De León promised to defend public freedoms and the rule of law, as well as make progress in the negotiations with the guerrillas, and purge the armed forces of their bad apples. He fired the defence minister General José Domingo García Samayoa, replacing him with General Jorge Roberto Perussina Rivera, who had been implicated in the massacres of the 1980s. On July 3, his cousin Jorge Carpio, who was playing a vital role in the peace negotiations, was assassinated by right-wingers. On August 26, he demanded that both all the deputies in the National Congress and all the members of the Supreme Court of Justice resign. This created a crisis that was not resolved until November 16, resulting in 43 amendments to the 1985 constitution, which were approved in a referendum on January 30, 1994.