The Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), headed by its presidential candidate Martín Torrijos, swept to a resounding victory in the May 2 general elections. Torrijos will be the next president and his long coat tails have brought his party an absolute PRD majority in the Legislative Assembly and control of most municipal governments.
“Today I call for a new social pact, to end poverty, corruption and hopelessness,” the 41-year-old Torrijos said in his election night victory speech. He pledged to maintain “judicial security,” pay the government’s debts and meet the challenge of expanding the Panama Canal. “We don’t promise to solve all of the country’s problems in five years,” the president-elect explained. “We do promise to lay the foundations for a modern country.”
Torrijos, who was also supported by the former Christian Democrats, now called the Partido Popular, won more than 47 percent of the vote in a four-way race, easily defeating second place finisher Guillermo Endara, who received 31 percent of the vote. In the past several elections the PRD had mobilized the support of around one-third of the electorate, but this year Torrijos smashed all of his party’s records in post-invasion elections, and given his strong performance with young voters it could mean a long-lasting realignment of Panama’s political divide.
In recent decades the Ngobe area had been one of the principal “swing votes” in Panamanian politics, and this time it swung solidly to the PRD, which won all three legislative seats from the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca. Kuna Yala, on the other hand, continued its contrarian tradition by being the single province that Torrijos didn’t win. In that comarca the voters preferred José Miguel Alemán for president and re-elected legislators Enrique Garrido and Rogelio Alba on Mireya Moscoso’s Arnulfista - MOLIRENA -Liberal Nacional slate.
The next assembly will have 78 members, as compared to the current one’s 71. Only 31 of the incumbent legislators will be returning. There are some impugnations that may affect the Legislative Assembly’s final composition, but according to the proclamations of the vote counters, the PRD has 41 seats, which gives them a majority even without the one seat that their Partido Popular allies retained. The legislature will have 17 Arnulfistas, four MOLIRENA deputies and three from the Partido Liberal Nacional. (The latter party lost its ballot status for falling well short of the four percent of the presidential vote. MOLIRENA and the Partido Popular appear to have just barely survived.) Solidaridad will have nine legislators and Cambio Democratico will have three.
One voting trend gives the defeated Arnulfistas a glimmer of hope. In legislative and local races the party did far better than its presidential candidate. Around half of those who voted for Arnulfista legislative candidates voted for Guillermo Endara, which would indicate a substantial group of voters who were disenchanted with Mireya’s preferred candidate nevertheless still showed Arnulfista inclinations. In general Endara defeated Alemán in urban areas, but the Mireyista candidate retained much of the rural Arnulfista base.
The Arnulfistas, however, were defeated in many of their traditional strongholds. The PRD won the mayoral races in all provincial capitals except for Changuinola and Las Tablas, which elected Cambio Democratico candidates. For the first time the PRD holds the mayor’s office and a majority of the city council in Chitre. The PRD won control of the municipal governments in Mireya’s hometown of Pedasi and in Arnulfo Arias’s native Penonome.
In Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro was easily re-elected on the PRD ticket, and for his second term he will have the advantage of a huge PRD majority --- depending on how an impugnation goes, 17 or 18 of 19 seats --- on the city council.
Have San Miguelito voters decided that they want a mayor who gets tough? In any case, they chose a boxer, PRD candidate Héctor Carrasquilla, to take charge of their city hall for the next five years. In Colon voters picked the PRD’s Tony Latiff for mayor.
After the debacle of the Moscoso administration became apparent in the public eye, it became somewhat fashionable among Panamanian male chauvinists to vow that they’d never vote for another female candidate. However, it seems that voters are willing to elect women --- depending on who they are, what they have done and what they stand for. Although the figure may change due to the outcomes of a couple of impugnations, there will be 13 women in the next legislature, only two of them incumbents. Voters ousted the Partido Popular’s Teresita Yaniz de Arias, Arnulfista Gloria Young, dissident PRD legislator Olivia de Pomares and Colon’s PRD deputy Olgalina de Quijada, while the former PRD legislative caucus leader, Balbina Herrera, didn’t seek another term.
In several places around the country there were actas that went missing, but so far no large discrepancies between party poll challengers’ numbers and the official figures have been reported. It seems that the vote counting was on the whole clean, if not perfect.
There were accusations of vote buying in several places. In San Miguelito the Arnulfistas bought some $100,000 worth of $10 coupons at the Xtra supermarket, allegedly to pass out and buy votes for legislator Francisco Alemán. In Tole payoffs were alleged for the purpose of re-electing MOLIRENA’s Jorge Alberto Rosas, who ended up losing by a narrow margin to his PRD challenger anyway. In the Darien, legislator Haydée Milanés de Lay will be challenged by the Electoral Prosecutor, who says that it appears she passed out checks from government Social Investment Fund to woo voters in her circuit. In Panama City’s circuit 8-7, a Cambio Democratico activist accused PRD legislator Franz Wever of buying votes at one of the polling places and Wever’s election has been impugned by a fellow PRD legislative candidate, Maribel Coco.
Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
PRD sweeps back into office
Posada Carriles gets eight years
Law students stand up for their professor
Scenes from the big Torrijos rally
Gangs: the lethal urge to belong
Bleming closes the circle
Alabama rape suspect's Chiriqui real estate career cut short
Supreme Court blocks presidential secret fund investigation
