Guillermo Endara

Guillermo David Endara Galimany (born 12 May 1936 in Panama City) was the president of Panama from 1989 to 1994.

Endara's middle-class parents had been allies of Authentic Panameñista Party founder Arnulfo Arias, and the family went into exile after Arias was overthrown in a 1941 coup. He went to school in Argentina and a military school in Los Angeles, and was later aboe to return and attend the University of Panama Law School, graduating first in his class. He received a subsequent LLM degree from New York University. He returned to Panama in 1963 to practice law, served two terms in the Panamanian National Assembly and taught law at the university. In 1968 Endara served as Arias's minister of planning and economic policy in a renued Arias administration. When Arias was overthrown again in October 1968, Endara went underground, was jailed in 1971, and joined the deposed executive in exile until the ban on Arias was lifted. He remained politically engaged and when Arias died in 1988, Endara became a leading opposition figure.

In the Panamanian presidential election of 1989, Endara ran as the candidate of an alliance of parties opposed to the military dictatorship of Manuel Noriega. To safeguard against anticipated vote-rigging by Noriega, the alliance organized a count of results from the country's election precincts before they were sent to the district centers. This count showed Endara defeating Carlos Duque, candidate of a pro-Noriega coalition, by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. Noriega had planned to declare Duque the winner regardless of the actual results, but Duque refused to go along. The next day, Endara and one of his running mates, Guillermo Ford, were badly beaten by a detachment of Dignity Battalions.

The United States overthrew Noriega's regime in Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989. Endara had by this time taken refuge in the Panama Canal Zone, where a judge swore him in as president.

Endara is noted for staging a public hunger strike to call attention to poverty and homelessness left in the wake of the Noriega years and destruction caused by the U.S. invasion. He visited then U.S. President George Bush, pressing for $1 billion in emergency relief aid and cooperative measures to curtail the Panamanian narcotics trade. He restored confidence in the banking industry, reduced unemployment, and struggled to address narcotrafficking and violent crime. His administration has faced criticism as dominated by wealthy businessmen or by initially overshadowing U.S. influence.

In later years, Endara distanced himself from the party on account of differences of opinion with party leader Mireya Moscoso, Arias' widow. He ran in the 2004 Panamanian presidential election as the candidate of the Solidarity Party. He finished second to Martín Torrijos.