SANTO DOMINGO.- Former president Hipólito Mejía yesterday revealed that then president Antonio Guzmán was found “crying in his office” 10 days before committing suicide the night of Saturday, July 3, 1982.

The revelation by Mejía, who was Minister of Agriculture during Guzmán’s Presidency, came in the “Government in the morning” radio program, and one week before the journalist Jose Báez Guerrero is to present his book next Thursday, “Guzmán, his life, government and suicide,” which contains amazing revelations.

One pf those is the chronology of the intense activity by then U.S. ambassador Robert Anderson hours after the suicide, out of fear that a coup d’état was unfolding to prevent president-elect Salvador Jorge Blanco from taking office.

When asked about Guzmán’s suicide, Mejía said 10 days before a close aide had told him that the president was found “crying in his office.” He added that the situation prompted him to speak with Guzmán’s wife, Renee Klang, and that she told him that “Antonio had always showed that type of depression.”

 Báez’s 408-page book is based on research as well as his reporter notes, because he was present in the National Palace the entire time between the night of the suicide, until vice president Jacobo Majluta’s took the oath of office as Head of State.