Jorge Antonio Serrano Elias

Jorge Antonio Serrano Elias, 2016

Jorge Antonio Serrano Elias (born April 26, 1945 in Guatemala City ) was President of Guatemala from January 14, 1991 to June 1, 1993 .

Life

His parents were Rosa Elías and the lawyer, politician and opposition to the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico Castañeda , Jorge Adán Serrano. He married Magda Bianchi Lazzari. You have five children. He graduated from high school at the Liceo Guatemala , which was run by Marist school brothers . He holds degrees in production engineering from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and Stanford University .

He entered the civil service in Guatemala. He became a member of the Democracia Cristiana (DCG). After the 1976 earthquake, he was a cooperante of evangelical churches on the reconstruction plan.

He published a study of the living conditions of the indigenous population, which earned him a death threat from racist circles, and he did a postgraduate course in North America.

Consejo de Estado

After the coup of Efraín Ríos Montt in March 1982, he returned to Guatemala. Ríos appointed him chairman of the Consejo de Estado (Council of State) founded by Ríos . He held this office until Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores abolished the Consejo de Estado in August 1983. The time of the Ríos government, to which Serrano belonged, represents a high point of the state murders, some of which were committed with the participation of the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil .

In the presidential elections on November 3, 1985 Serrano was a candidate for the Partido Democrático de Cooperación Nacional (PDCN) and the Partido Revolucionario (PR). Mario Fuentes Pieruccini was to be his deputy. With 12.6% of the votes counted, he reached third place after Jorge Carpio Nicolle (murdered July 3, 1993) candidate of the Unión del Centro Nacional (UCN), and Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo , candidate of the Democracia Cristiana (DCG).

From September 1987 Serrano was one of the four members of the Comisión Nacional de Reconciliación (CNR), an institution that President Cerezo set up to document the fulfillment of the Acuerdo de Esquipulas II, as a representative of the political parties .

On March 29, 1990, Serrano headed the government delegation of the CNR , which signed the Acuerdo Básico para la Búsqueda de la Paz por Medios Políticos (basic agreement for the search for peace by political means) in Oslo with the representatives of the Unión Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG) .

In the presidential elections on November 11, 1990 Serrano was a candidate for the Movimiento de Acción Solidaria (MAS), an evangelical conservative movement. His election program pointed to traditional family concepts and the state of order . In the first ballot, he achieved 25.7% of the votes counted in front of Jorge Carpio from the Unión de Centro Nacional (UCN), Alfonso Cabrera Hidalgo from the Democracia Cristiana (DCG) and Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen from the Partido de Avanzada Nacional (PAN). In the runoff election on January 6, 1991, he stood against Jorge Carpio, lobbyist of the employers of the Grupo Pirámide , and achieved 68.1% of the votes counted. The Agrupación Nacionalista Guatemalteca (ANG) of Ríos Montt gave a recommendation for Serrano because Ríos had been banned from running as a coup.

Presidency

Serrano was the first evangelical president in Latin America . In parliament, his party, the Movimiento de Acción Solidaria (MAS), had 18 of the 116 MPs. Serrano formed his government cabinet with members of other parties.

On April 3, 1991 Serrano offered the guerrillas of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (UNRG) a “Plan total de paz”. The government troops and paramilitary Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil , death squads of the Mano Blano apparently continued to lead a life of their own.

In its first year of government, 1991, the Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala recorded more than 1,000 extrajudicial executions, murders, enforced disappearances and torture for political reasons, a relative decrease from previous years.

Talks with the UNRG continued on April 24, 1991 in Mexico. Successive rounds followed, which dealt with various aspects of the conflict, such as: human rights, identity and rights of indigenous peoples, strengthening civil society, tasks of the armed forces in democracy, social and economic agricultural situation, constitutional reforms, integration of the guerrillas into civil society and political life and finally exclusively military issues, including a truce, disarmament, demobilization of units.

Serrano set up two institutions directly subordinate to the office of the President: On June 28, 1991 the Fondo Nacional para la Paz (FONAPAZ), with which the integration of rural communities should be promoted, and on July 12, 1992 the Comisión Presidencial Coordinadora de la Política del Ejecutivo en Materia de Derechos Humanos (Copredeh).

On July 26, 1991, agreements on democratization and on August 7, 1992 the agreement on the demobilization of the thousands of Patrulleros de los Comités Voluntarios de Defensa Civil (CVDC) , who had done the dirty work in massacres of government forces, were signed.

On January 14, 1993, Serrano offered the UNRG an Acuerdo integral de paz, a comprehensive peace agreement with a period of 90 days, with an acceptance of the review of the agreements by the UN and the recognition of the guerrilla as a warring party in the broader sense. On the one hand, he torpedoed the negotiating concept of the representatives of the government troops, who negotiated for a limited period because they saw themselves militarily superior, on the other hand, he tried to make the UNRG responsible for them with regard to human rights.

The martial conflict resolution concept was confirmed with the appointment of General José Domingo García Samayoa as Minister of Defense and the promotion of General Jorge Roberto Perussina Rivera to head of the Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional (EMDN) (General Staff). This personnel policy honored massacres in remote rural areas.

In September 1991 the Serrano government recognized the state of Belize and ambassadors were exchanged, which had not been done since 1981. The borderline remained controversial.

Serranazo

On June 9, 1990, the US embassy employee Michael DeVine (* 1941) was murdered by a Guatemalan drug dealer. The United States Congress wanted to be informed of the involvement of military commanders in the drug trade and on December 22, 1990 stopped providing military aid.

