Panama's wild election approaches
May 02, 2024
Alex Kliment
This weekend, Panamanians will elect a president after a roller-coaster campaign period that has featured a dog with an X (formerly Twitter) account and a popular former president hiding in the storage room of a foreign embassy.
The country’s most popular politician, Ricardo Martinelli, is a charismatic populist supermarket tycoon known as “the crazy one” who oversaw a mini economic boom in Panama when he was president from 2009 to 2014.
But he’s currently holed up in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama City, where he’s avoiding arrest on money laundering charges he says are bogus.
That rap disqualified his candidacy in February, but Martinelli (and his social media-savvy dog, Bruno) has endorsed his one-time Veep candidate José Raúl Mulino, a somewhat drier figure who nevertheless leads polls by double digits with the support of about 30% of Panamanians.
In a fragmented field, that’s enough to win, as Panama’s single-round system rewards the top outright vote-getter.
More:
https://www.gzeromedia.com/news/analysis/panamas-wild-election-approaches
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May 4, 2024
By Thomas Graham
Panama’s presidential frontrunner has vowed to “close” the Darién Gap, the swampy jungle straddling the border with Colombia that has become an unavoidable ordeal for many US-bound migrants – but experts criticised the idea as unworkable and potentially dangerous.
The journey across the Darién Gap is long and difficult, as seen here in May 2023.
Presided over by criminal groups and corrupt officials, the Darién Gap is one of the world’s most dangerous and fast-growing border crossings. Last year, more than half a million people – including 113,000 children – risked their lives to make the crossing, up from 24,000 in 2019.
“The border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, moved to Panama,” said José Raúl Mulino, who served as security minister under former president Ricardo Martinelli.
“We’re going to close the Darién and we’re going to repatriate all these people,” said Mulino, without saying how he would do it, though promising to respect migrants’ human rights.
“I have no idea what’s in their heads,” said Juan Pappier, the Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “Closing the Darién Gap is virtually impossible.
More:
https://cuencahighlife.com/leading-panamanian-presidential-candidate-says-he-will-close-the-darien-gap-to-migration/