Antonio Saca biography
Antonio Saca, in full Elías Antonio Saca González, (born March 9, 1965, Usulután, El Salvador), Salvadoran sportscaster who served as president of El Salvador (2004–09).
Saca was the grandson of Palestinian Catholics who moved to El Salvador from Bethlehem early within the twentieth century. His household had prospered as retailers and cotton sellers, however when his mother and father’ cotton mill in Usulután failed, they moved to San Salvador, the nationwide capital. While nonetheless at school, Saca bought jobs at a number of radio stations and labored alongside skilled sportscaster Mauricio Saade Torres. In 1982 Saca began the Only Sports program on the Sonora radio chain, and he later grew to become a tv sportscaster on Channel 4, the place he was sports activities director for greater than a decade. His protection of soccer (soccer) video games earned him widespread visibility.
Saca entered the University of El Salvador in 1984 however by no means accomplished his journalism diploma, focusing as an alternative on his skilled profession. After serving to in 1987 to kind the Radio América chain, in 1993 he left Channel 4 and Radio América to launch the SAMIX chain of radio stations together with his spouse. Saca gained quite a few awards within the radio and tv business, and the success of SAMIX led to management posts on skilled and civic boards and committees. He served (1997–2001) as president of the Salvadoran Association of Radio Broadcasters and chaired the Freedom of Expression Committee of the International Radio Association. In 2001 he grew to become president of the National Association of Private Enterprise (Asociación Nacional de la Empresa Privada; ANEP). A survey that very same 12 months revealed that Saca was the third hottest character within the nation, trailing solely San Salvador Mayor Héctor Silva Argüello and Pres. Francisco Flores Pérez.
In 1989 Saca affiliated himself with the right-wing National Republican Alliance (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista; ARENA), and as head of ANEP he supported President Flores’s pro-U.S. insurance policies and the choice to undertake the U.S. greenback as El Salvador’s nationwide forex. Although strongly dedicated to a market economic system, Saca expressed sympathy for labour, which led Flores to call him to move a fee that introduced a small enhance within the minimal wage. ARENA, which confronted robust opposition from the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional; FMLN) within the 2004 presidential election, turned to Saca as a candidate whose recognition was extra essential than his ideological stance. Despite his lack of political expertise, he united the celebration and campaigned successfully in opposition to FMLN candidate Schafik Jorge Hándal, a former guerrilla commander. While interesting to labour with guarantees to not privatize the nation’s social safety and well being care techniques, Saca made anticommunism a serious problem and warned that an FMLN victory would destroy El Salvador’s good relations with the United States.
After a bitter marketing campaign, Saca triumphed on March 21, successful 57.7 % of the votes in opposition to Hándal’s 35.6 %. In his inaugural tackle Saca promised to “forget the past without hate or rancour” and to place the social agenda as his prime precedence.
Saca’s chief problem all through his time period was the nation’s enhance in gang exercise. The powerful anticrime measures he applied, which included the conviction of gang members underneath age 12, led to criticism from worldwide human rights teams. Like his ARENA predecessors, Saca promoted ties with the United States: in 2006 El Salvador was the primary Central American nation to cross the Central America–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement with the United States, and it remained the one nation in Latin America to maintain troops in Iraq by way of 2008 (see Iraq War). Also in 2008, El Salvador and the United States agreed on a cross-border plan to scale back gang violence by sharing intelligence. Saca was not eligible for a consecutive time period, and he left workplace in 2009.
In 2016 Saca was arrested on corruption costs, accused of diverting greater than $300 million in state funds whereas he was president. Two years later he pled responsible to embezzlement and cash laundering and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.