On the other hand, the Movimiento de Acción Solidaria MAS was able to push through its candidates as mayor in local elections on May 9, 1993 in 276 municipalities . On the eve of the local elections, talks with the UNRG on the negotiation point of the armistice were suspended. Since April 5, 1992, Alberto Fujimori presented a government without a parliament. On May 25, 1993, Serrano got rid of the executive branch, his control body, the legislature: he dissolved parliament and decreed a state of emergency. Serrano repealed the 1985 constitution, had the buildings of Parliament, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court surrounded by the military, and stated that this was necessary to combat the organized drug trafficking and corruption he said is establishing itself in the administration of the state would have. He announced elections to a constituent assembly within 90 days.

He fostered the notion of the Fujigolpe analogy when he stated that he had phoned Fujimori because all foreign journalists asked him about him. In the chest of the Savior of the Nation, he declared that he was not a dictator but loved democracy and prophesied that there would soon be many similar governments across Latin America. He suggested to his Latin American colleagues to clean up the democratic control systems so that the same thing as Guatemala does not happen to them.

Contrary to what was predicted, a considerable protest movement arose from all areas of society. Political parties and non-governmental organizations agreed to the international condemnation of Serrano. Ironically, Serrano strengthened the role of civil society actors on the pretext of ending impunity.

On May 30, 1993, Serrano, sobered by the protest against him, made an offer to the UNRG ; his putsch regime is open to the participation of the guerrillas in order to work out a new constitution. Civil society rejected this offer. The Electoral Tribunal, like the Constitutional Court under the presiding judge Epaminondas González Dubón (murdered April 3, 1994), declared any election call to be invalid under the current conditions.

On June 1, 1993, Serrano was politically isolated, the US and the EU had imposed financial sanctions, and his stewards, Generals García Samayoa and Perussina, risked their positions in the army. García Samayoa decided that the head of the Estado Mayor Presidencial (EMP), General Francisco Ortega Menaldo, should convey to Serrano the end of his presidency. Serrano resigned and fled to El Salvador.

The military took the initiative and tried to install Serrano's deputy Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero as president. Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero participated in the May 25 coup. On June 5, 1993, Parliament declared the post of President and Deputy President to be vacant and appointed Ramiro de León Carpio to serve as President for Serrano's remaining term until January 14, 1996.

Exile in Panama

Serrano went from El Salvador to Panama where Guillermo Endara Galimany ruled and granted him asylum. Serrano was dedicated to coaching, real estate investment advice, and ran a quarry company. Political statements were not heard.

On June 15, 1993, the Guatemala Attorney General opened an investigation into Serrano for massive corruption. The offenses investigated were constitutional violation, presumption of office, abuse of office, flight from office, fraud, embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, illegal appropriation of land, around 14 economic and political offenses .

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala filed extradition requests with the government of Panama based on the allegations of the public prosecutor's office in 1993, 1994 and 1998. On June 4, 2002, Mario Leal filed an application for arrest for the Ministerio Público with the intervention of Interpol, which was ordered by the Juzgado IV de Primera Instancia . The allegations include embezzling at least 134 million quetzales ( $ 17.3 million ) from reptile funds .

Imaculata Presidencia

Serrano came with his wife to several press rounds and defended his innocence, dispelled any connection to corrupt machinations, assured that he was the victim of political persecution, which was unfairly orchestrated by certain business families in Guatemala, denied a business relationship with the then president Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera , also a political foster child of Efraín Ríos Montt , who makes Serrano's protested innocence relatively credible in terms of corruption.

The discovery of a conspiracy against his government in 1993 would have left him no choice but to dissolve the legislative and judicial institutions. "powerful and influential personalities from the private sector" who had allied themselves with the then head of the Dirección de Inteligencia del Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional and later head of the Estado Major Presidencial Colonel Otto Pérez Molina . He stated that he had neither resigned nor resigned from his office, but was deposed by the military under the orders of General Mario René Enríquez Morales.

In June 2003 Serrano announced that he was preparing to return to Guatemala to clear his name and clear up the defamation of which he has been the victim.

In May 2005, Serrano, who now has a considerable fortune, declared that he has no regrets for anything he has done in his brief presidency. It may be that he was wrong about the dissolution of the Parliament and the Supreme Court, as they undermined his popular support. When asked about his 2003 announcement, he said he wouldn't be stupid enough to face accusations he didn't even know about.

In 2003, his lawyer applied to the Juzgado IV de Primera Instancia for the case against Serrano to be closed, which the court rejected and the Constitutional Court upheld.

In Prensa Libre Serrano states that the judiciary in Guatemala has been hijacked and that the Guatemalan economy is living on the gifts from abroad and remesas (foreign transfers from Guatemalan citizens).

At the same time, public prosecutor for administrative offenses Ana Patricia Lainfiesta filed another application for Serrano to be extradited to the Panamanian government.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The New York Times , March 28, 1995 On Her Guatemalan Ranch, American Retraces Slaying
2. ↑ Prensa Libre , 07 de Julio de 2002 Quizás algún día, el ex mandatario, con el deseo de un típico plato de chicharrón con yuca quiera regresar a Guatemala ( Memento of the original of May 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Prensa Libre , 08 de noviembre de 2007 Serrano quiere regresar con el nuevo gobierno ( Memento of the original dated May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Prensa Libre , 30 de Julio de 2003, Empresa pagó US $ 17 millones para obtener contrato en tiempo de Serrano Elías ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Prensa Libre , 22 de mayo de 2005 Serrano Elías: “No me arrepiento de lo que hice” ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Prensa Libre , 27 de abril de 2006 Jorge Serrano Elías, en pleito con invasores ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Centro de Investigación de Relaciones internacionales y Desarollo , CIDOB Jorge Serrano Elías
8. ↑ Prensa Libre , 24 de junio de 2008 Congreso panameño investigará a Serrano Elías ( Memento of the original of May 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

predecessor	Office	successor
Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo	President of Guatemala January 14, 1991–1. June 1993	Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero