Francisco Flores Pérez, Salvadorian politician, Died at 56

Francisco Guillermo Flores was born on October 17, 1959, and died on January 30, 2016.

He was a Salvadoran politician.

He served as President of El Salvador from 1999 to 2004 as a member of the conservative Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

He was the son of Maria Leonor de Flores (née Perez), an ethnographer and folklorist, and Ulises Flores, an economist.

Francisco received his education at the Escuela Americana in San Salvador.

Perez obtained an associate degree from the University of Hartford’s Hillyer College, then, majored in political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, United States, and received a master’s degree in philosophy at the  World University.

Francisco started politics after the assassination of his father-in-law, who was chief of staff to Alfredo Cristiani.

He began his political career as a vice-minister for planning during Alfredo Cristiani’s presidency in 1989.

After that Francisco completed his term as a vice-minister of the Presidency, with functions as adviser of the head of state, and directed the plan of governmental action in accordance with the peace accords of January 1992 that ended fighting with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) guerilla group.

March 20, 1994, elections he was elected to the Legislative Assembly and the new president, Armando Calderón, made him Secretary of Information of the Presidency.

He was elected as the President of the Legislative Assembly, in 1997.

The ARENA announced Flores as their candidate for the presidential election of the following year.

Francisco was considered a moderate within the party, on March 29, 1998.

At the age of 39 (the youngest chief executive on the continent at that time), Flores became the third consecutive president from ARENA by winning an outright majority in the elections in March 1999, and took office on June 1, 1999.

Mr. Flores served his five-year term and was succeeded by another member of his political party, Antonio Saca, in July of 2004.

Francisco Flores Pérez wife, Lourdes de Flores (nee. Rodriguez), whom he met in high school in San Salvador.

The pair had two children, Juan Marco and Gabriela.

Francisco experience a cerebral hemorrhage.

He was in a private hospital in San Salvador in a coma after undergoing emergency surgery, On January 30, 2016.

Francisco Flores Pérez passed away at 56 yrs old.