While José Raúl Mulino celebrated his electoral victory this Sunday night in Panama, more than a thousand kilometers away, in Managua, an old dictator rubbed his hands with pleasure.
“Daniel Ortega calculated the victory of (Ricardo) Martinelli’s party. And that is why he gives him asylum and that is why he gives him protection. Now Ortega is going to collect favors,” says Nicaraguan political analyst Eliseo Núñez.
José Raúl Mulino, 64, won the presidential election in Panama on Sunday with just over 34 percent of the votes after an eventful campaign in which the former president Ricardo Martinellipresidential candidate of the Realizing Goals and Alliance parties, was disqualified from voting after a conviction for money laundering.
Mulino, Martinelli’s former Security Minister and vice presidential candidate, assumed leadership of the campaign and on the electoral ballot, while Martinelli took refuge in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama to request political asylum and avoid jail in his country. .
Five days after a sentence of more than ten years in prison and the payment of a fine of more than 19 million dollars for money laundering against Martinelli was ratified, on February 7, the Daniel Ortega regime announced that Nicaragua was granting political asylum to the former Panamanian president for considering him “persecuted for political reasons.”
The Panamanian government, however, denied the necessary safe conduct for Martinelli to leave the embassy and travel to Nicaragua or any other destination.
Martinelli turned the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama into his personal sanctuary, which meant a revolution in the rather modest diplomatic building, located in the La Alameda urbanization, Betania district, in the Panamanian capital.
After Martinelli’s arrival, extensive renovations were carried out in the building and a parade of workers carrying household utensils was seen, as well as visits from friends and co-religionists of the Panamanian president.
Martinelli, who declares himself to be right-wing, and despite being at odds with Daniel Ortega, thus became the third former Central American president accused of corruption in his country who seeks refuge in the Nicaraguan dictatorship.
The former Salvadoran presidents also arrived in Nicaragua as political asylum seekers and then expressly became Nicaraguan citizens. Mauricio Funes Cartagena and Salvador Sánchez Cerén.
During the electoral campaign, the Government of Panama claimed Nicaragua’s interference in granting political asylum to someone for whom an arrest warrant was pending and denounced that Martinelli used the Nicaraguan diplomatic headquarters to carry out political proselytization in favor of Mulino.
“I especially thank and thank you for the noble and selfless gesture that I will never forget, the President of Nicaragua, Commander Daniel Ortega, and Doña Rosario Murillo, his wife and VP,” Martinelli published in X on March 11, when he turned 75.
Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, congratulated this Monday the president-elect of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, for his electoral victory this Sunday.
“We celebrate in our American and Caribbean brotherhood the decision of the Panamanian people to elect you as head of State and Government with a program that you yourself have described as paths of hope for Panamanian families,” says the letter sent to Mulino.
For the Nicaraguan opposition leader, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, it is difficult to predict for now how this relationship between the Daniel Ortega regime and Panama will end.
“In the short term I see a very probable issuance of safe passage so that Martinelli leaves the embassy, and that frees him a little from the judicial pressure that he has in his country, beyond the fact that later the president-elect, already in office, will want to carry out some type of pardon or something a little more definitive,” Chamorro calculates.
“Ortega, certainly, wins in this game in the short term, because in some way, he can now collect his cut (part) with more peace of mind. He will probably receive Martinelli and will probably ask for political favors in the international concert in Panama. I am sure that Ortega will do that, what I am not very sure is if Mulino would grant it to him,” he adds.
Eliseo Núñez, political analyst, considers that, in addition to the accounts receivable that Ortega has “from the owner of the party to which the president-elect belongs, he also has in his favor that the issue of Nicaragua is not a priority for Panamanian society, it is That is to say, the fact that the new Mulino government has better relations with Ortega does not cause internal problems in Panama.”
Both Chamorro and Núñez agree that Mulino has a major obstacle in parliament given that the Realizing Goals party only won 13 of 71 seats, according to preliminary counts.
“An additional factor is that this time the party that won has very few deputies in the legislative Assembly. So this also takes away Mulino’s ability to pay Ortega all the favors,” says Núñez.
The analyst adds two factors that could change Ortega’s calculations: pressure from the United States and the independence that Mulino can show before Martinelli.
“The pressure from the United States on Panama can be quite specific and strong, and will also depend on whether Nicaragua continues to be a priority for the United States in the region; and the second thing that can help in this is that it is always uncomfortable that someone wants to rule instead of the elected president. And this could cause friction with Martinelli,” she adds.
For the moment, says Núñez, “it seems that Ortega’s move turned out well and Martinelli is going to have a pardon or, in the worst case, he can obtain safe passage to leave Panama. But, definitely, it is time for Ortega to collect favors and we will see if Mulino is going to pay them.”
