Martinelli gets important new allies

Martinelli bolsters his presidential bid with new alliances
by Eric Jackson

Supermarket baron (Super 99, Mega Depot) and former Seguro Social director and Minister of Canal Affairs Ricardo Martinelli has bolstered his bid to become the principal opposition candidate and president of Panama by way of a new alliance with the Union Patriotica party and by attracting people away from the Partido Popular.

The Union Patriotica was formed by a merger of the Solidaridad and Liberal Nacional parties, which in turn attracted former Vice President Guillermo Ford and other high-profile members from the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA). It's by and large a business-oriented, conservative party.

The Partido Popular, the successor to the old Christian Democratic Party, is a junior partner of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in the current government. A mid-July deadline for negotiating an alliance for 2009 with the PRD had been set by the Partido Popular but came and went without any such agreement. It appears likely that the party will officially be part of the coalition again, but many members don't like that idea because of long-standing ideological problems, bad memories of persecution under the dictatorship or an apprehension that the PRD is a likely loser in 2009. Former Panama City Mayor Willy Cochez has bolted the Partido Popular to join Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party, and was neither the first nor the last Christian Dem to do so.

The Dichter & Neira polling firm, which La Prensa fired earlier this year and was then picked up by El Panama America, conducted a mid-July poll that showed, among all potential presidential candidates, the PRD's Balbina Herrera, Ricardo Martinelli and Panameñista Party primary winner Juan Carlos Varela in a statistical three-way tie, all of them between 22.4 and 23.1 percent support and within the margin of error. The methodology doen't very well account for intra-party dynamics like the PRD presidential primary contest, after which that party's factions are likely to close ranks and become a rock-solid one-third of the Panamanian electorate.

Varela is demanding leadership and virtually all important candidacies for his Panameñista Party, and this insistence played a major role in driving the Union Patriotica into an alliance with Martinelli. But three other parties are out there as potential Panameñista allies: Guillermo Endara's Vanguardia Moral de La Patria, Sergio González Ruiz's MOLIRENA and Joaquín Franco's Partido Liberal. That latter faction of the Liberals has been allied with the PRD and Partido Popular and may drop out of that coalition, and indeed has nominated that most anti-PRD of independents, Miguel Antonio Bernal, as its Panama City mayoral candidate. MOLIRENA, which after its scandalous role in the Moscoso administration and waves of resignations in the wake of that has little bargaining power, is expected to align itself with Varela. That leaves former President Guillermo Endara the option of running as a fourth presidential candidate or forming an alliance with Varela.

Theoretically Vanguardia Moral could jump on the Martinelli bandwagon, but there is a history of bad blood to overcome before that might happen. When Martinelli headed the Social Security Fund during the Pérez Balladares administration, there was a rash of 11 sudden deaths of kidney dialysis patients, most likely caused by using bad chemicals in the machines. By the time that the problem was discovered, any evidence that might have identified the cause had been removed and the doctors and technicians weren't talking. Endara's wife, Ana Mae Díaz de Endara, criticized Martinelli for failing to get to the bottom of the situation and the latter charged her with criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria). That prompted the former president to call Martinelli a "maricon" (homosexual), whereupon Martinelli charged him with defamation. The former first lady was acquitted, the former president was convicted but pardoned, and there isn't a lot of love lost between Mr. Endara and Mr. Martinelli.

Recent polls suggest that most Panamanians disapprove of the present administration's performance, think that the country is on the wrong track and are likely to vote against the PRD in the May 2009 general elections. But Panama has first past the post presidential elections and since 1989 no presidential candidate has been elected with a majority of the vote. In 1994 Ernesto Pérez Balladares was elected with few votes beyond the PRD base, winning just over 33 percent in a seven-way race. Most political analysts believe that if Martinelli and Varela split the opposition vote about evenly, the PRD candidate will win. However, both Martinelli and Varela are counting on a shift of opposition voters to the strongest-looking PRD opponent as Election Day approaches. That polarization has yet to begin.

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