02:32 PM
The Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) of Panama declared constitutional this Friday, the presidential candidacy of the right-wing José Raúl Mulino, substitute for the disqualified former president Ricardo Martinelli and favorite for Sunday’s elections.
After three days of closed-door sessions and just two days before the vote, The Court’s magistrates announced, in the early morning before the press, that “the decision of the Electoral Court that accepted Mulino’s nomination is not unconstitutional.”
64 year old lawyer, Mulino replaced Martinelli as candidate of the Realizing Goals party, after he was disqualified after his sentence of almost 11 years in prison for money laundering was confirmed, and he sought asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy.
A private lawyer then filed an unconstitutionality lawsuit against Mulino’s candidacy, arguing that he did not go through primary elections nor does he have a candidate for vice president, as established by law.
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The court’s decision kept the country in suspense in the final stretch of elections in which three of the 4.4 million Panamanians are called to elect a president, in a single round and by simple majority, 71 deputies and local governments. .
María Eugenia López, president of the CSJ, argued that the resolution seeks to protect “democracy” and the “sovereign will of the Panamanian people.”
“I feel very happy because truth, law and justice always prevail in the end,” Martinelli wrote in X, by highlighting that the “correct decision” of the Court “will ensure democracy is respected.” His dolphin hasn’t reacted yet.
“Pact of impunity”
Mulino, former Minister of Security in the Martinelli government (2009-2014), has 37.6% voting intention, according to the latest survey by the Planned Marketing firm published on Thursday by the newspaper La Prensa.
He is followed, with 16.4%, by former social democratic president Martín Torrijos (2004-2009), son of leader Omar Torrijos, who negotiated with the United States the return of the canal. Panama; and the center-right lawyers Rómulo Roux (14.9%) and Ricardo Lombana (12.7%).
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Torrijos, Roux and Lombana called on Panamanians to vote against the “impunity pact,” as they described the Court’s decision.
Mulino has avoided saying what he will do with the former ruler, but he would have the power to issue safe conduct for him to leave the Nicaraguan legation.
According to a survey by the Doxa firm, 65% of Panamanians believe that if Mulino wins, the former president will be the one who governs in the shadows.
This Friday, Panamanian salsero Rubén Blades called on his compatriots not to vote for someone he described as the “front man of someone declared corrupt.”
“The electoral situation is clear,” but “politics is tangled,” according to sociologist Daniel Toro. “In a serious country” the credibility of justice and electoral authorities should not be harmed, he told AFP.
“Mulino is Martinelli!”
Mulino inherited the support of the popular Martinelli, whose supporters claim that during his government there was an economic boom, driven by the expansion of the Panama Canal and the construction of the first subway in Central America.
“People are really giving Mulino 100% support because Martinelli decided to put him” as a candidate, Rigoberto Acevedo, a 27-year-old law student, told AFP, who believes that the former ruler suffers “political persecution.”
Despite being granted asylum, Martinelli campaigned for elections and the Panamanian government’s protest against Nicaragua was of no use. Last Sunday he participated, through a video, in the closing of Mulino’s campaign.
“Martinelli is Mulino and Mulino is Martinelli”, is the slogan used by the campaign of the RM party, which is going to the elections in coalition with the minority Alianza.
Mulino was in preventive detention between 2015 and 2016 for corruption, but was released due to procedural errors. He assures that during that period he was a “political prisoner.”
He has been Minister of Government and Justice, and was Chancellor during the first Panamanian government after the fall of former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega in 1989.
The president for the next five years will have to face the challenges of a country hit by corruption, the migration crisis in the Darién jungle, the high cost of living, the deterioration of basic services and the drought that affects the canal due to climate change.
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