From start to finish, the disqualified former president Ricardo Martinelli has imposed his popularity in this Sunday’s presidential elections in Panama, the youngest democracy in the region. Before nine at night, the Electoral Court announced the victory of José Raúl Mulino, the replacement for the former president convicted of money laundering, with a level of support similar to that anticipated by the polls. With 85% of the tables counted, the candidate of the Realizing Goals party took 34.4% of the votes, compared to 25% for Ricardo Lombana, the anti-system candidate who exceeded expectations, and 16% for former president Martín as well. Torrijos. The ruling party José Gabriel Carrizo was relegated to a very poor sixth place (5.76%), weighed down by the very low popularity of the still president Laurentino Cortizo, the worst historical result of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).
The campaign took place under the shadow of Martinelli. Mulino, who established himself as an unexpected favorite, visited the former president on the morning of this same election Sunday at the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City, where he has been holed up since February to avoid the arrest warrant against him. In a short video released by his campaign, they are seen hugging effusively at the diplomatic headquarters. The former president’s cap reads the same motto on the candidate’s shirt, omnipresent in campaign advertising: “El loco con Mulino,” in reference to the nickname by which everyone knows Martinelli. The Supreme Court of Justice only cleared up the uncertainty that hovered over the elections until last Friday, by finally endorsing the appointment of Mulino, originally Martinelli’s vice-presidential formula.
Although the disqualification came with an express prohibition from participating in the campaign, Martinelli maintained very active proselytizing from the diplomatic headquarters to promote Mulino, who was his Minister of Security. The former supermarket magnate governed Panama between 2009 and 2014, at a time of strong growth and multimillion-dollar investments in infrastructure. That memory has made him popular despite his problems with the law and being identified by the United States as a corrupt ruler. Aside from the legal tangle, Mulino stuck to a strategy of attracting voters with the promise of returning to the good old days.
Without attending the debates, Mulino consistently led recent polls, in which Lombana and Torrijos, who defended a discourse of national unity, usually alternated in second place. In the end, it was Lombana, from the Other Path Movement (Moca), who exceeded expectations, although he was far from surprising with his marked anti-corruption speech. Already in the 2019 elections he had achieved an unexpected third place being an unknown. In fourth place was former Foreign Minister Rómulo Roux (11%), and in fifth place was the independent Zulay Rodríguez (6%), relegating ‘Gaby’ Carrizo to sixth place, an unprecedented disaster for the PRD founded by General Omar Torrijos. .
In a country that has just faced a severe drought, with massive protests in a context of economic slowdown, the next president will have to address an accumulation of fiscal, environmental, immigration and anti-corruption problems, observers agree. Cortizo’s management has increased social tension, which reached its climax at the end of last year. Then, the extension of a contract by the Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals caused a wave of protests that escalated to the cancellation of the agreement and the definitive closure of the Minera Panamá copper mine, which contributed almost 5% of the Domestic Product. Rough. Added to this is the water crisis as a result of the drought, a problem that impacts the operation of the Panama Canal.
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