Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre

Alejandro Maldonado (2015)

Alejandro Baltazar Maldonado Aguirre (born January 6, 1936 in Guatemala City ) is a Guatemalan lawyer and politician . He was President of Guatemala from September 3, 2015 to January 14, 2016.

Life

Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre studied law at the Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala and then initially established himself as a lawyer and notary. He is married to the Swiss Lugano -born Salvadorian Mariem Lutomirsky Ayala , with whom he has three sons, including the longtime head of the Guatemalan civil protection authority CONRED, Alejandro Maldonado Lutomirsky .

Political career

Maldonado turned to politics at a young age. He joined the anti-communist National Liberation Movement ( Movimiento de Liberación Nacional , MLN) founded in the wake of the military coup in 1954 and was elected to the Guatemala City Council in 1956. From 1966 to 1970 he was a member of the MLN in the Guatemalan parliament , before joining with Álvaro Arzú , Jorge Serrano , Edmond Mulet and other more moderate members at the instigation of party chairman Mario Sandoval Alarcón at the end of 1970 because of contacts with the Christian Democratic Party of Guatemala ( Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca , DCG) was excluded from the MLN. Nonetheless, he was appointed Minister of Education in 1970 by General Carlos Arana Osorio , who had been elected President with the support of the MLN. He held this office until 1974. Under the two subsequent presidents, Generals Laugerud and Lucas , Maldonado was Guatemala's Ambassador to the United Nations , first in New York from 1974 to 1976 and then from 1978 to 1980 in Geneva .

In 1978 Maldonado founded the National Renewal Party ( Partido Nacional Renovador , PNR) together with Alvaro Arzú and Edmond Mulet , of which he remained the dominant figure until 1985. In 1982 Maldonado ran for a coalition of DCG and PRN for president, but only came third with 22.7%. Ultimately, however, these elections were canceled by the military coup led by General Efraín Ríos Montt two weeks later .

From 1984 to 1986 Maldonado was a member of the Constituent Assembly, which prepared the transition from decades of military rule back to civil, democratic governments. He was subsequently a judge at the Constitutional Court from 1986 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2001 . In between he was Guatemala's Ambassador to Mexico from 1991 to 1995 . In 2002, Maldonado co-founded the Unionist Party ( Partido Unionista , PU) established by Alvaro Arzú and other dissidents from the National Progressive Party ( Partido de Avanzada Nacional , PAN ). For this he was elected to parliament two years later, whose first vice-president he was in 2005. After leaving parliament, Maldonado was re-elected as a judge at the Constitutional Court, which he remained until 2015. In 2006, as before in 1989, he was President of the Constitutional Court.

The "La Línea" case

On May 8, 2015, the Vice President came Roxana Baldetti one in the wake of corruption scandal a "La Linea" called network within the Guatemalan Tax and Customs Administration ( Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria back, SAT). The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala ( Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala , CICIG) and the Guatemalan attorney general had discovered this network three weeks earlier and identified Baldetti's private secretary Juan Carlos Monzón as its head. After Baldetti's resignation, President Otto Pérez Molina had to present parliament with a list of three candidates from which parliament would then elect Baldetti's successor. After parliament had completely rejected the first two lists, Pérez finally presented parliament with a list that included Maldonado alongside two other candidates. Parliament then elected him as the new Vice President on May 14th.

A good three months later, on August 21, 2015, the CICIG and the Public Prosecutor General then accused President Pérez of having been the head of the “La Línea” network since before his presidency , and asked him to resign . Pérez initially refused. However, after Parliament unanimously lifted his immunity on September 1 and an arrest warrant was issued on the same day, Pérez announced his resignation as President on September 2. Parliament accepted this on September 3 and sworn in Maldonado as the new president on the same day. On January 14, 2016, Maldonado's successor Jimmy Morales took office.

Individual evidence

^ Peter Gaupp: Inauguration of President Morales in Guatemala. A comedian facing a serious task. In: NZZ. January 15, 2016, accessed January 23, 2016 .

Web links

Commons : Alejandro Maldonado - collection of images, videos and audio files

predecessor	Office	successor
Otto Pérez Molina	President of Guatemala 2015-2016	Jimmy Morales

personal data
SURNAME	Maldonado Aguirre, Alejandro
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Maldonado Aguirre, Alejandro Baltazar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Guatemalan lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH	January 6, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH	Guatemala City

[1] Peter Gaupp: Inauguration of President Morales in Guatemala. A comedian facing a serious task. In: NZZ. January 15, 2016, accessed January 23, 2016 .