QAna Ma celebrates this Sunday the most complex elections in its history with eight candidates and the long shadow of the former president Ricardo Martinelliwho has his dolphin, José Raúl Mulinoleading the polls and with a candidacy ratified at the last minute by the Supreme Court of Justice.
As in previous newspaper polls The Pressthe last one released last Thursday before the start of the reflection period, Mulinoof Realizing Goals (RM), occupies first place with 37.6% of the voting intention, while his three immediate opponents remain at a certain distance.
The former president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, sends a campaign message from the Nicaraguan embassyMartin Bernetti / AFP
The ex-president Martin Torrijos (2004-2009), by People’s Party (PP), Romulo Rouxby Democratic Change (CD), and Ricardo Lombanaby the Otro Camino Movement (Moca), follow with support of 16.4%, 14.9% and 12.7%, respectively, a “technical tie” when the margin of error is 2%.
The rest of the competitors lack apparent options, with Jose Gabriel Carrizoby the ruler Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), as the best positioned of them with 8.3%, followed by the independents Zulay Rodríguez (5.1%), Meliton Arrocha (2.4%) – who surprisingly asked for the vote for Torrijos– and the leftist Maribel Gordón (1%).
The 3,035 electoral centers will open from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. local time so that the more than three million Panamanians summoned to the polls can choose the 885 charges: a new president and 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, all with their substitutes, for the constitutional period from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2029.
The uncertainty disappeared
The climate of uncertainty disappeared early Friday morning after the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) of Panama declared that “the decision of March 4, 2009 is not unconstitutional.” electoral Tribunal (TE) to designate as presidential candidate Mulino in replacement in extremis of the former president Martinelli.
That legal controversy around Mulino will be included in a final report of the general elections of May 5 in Panama that some international observers will write, as they announced.
In addition to the legal status of the candidacy of Mulinothe final stretch of the general elections of Panama has been marked by unforeseen technical errors in advance digital voting, which led to the electoral Tribunal suspended electronic voting on election day due to distrust of the parties.
«The electoral campaign is a process full of passions, controversies (and) debates. Of course, Panama does not escape these fundamental characteristics with the peculiarities that this process presents,” said the head of the Electoral Observer Mission of the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (UNIORE), Wilfredo Penco.
Martinelli’s shadow
But if there is a figure that flies over these elections without being a candidate, it is the former president Martinelliwho said goodbye last March to his aspirations to return to power after the electoral Tribunal disqualified him from participating in the elections after a sentence of more than ten years in prison for money laundering, which led him to seek asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama waiting for safe passage.
Without being part of the electoral process, Martinelli has been very present, campaigning from the embassy in favor of Mulinoor appearing in advertising and campaign videos along with the person who was his running mate until two months ago.
This has raised tension between Panama and Nicaragua throughout the electoral process, by demanding the Chancellery Panamanian its actions with “political-partisan purposes” carried out from the diplomatic headquarters.
Mulino has publicly said that if he came to power he would “help” Martinelli “as appropriate according to the law”, after the current Government denied him safe passage to travel to Nicaragua where the dictator Daniel Ortega awaits him to asylum him, just as he already did with the former Salvadoran presidents Salvador Sánchez Cerén and Mauricio Funes.
