Jorge Serrano Elías

On May 25, 1993, Serrano sparked the 1993 Guatemalan constitutional crisis when he illegally suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court, imposed censorship and tried to restrict civil freedoms, allegedly to fight corruption. The attempted self-coup was similar to the one carried out by Peru's Alberto Fujimori. However, Serrano's action met with strong protests by most elements of Guatemalan society, at the forefront of which was the Siglo Veintiuno newspaper under the leadership of José Rubén Zamora. This was combined with international pressure, and the army's enforcement of the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which ruled against the attempted takeover. In the face of this pressure, Serrano resigned as president on June 1 and fled the country. He was replaced on an interim basis by his vice president, Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero. However, Espina was involved in Serrano's self-coup as well, and Congress replaced him with Human Rights Ombudsman Ramiro de León Carpio.

Serrano became the presidential candidate for the Solidarity Action Movement (MAS) in the 1990 presidential elections. He lost the first round on November 11 with 24.1% of the vote, and won the second round against Jorge Carpio on January 6, 1991 with 68.1% of the vote. Carpio unsuccessfully tried to use Serrano's fundamentalist beliefs against him as a campaign issue.

In 1985 Serrano stood as presidential candidate for the Democratic Party of National Co-operation (PDCN) and the Revolutionary Party (PR), coming third with 12.6% of the vote. In September 1987 as the political parties representative he became one of the four members of the National Reconciliation Commission (CNR).

Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías (born 26 April 1945) is a Guatemalan politician who served as President of Guatemala from January 14, 1991 to June 1, 1993.

Serrano was born 26 April 1945 in Guatemala City as the son of Jorge Adán Serrano and Rosa Elías, who was of Lebanese descent. After attending school in Switzerland he graduated in industrial engineering from the University of San Carlos, and then attended Stanford University in California, U.S., where he studied economic growth and gained a doctorate in education and science. He then returned to Guatemala to become a civil servant. In 1976 he collaborated with various American Protestant churches to help the population recover from the devastating earthquake that had afflicted the country. He then published a document describing the miserable conditions under which the indigenous population lived, which resulted in his receiving threats. He went into exile in the US, only returning in 1982, to work in the government of fellow evangelical General Efraín Ríos Montt as Vice President of the Advisory Board to the government.