Panama's wild election approaches

[Judi Lynn]

May 02, 2024
Alex Kliment

This weekend, Panamanians will elect a president after a roller-coaster campaign period that has featured a dog with an X (formerly Twitter) account and a popular former president hiding in the storage room of a foreign embassy.

The country’s most popular politician, Ricardo Martinelli, is a charismatic populist supermarket tycoon known as “the crazy one” who oversaw a mini economic boom in Panama when he was president from 2009 to 2014.

But he’s currently holed up in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama City, where he’s avoiding arrest on money laundering charges he says are bogus.

That rap disqualified his candidacy in February, but Martinelli (and his social media-savvy dog, Bruno) has endorsed his one-time Veep candidate José Raúl Mulino, a somewhat drier figure who nevertheless leads polls by double digits with the support of about 30% of Panamanians.

In a fragmented field, that’s enough to win, as Panama’s single-round system rewards the top outright vote-getter.

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