Guillermo Endara

Guillermo David Endara Galimany (Panama City, May 12, 1936 – September 28, 2009) was a Panamanian politician and lawyer who served as the 32nd Constitutional President of the Republic of Panama from December 20, 1989 to August 31, 1994. He was the first president to take office after the end of the military regime, dismantled after the US invasion of 1989.

Biography

With Ecuadorian ancestry on the father's side and Spanish on the mother's side, he is the son of Guillermo Endara Paniza, a pioneer of Panamanian radio broadcasting and businessman. The young man received primary education at the Miramar School in Panama City and, after the family temporarily emigrated due to the 1941 coup, at the La Salle Christian Brothers School in Buenos Aires, and secondary school in the United States. United States, at the Black-Foxe Military Institute in California.

He studied Pre-Medicine at Tulane University and Accounting at the Seale Business College in New Orleans, United States, but ended up graduating in Law and Political Science at the University of Panama and He completed a postgraduate degree in Anglo-American Law at the University of New York, United States.

He married Marcela Cambra Navarro in 1962, and in 1963 he became the father of Marcela Endara, who gave him three grandchildren: Javier Guillermo Yap Endara, Jacob Guillermo Domínguez Endara, and Marcela Domínguez Endara.

Upon returning to Panama, he dedicated himself to practicing as a lawyer. In 1964 he began to participate in political campaigns in San Miguelito and Curundú. In 1984 he was undersecretary of the Authentic Panameñista Party.

Presidential race

In 1961, he was among the founding militants of the Panameñista Party (PaPa). Since the 1930s, Panameñismo had given rise successively to the Partido Nacionalista Revolucionario (PNR) and the Partido Revolucionario Auténtico (PRA), the predecessors of the Panameñista Party. In the elections of May 10, 1964, which placed the liberal Marco Aurelio Robles Méndez in the Presidency of the Republic, Endara was elected substitute deputy, although he later requested and obtained the annulment of his credentials as elected legislator in protest against the fraud of the that other comrades on the PaPa list had been subjected to.^{[citation required]}

When his party came to power four years later, he served as Director General of Planning and Economic Policy, which lasted only ten days. After the military coup d'état, he joined the dictatorship's list of politically persecuted, being forced to operate in hiding. Starting in 1969, he began a period of constant exile that took place first in the Canal Zone, at the home of an aunt of his who was married to a US Army medical colonel, then in Guatemala and finally in Miami, after being arrested by the political police of Torrijos.

Upon returning from exile, in 1979 he became General Sub-Secretary of the Pope, in 1982 he represented the party in the Political Constitution Revision Commission and in 1981, in the National Constitutive Convention of the PPA held on August 14 of that year in Penonomé, Coclé province, was elected undersecretary general of the party.

The PPA participated in the general elections of May 6, 1984, the first democratic ones in 16 years, within the Democratic Opposition Alliance (ADO), also made up of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the Liberal Movement Nationalist Republican (MOLIRENA). The elections were won by the National Democratic Union (UNADE), led by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) founded by the late Omar Torrijos. The new president was Nicolás Ardito Barletta.

Presidency (1989-1994)

He was elected president on May 7, 1989, through an Alliance of Opposition Political Parties (ADOC) with 71.2% of the vote against 28.4% of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate who was protected under the dictator Manuel Noriega, who refused to acknowledge his defeat, and ordered Endara and the Second Vice President-elect Guillermo Ford to be repressed when they were in a caravan proclaiming their victory. This, together with the death of a US soldier by Panamanian forces, was the reason for the US government, headed by George H. W. Bush, for the Invasion of Panama by US Army troops in December 1989. On Wednesday, December 20, 1989, while the Americans bombed different parts of the Panamanian capital, Endara was sworn in as Constitutional President of Panama, in a ceremony held inside a United States military base, located in the Canal Zone.

In 1990 he was one of the founders of the Arnulfista Party, but years later he distanced himself from the party due to differences of opinion with the president of the Party, Mireya Moscoso.

During his government the economic situation of the country improved, since in 1990 the gross domestic product fell by 7.5% due to the economic crisis left by the military dictatorship, during 1992 the GDP grew by 8%. He also reestablished democratic institutions, promoted the constitutional reform that created the Panama Canal Authority, and created the Interoceanic Region Authority. In 1994, the Government was succeeded by PRD candidate Ernesto Pérez Balladares.

After the presidency

In 2004, he ran for the elections as a candidate for the Solidarity Party, and came in second with 30.8% of the vote, behind Martín Torrijos Espino; he managed to be the first figure to break the prd-arnulfista bipartisanship.

In 2009, he ran for the Panamanian presidential elections on Sunday, May 3 of that year, in which he only obtained 2.38% of the valid votes cast (+-34,773 votes).

Last years

After the 2004 elections he resigned from the Solidarity Party and formed a new political party called Vanguardia Moral de la Patria with several followers and some citizens and was one of the candidates to return to the presidency of the Republic of Panama in the general elections May 2009. In mid-January 2009 he tried to ally himself with the Panameñista Party, but a few days later the negotiations failed. Subsequently, the Panameñista Party would unite with the Cambio Democrático party, unifying almost all the opposition parties under the candidacy of Ricardo Martinelli, with the exception of Endara's party, which insisted on not joining said coalition.^{[citation required]}

The ex-president's party failed to meet the quota to survive politically and came in last place, causing his retirement from politics.

On June 27, he was hospitalized due to kidney failure. A few days later he was discharged, but died on September 28, 2009 at his home.