Jorge Serrano Elías
(Guatemala City, 1945) Guatemalan politician, president of the republic between 1991 and 1993.Exiled in the United States in 1981, he returned to his country after the general's coup Ríos Montt (1982), who appointed him president of the Council of State.Defeated in the presidential elections of 1985, in 1986 he founded the Movement of Solidarity Action, of authoritarian social-Christian orientation.After his victory in the 1991 presidential elections, he formed a government that included from the extreme right to the Social Democrats.In 1993 he tried to dissolve the Parliament and the Constitutional Court, but the civil coup failed and he had to go into exile.
Jorge Serrano Elías
His father Jorge Adán Serrano, was strongly linked to politics and was a notorious opponent of the dictatorship of General Jorge Ubico (1931-1944).Jorge Serrano Elías studied at the Marist Brothers and, later, at the National University of San Carlos de Guatemala, where he obtained the degrees of industrial engineer and professor of secondary education in physics and mathematics.In his years at the university he joined the Christian Democratic youth.A Catholic by training, at 28 years of age he embraced the fundamentalist evangelical church El Shaddai.Between 1974 and 1976 he was director of the Human Resources section of the General Secretariat of the National Council for Economic Planning of Guatemala.At this same time he collaborated in the development of the National Plan for Education and Health.
He entered active politics in 1976, when the country had just been devastated by an earthquake, proposing a plan of reconstruction for the country based on the collaboration of North American capital and aid from Protestant organizations.In the 1970s he was a member of the Christian Democracy and, later, of the National Renewal Party.Later he was exiled to the United States, due to threats received from the extreme right for the publication of a document on the miserable living conditions of the indigenous population.
He returned to Guatemala in 1982, coinciding with the coup of General Efraín Ríos Montt.During the latter's term (1982-1983), which was one of the most violent periods in the country's history, Serrano Elías presided over the Council of State.In March 1983 he was the center of strong controversies for his refusal to reach out to Pope John Paul II, who was visiting Guatemala.
At the end of 1985 he was a presidential candidate for a coalition of two moderate right-wing parties, the Democratic for National Cooperation and the Revolutionary, remaining in third place after the winner, the Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo, and Jorge Carpio.A year later, in 1986, he founded the Movement of Solidarity Action (MAS) party.Serrano Elías played an important role as a member of the National Reconciliation Commission of the Legislative Assembly, which had been created in 1987 after the regional peace accords signed in August.During that legislature, he alternated his opposition work in the Assembly with that of evangelist pastor.
On November 11, 1990 he ran as a candidate in the presidential elections for the Movement for Solidarity Action (MAS), but had They have to resort to the second round of January 6, 1991 to defeat by 68.12% against 31.68% Jorge Carpio, from the Union of the National Center (UCN).Much of his success at the polls was due, according to analysts, to the thousands of evangelical votes, which in principle would have gone to the coup leader Efraín Ríos Montt had he been able to appear.Serrano Elías was inaugurated as president on January 14, 1991, succeeding Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo.He was the first civil president to receive power from another civilian throughout the 20th century, and the first evangelist to hold the presidency of the Republic in a country with a 90% Catholic population.
The government of Jorge Serrano, who lacked real support, had to face serious economic and social difficulties; Not without problems, he maintained a dialogue with the guerrillas in Mexico City until the moment arrived to implement the democratizing measures agreed upon.Paramilitary and far-right violence and conflict Politics, due to the social protests led by popular organizations of those affected by the war and by the indigenous movement, which initiated their demands for the recognition of their identity and their rights, reduced the Government's room for maneuver.On the other hand, the substantiation of judicial cases related to human rights violations and the discussions on the depth of the reforms gave the country a different political tone, to which was added the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú.
The scarce 18 seats that his party had in an Assembly of 115 deputies forced him to form a coalition with other parties and to govern in the shadow of the military.It received a country with a serious economic crisis, with unemployment of 45% and the scourge of violence that dragged on since the 1960 war and that had cost the lives of more than one hundred thousand people.Since coming to power, different national and international organizations have continued to report human rights violations.In June 1991, the attorney for Human Rights, Ramiro de León Carpio (first cousin of Jorge Carpio, and also a former president of the Republic of Guatemala) recognized that the situation had improved thanks to national and international support, although the data on deaths and disappearances were still very high and in some cases attributable to the police and the Army.
In the first months of his term in office, his government resumed contacts with the URNG guerrilla in Mexico, which culminated in the summer of 1991 with the signing of the Querétaro Agreement for the democratization of Guatemala.Then followed a series of ups and downs in the meetings, and in January 1993 Jorge Serrano Elías presented a peace proposal with the guerrillas, but the guerrillas rejected it as partial and incomplete.The URNG then presented a proposal very similar to the one presented to the United Nations (UN), which was rejected by the Guatemalan president.January 1993 saw the return of the first 2,500 Guatemalan refugees of the 55,000 who lived in the Mexican southeast.
In the first months of 1993, Serrano Elías permanently lost his fragile political support and clashed with businessmen, the press and the Catholic Church, which fueled the rumors of a coup.In May 1993, the government broke off talks with the URNG, and shortly thereafter, under the pretext of ending corruption and drug trafficking, announced the suspension of the 1985 Constitution, the dissolution of Parliament and the holding of elections for a Constituent Assembly.
The attempted coup d'etat by Serrano Elías revealed the fragility of the parliamentary system reinstated in 1986.Finally, Serrano had to resign due to the lack of support and Congress elected the attorney general of human rights, Ramiro de León Carpio, who had stood out for his denunciations of institutional violence.But the appointment as the new Defense Minister of General Roberto Perussina, representative of the hard wing of the army, exposed the real power of the military, the main responsible for the repression in these years.
Serrano Elías left the country via El Salvador to land on June 6 in Panama, where, thanks to his friendship with President Guillermo Endara Galimany, he has since resided as an asylee along with his wife and three of their minor children.In this country he dedicated himself to consulting work and was one of the largest partners in the Hacienda Country Club hotel complex, inaugurated in 1997.One of the first steps of his successor in the presidency of the Republic, Ramiro de León Carpio, was to initiate the procedures for his extradition.The former president was charged with eleven crimes, including those of violation of the Magna Carta, abuse of authority, embezzlement and embezzlement of public funds.It was revealed that Serrano Elías owned a large number of properties, both in Guatemala and the United States, and bank accounts in the United States, Switzerland, and Panama.
On July 26, 1993 his car was shot at; Serrano Elías was unharmed from the attack.On August 10, 1994, the Panamanian authorities received the documentation of a second extradition request (the first had already been dismissed).The request was rejected a few days later for "containing deep political overtones." Between September and October 1994, Serrano Elías made several trips to Europe following threats from the Guatemalan guerrillas.He had previously made trips to Argentina, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
In June 1997 the prosecution opened a third extradition process for common crimes (usurpation of functions, abuse of power and fraud, among others), but it ran the same fate as the previous ones: it was rejected in February 1998 by the Panamanian government "for not falling within the assumptions of the 1993 Montevideo Convention", as crimes do not have a minimum penalty of one year in both laws.In June 2002, a Guatemalan court, following the prosecutor's request, approved an international arrest warrant based on the previous common crimes, which was never effective thanks to his status as a political asylee.
Comments
Post a Comment