Electoral Tribunal voids Haydée Milanés de Lay's election

On July 22 the Electoral Tribunal unanimously voided the re-election of Darien legislator Haydée Milanés de Lay after it found that her razor-thin victory over PRD challenger Giovanni Castillo was bought by passing out more than $200,000 in public funds to voters in the days before the May 2 vote.

A new election will be held, in which Milanés de Lay and Castillo are likely to face off again. Four other candidates who also ran may also give it another try, or may form alliances for or against Milanés de Lay. No date has been set for the by-election.

In the wake of the decision Milanés de Lay went on a brief hunger strike, after which she passed out and was taken to a hospital. Although the rump of the Arnulfista Party controlled by Mireya Moscoso and a group of supporters from the Darien have stood by the legislator, there is little evidence of any groundswell of public sympathy for her.

One of the reasons why few Panamanians feel that Milanés de Lay’s removal from the assembly is a grievous loss is that she is an outspoken advocate of ethnic cleansing in the Darien. Her backing for invasions of collectively held indigenous lands and her slogan “Indigenous to the Comarca” were sharply criticized earlier this year by the Catholic Church.

Anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro, for his part, argues that Milanés de Lay is ineligible to run for office under the law as it is, because he claims that she falsified her birth records and was actually born in Colombia. However, Montenegro’s complaints have been rejected by the Legislative Assembly, which has invoked legislative immunity and refuses to allow an investigation into the substance of that charge.

Because the margin of the election in Darien’s circuit 5-1 was under 200 votes, and because of the large scale of vote buying and the public source of the funds that were used, Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís impugned Milanés de Lay’s election while declining to do so in several other vote-buying cases. However, in some of the other cases Solís is pressing criminal charges based on violation of election laws, and conviction would probably result in removal from office. In those cases involving people who won legislative races, the incoming Legislative Assembly would have to lift the accused deputies’ immunity for any prosecution to proceed, and that could be the first big test of the new PRD government’s attitude about corruption.

The provenance of the public funds used to buy votes by Milanés de Lay runs right back to Mireya Moscoso herself, as would be the case in several other circuits where the practice has been alleged. At the Darien legislator’s trial, Solís alleged that the Moscoso administration “created a slush fund for politicians.”

Mireya Moscoso loses her presidential immunity as of September 1, and while she will still control the Supreme Court, she does not and will not dominate the Electoral Tribunal, which is in charge of the trial and punishment of electoral crimes. There thus looms the possibility that the facts proven in court to nullify Milanés de Lay’s re-election could become the core of a case that would send Mireya Moscoso to prison.

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Milanés de Lay's election annulled

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Haydée Milanés de Lay’s election annulled