return to his so-far successful style of stomping the urban shanty-towns and poorer Andean and jungle villages almost daily, handing out gifts and opening state works.
The president knows, too, that a costly rebel war has left people wary of taking part in politics. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, anyone participating in trade union or community organisation was a target for the Maoist Shining Path and a suspected rebel in the eyes of the security forces, a stigma that has not gone away.