MOLIRENA ditches Varela, moves toward Martinelli

Ricardo Martinelli, who's rallying the anti-PRD forces. Photo by the Martinelli campaign

De facto "opposition primary" just about over

MOLIRENA quits alliance with Panameñistas, Varela's support in his own party wavers

by Eric Jackson

Supermarket tycoon Ricardo Martinelli, who served as Social Security director in a PRD administration and Minister of Canal Affairs in a Panameñista administration, got Panameñista candidate Juan Carlos Varela's junior coalition partner for Christmas. Alarmed at Varela's slippage in the polls into a distant also-ran third place and its implications for their survival as a political party with ballot status, the National Executive Committee of the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA) met on December 23 and by a 17-3 vote (with three abstentions and four other committee members absent) abandoned its alliance with the Panameñistas and decided to put presidential front runner Martinelli at the top of their 2009 ticket.

MOLIRENA broke off the alliance at all levels, which may have major repercussions in the Panama City mayoral race, and appointed emissaries to talk with both Martinelli and Vanguardia Moral leader Guillermo Endara about forming a grand electoral alliance. For his part Martinelli welcomed MOLIRENA's support and reached out to invite Panameñistas, independents and disenchanted PRD members into his alliance.

The political parties have until February 2 to finalize their electoral alliances. MOLIRENA will hold a special convention in January to formalize its alliance with Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party and its Union Patriotica allies. On the PRD side, a move within the Partido Popular to break its ties with the ruling party has fallen short, but the final details of that alliance are still not worked out. The Liberals are also allied with the PRD, but have nominated the very anti-PRD Miguel Antonio Bernal as their Panama City mayoral candidate and are less certain to maintain their support for Balbina Herrera than are the Partido Popular.

Driving crises in MOLIRENA, the Panameñistas, Vanguardia Moral, the Partido Popular and the Liberals are polls that show Ricardo Martinelli opening up a double-digit lead over Balbina Herrera. Traditionally minor parties in Panamanian politics are businesses rather than ideological formations, with the aim to be on the winning side or hold the balance of power in the legislature and use such positions to gain jobs and government contracts for party members. If nobody comes up with an absolute majority in the legislature it may not rule out such aims to go down with the sinking ship of a failed presidential campaign, but it's almost always more profitable to go with a winner. And then there is always the possibility that a party may not, at some level of its ticket, get the one percent of the total national vote that's required to retain ballot status. (Which goes a long way toward explaining the Liberals' decision to nominate Bernal for mayor.)

So are there other pieces to fall in place for Martinelli as the leading opposition presidential candidate? The withdrawal of Varela and Endara, who up until now have rejected grand alliances, would put Martinelli in a commanding position over the PRD, and give him the opportunity to put together a united legislative slate that would give him the power to rule that Martín Torrijos presently enjoys by virtue of his party's absolute majority in the National Assembly.

Varela says that he will restructure his campaign to do without MOLIRENA, but there have been screaming arguments among Panameñista leaders that suggest that the final word on an electoral alliance may not have been spoken. The intra-party pressure on Varela to make a deal with Martinelli is not so likely to come from other Panameñista factions per se as from candidates further down the ticket whose chances of election will go down if they run without the backing of other parties. Martinelli could play up such pressures by offering positions on a united slate to some of the high profile Panameñistas, but the risk in that is alienating some of his earlier supporters and Cambio Democratico or Union Patriotica primary winners who might be obliged to step aside. In his current position of strength, Martinelli would be in a good position to make some concessions in order to get a united opposition slate.

If Martinelli is elected next year, it would be the first time since 1964 that neither a member of the Arnulfista (nor one of their splinters), nor a Torrijista movements has been elected president. It would also be the first time since the 1930s that neither one of the Arias Madrid brothers (Arnulfo or Harmodio) nor one of their followers finished first or second in a presidential election. Call it "realigning" or call it "destabilizing," but it does increasingly look as if some old Panamanian political equations are going to be made irrelevant in 2009.

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