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Haydée Milanés de Lay, the Darien politician who advocated the removal of indigenous people from those parts of the province outside the comarcas, will have to carry out her ethnic cleansing campaign without the salary, prestige and immunity of a legislator.

Running for a third term on the Arnulfista ticket, on May 2 Milanés de Lay edged PRD challenger Giovany Castillo by a 148-vote margin in a six-way race in Darien’s electoral circuit 5-1. However, after the Electoral Tribunal found that the Arnulfistas had distributed at least $140,000 in public funds to voters in the circuit in order to buy votes, the result was annulled and a new election was set for September 12.

The second time around, the four also-ran candidates threw their support to Castillo, as did Milanés de Lay’s May 2 running mate. The result was that Castillo won the race by a 5,359 to 4,295 margin. Castillo’s victory gives the PRD 42 of the Legislative Assembly’s 78 seats.

The vote buying scheme is an electoral crime for which Milanés de Lay could have been prosecuted and sent to prison. However, the former legislator was among a group of Mireyista activists accused of vote buying whom the outgoing president pardoned in her last days in office.






























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