Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen

Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen (2014)

Álvaro Enrique Arzú Irigoyen (born March  14, 1946 in Guatemala City ; † April 27, 2018 ibid) was a Guatemalan politician . He was President of Guatemala from 1996 to 2000 and Mayor of Guatemala City from 1986 to 1990 and again from 2004 until his death .

Life

Alvaro Arzú came from a wealthy and influential Guatemalan entrepreneurial family of Basque origin. He studied law and social sciences at the Jesuit- led Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City. However, it is disputed whether he graduated. He was married for a second time and had a total of five children and six grandchildren. After initially working as an entrepreneur in the fields of tourism, trade and industry, he was director of the state tourism institute INGUAT (Instituto Guatemalteco de Turismo) from 1978 to 1981 .

Political career

Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen (2006)

In 1981, Arzú won the election of Mayor of Guatemala City as a candidate of the Christian Democratic Party (Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca, DCG) and the National Renewal Party (Partido Nacional Renovador, PNR) . Before he could take office, however, the elections were canceled in the wake of a military coup by General Efraín Ríos Montt in March 1982. The military government then offered him a post in local government, which he refused. In the course of the democratization of Guatemala, Arzú founded the citizens' committee “Plan for National Progress” (Plan de Avanzada Nacional) in 1985 , from which four years later the Party for National Progress (Partido de Avanzada Nacional, PAN) emerged . In November 1985 he again won the mayor elections and this time was able to take over the office for the 1986–91 electoral period. He gained a high degree of recognition in this role. In 1990 he resigned as mayor in order to be able to take part in the elections in November that year as the PAN presidential candidate. His successor in the office of mayor was Óscar Berger Perdomo , who was confirmed in office by the subsequent elections. Since Arzú only achieved fourth place in the presidential elections, he and the PAN supported the eventual winner Jorge Serrano Elías in the second ballot , who then appointed Arzú to his cabinet as foreign minister . When the Serrano government recognized Belize in 1992 without holding a referendum on the issue - as the PAN called for it - Arzú resigned as foreign minister in protest. Since the PAN terminated its alliance with the ruling party MAS (Movimiento de Acción Social) at parliamentary level shortly afterwards and went into the opposition, the reputation of Arzús and his party was not damaged by the Serranos self- coup in 1993. From 1992 to 1995, Arzú was Secretary General of PAN.

Presidency

After he had won the presidential elections in November 1995 in the second ballot against the candidate of the Republican Front Guatemala ( Frente Republicano Guatemalteco , FRG ), Alfonso Portillo , Arzú was President of Guatemala from 1996 to 2000.

As president, he advocated a speedy conclusion of the peace negotiations that had been going on for six years with the guerrilla organization URNG ( Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca ). Thanks to a secret trip to Mexico , where he entered into direct negotiations with the leadership of the URNG for the first time, he achieved his breakthrough that finally led to the signing of the final peace agreement in December 1996 and thus to the formal end of the thirty-six year civil war in Guatemala. All constitutional amendments agreed in the peace treaty were implemented under his presidency and passed by parliament in October 1998. The referendum on this, however, ended in March 1999 against the government because - with a turnout of only 18.6% - 50.6% voted “No” and only 40.4% voted “Yes” (10% of the votes were invalid ). Nonetheless, the guerrilla quickly sank into insignificance.

A problematic consequence of the peace treaty, which the Arzú government only managed with difficulty, was the surge in general crime . In particular, there was a wave of kidnappings.

Other major challenges during his presidency were the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch and the political crisis triggered by the assassination of Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi two days after the presentation of the Guatemala: Nunca más report . In this report, the Commission for the " Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica " ( REMHI) of the Archdiocese's Office of Human Rights ( Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado , ODHA), headed by Gerardi, concluded that most of the crimes occurred during the Guatemalan Civil War waged by the army and government employees.

In economic policy, Alvaro Arzú stood for a neoliberal policy, which was mainly characterized by extensive privatizations (e.g. the electricity company EEGSA, the telephone company GUATEL, the airline AVIATECA and the railway company FEGUA), but also infrastructure improvements.

Since the Guatemalan constitution does not allow direct re-election of the president, Arzú left office in 2000. In the presidential elections in November / December 1999, the PAN candidate, Óscar Berger, was defeated by the FRG candidate Alfonso Portillo in the second ballot.

Further political career

Following his presidency, Arzú was a member of the Central American Parliament PARLACEN from 2000 to 2004 . He left the PAN and founded the Unionist Party ( Partido Unionista , PU ) together with other former party friends . For this he won again in November 2003 the election for Mayor of Guatemala City for the 2004-2008 term. In 2005, he was voted third best mayor in the world (and best mayor in Latin America) in the annual World Mayors competition. He was confirmed in office in the local elections in 2007, 2011 and 2015.

Arzú died on April 27, 2018 at the age of 72 from a heart attack while playing golf .

Awards

• 1996 Félix Houphouët Boigny Peace Prize together with Comandante Rolando Morán (real name: Ricardo Arnoldo Ramírez de León ), representative of the guerrilla organization URNG (National Guatemalan Revolutionary Association)
• 1997 Prince of Asturias Prize for International Cooperation
• 1997 Monseñor Leonidas Poraño Prize of the Latin American Human Rights Association

In addition, he was awarded the University of St. Paul the honorary doctorate .

literature

• Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 29/2000 of July 10, 2000, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Guatemala's ex-president Arzu has died. In: tageblatt.ch. April 28, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Muere Álvaro Arzú de un infarto. In: Prensa Libre. April 27, 2018, Retrieved April 28, 2018 (Spanish). 

predecessor	Office	successor
Ramiro de León Carpio	President of Guatemala January 14, 1996-14. January 2000	Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera