Enrique Bolaños

Who is Enrique Bolaños?

Enrique José Bolaños Geyer was the President of Nicaragua from 10 January 2002 to 10 January 2007. President Bolaños is of Spanish and German heritage and was born in Masaya.

He received his education in the United States, graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Saint Louis University in 1962.

He publicly opposed the Sandinista controlled government of the 1980s, resulting in brief imprisonment. His family cotton farming operations, SAIMSA, were confiscated during the first Sandinista administration of the 1980s.

Bolaños served as vice president under his predecessor, Arnoldo Alemán. On 4 November 2001 he defeated Daniel Ortega of the Sandinista National Liberation Front party in the presidential elections and was sworn in as president on 10 January 2002.

He was a member of the Constitutional Liberal Party until he broke with it to help form the Alliance for the Republic. At the beginning of his term he led an anti-Corruption campaign against his predecessor and the head of the PLC Arnoldo Alemán politically isolating himself from the influential Liberal Party. Institutional struggles for power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches resulted in great inefficiency for the Bolaños government.