With a participation close to 78 percent and more than 90 percent of the vote, Mulino achieved 34.4 percent of the votes
The right-wing lawyer José Raúl Mulino was proclaimed president-elect of Panama. (Photo: PL).
The right-wing lawyer José Raúl Mulino was proclaimed president-elect of Panama with 34 percent of the vote, nine points behind his immediate follower. «On behalf of the Electoral Tribunal (TE), I am pleased to inform you that (…) you are at this moment unofficially the winner of the presidency of the Republic. of Panama, said Judge Alfredo Juncá.
Mulino led the election with more than 34.06 percent of the votes. He appeared at the top of the few polls released before the voting, and was designated at the last minute by the TE as the presidential candidate of the alliance of the Realizing Goals (RM) and Alianza parties, replacing former president Ricardo Martinelli, who was disqualified. for a sentence of more than ten years in prison for money laundering.
In second place was Ricardo Lombana, the candidate of the Other Path Movement (Moca), with 24.5 percent of the votes; and, in third place, former president Martín Torrijos (2004-2009), at the head of the Popular Party (PP), with 15.8 percent.
The election was held at a time when Panama is suffering the attacks of deep-rooted corruption, a drought that reduced the transit of ships through the canal, the main driving force of its economy, and a wave of migrants crossing the Darien jungle with heading to the United States.
«A hug Ricardo (Martinelli) to where you are. As I said, political persecution is over in this country, the country is fed up with political fights that have not led us to anything good, I do not consider myself an enemy of anyone, and I hope that no one considers me their enemy,” he stressed.
In a day in which some 3 million Panamanians were summoned, there was a participation of more than 75 percent, and the vice president, 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament (Parlacen), 71 deputies to the National Assembly (AN), 81 mayors, 701 township representatives and 11 councilors, for the constitutional period from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2029.
Mulino
On March 5, Mulino officially became the presidential candidate of the Realizing Goals (RM) party after the Electoral Court (TE) disqualified Martinelli as a candidate for the Executive after being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for money laundering. capitals.
The TE resolved that on the voting ballot, in the box for the Realizing Goals parties and the Alianza party, Mulino should appear to replace Martinelli, as he was their candidate for vice president, something that, although it was challenged before the Supreme Court of Justice .
The president-elect graduated in Law and Political Science (1982) from the Universidad Santa María La Antigua (USMA) and in 1983 completed a master’s degree in Maritime Law from the American Tulane University (New Orleans).
Since 1988 he practiced law as a founding partner of the Fábrega, Molino y Mulino law firm, from which he left in 2015.
In July 2009, Martinelli appointed him as Minister of Government (Interior) and Justice, but in April 2010 he became Minister of Public Security, having a debated management in July 2010 due to the protests of banana workers in the Bocas region. del Toro (Caribbean), with a death toll of two, dozens of injured and more than a hundred arrested.
At the beginning of the Juan Carlos Varela Administration (2014-2019), he was accused of corruption in relation to the Italian company Finmeccanica for allegedly receiving commissions for the purchase of 19 radars, a case for which he was preventively imprisoned for seven months until April. 2016. This case was annulled in August 2017.
Before learning of his electoral victory, the new head of state assured that he would return to the “good times” of the Martinelli administration, whom he visited this Sunday at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama, where he is seeking asylum. Mulino has publicly expressed that he would “help” Martinelli “as he corresponds according to the law,” after the current government denied him safe passage to travel to Managua.
