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Mireya does battle with the Electoral Tribunal
No constitutional referendum in May
Colon blaze kills boy, disrupts city life
On the campaign trail
   
   
On the Campaign Trail
What will he do next?
It’s the but of all sorts of jokes, some of which are not fit to publish in The Panama News. Supermarket baron and presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli, mired in fourth place with poll numbers in the low single digits, is now “walking in the people’s shoes,” working such jobs as a street vendor, gas station attendant, fisherman and cobbler to show that he understands the concerns of working people. It seems that there are a lot more people who want to see him try his hand at brain surgery than there are volunteers to be his patient. In any case it doesn’t seem to be making a difference in the presidential race.
Dichter & Neira: Torrijos 46.3, Endara 30.9
Dichter & Neira, the Latin American affiliate of the Harris polling organization, says that in the poll they took for La Prensa between February 6 and 8, 46.3 percent of voters said they’d cast their ballots for Martín Torrijos, against 30.9 percent for Guillermo Endara. Compared to earlier polls by the same company it represents a slight decline for the PRD candidate and a slight rise for the former president. José Miguel Alemán and Ricardo Martinelli were way behind, at 12.4 and 6.6 percent respectively. The other reputable pollster who works in Panama, CID/Gallup, shows a somewhat closer race between the two front-runners, but historically CID/Gallup polls show more undecideds than Dichter & Neira surveys. The poll found 39.5 percent of the voters saying that they would never vote for Mireya Moscoso’s chosen successor, José Miguel Alemán, under any circumstances. Guillermo Endara had the lowest such negative rating, at 15.6 percent.
Torrijos predicts a dirty campaign
The PRD’s Martín Torrijos, currently the front-runner in the presidential race, said at a February 15 campaign appearance in San Miguelito that he expects the campaign to get dirty as Election Day approaches. It’s a matter of his opponents’ desperation in the face of impending defeat, Torrijos opined. He didn’t name names or cite particulars.
Navarro wants funding to clean up electoral mess
It’s that time again. Utility polls, the walls of derelict buildings and just about all imaginable surfaces in Panama City are being covered with election posters. Thus Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro is asking the Electoral Tribunal for special funding to clean up the mess after Election Day. Given partisan alignments and budget realities, the city will be lucky to get any such assistance.
Torrijos wouldn’t hire Sossa or Cochez
Surely the most unpopular aspect of the PRD-Partido Popular alliance is Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, the former Christian Democrat legislator who has until January of next year to serve on his 10-year term in office. Asked by La Prensa --- whose journalists have been repeatedly prosecuted by Sossa, often at the behest of criminals like American “offshore asset protection guru” Marc Harris --- whether he’d give Sossa another term, PRD presidential candidate Martín Torrijos said he would not. Torrijos, who avoided any comment about the quality of Sossa’s service, also scotched rumors that he’d appoint the former Christian Democrat legislator Guillermo Cochez to the post.
Endara: break up Ministry of Economy and Finance
During the Pérez Balladares administration the old Ministry of Government Finance and Treasury (Hacienda y Tesoro) and Ministry of Planning and Economic Policy were merged into the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Guillermo Endara, arguing that the result has been a ministry that's too big and unwieldy, says he wants to break the current ministry back up into the two parts that were merged. The proposal has run into the expected partisan criticism from his opponents' camps, mostly to the effect that it would cause duplications and loss of economies of scale. However, there may be an unstate ideological difference in play. Toro's economic policy was one of aggressive privatization and deregulation, which downplayed the entire concept of government planning of the economy. Although from the perspective of certain individual interests Mireya may have an identifiable economic policy, from the national point of view it is hard to identify any coherent economic philosophy that guides the current administration. Martín Torrijos has had little to say about economics other than to promise more jobs, while Ricardo Martinelli has outlined a consistent right-wing free market economic philosophy. Endara, however, has advocated certain price controls and other government interventions in the economy which would be consistent with a greater role for economic planning than the other candidates would allow.
Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Mireya does battle with the Electoral Tribunal
No constitutional referendum in May
Colon blaze kills boy, disrupts city life
On the campaign trail
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