Less than two months ago, José Raúl Mulino replaced on the ballot a popular former president who was electorally disqualified after being convicted of money laundering. Today, this lawyer and former Minister of Security – who promises to return Panama to the economic boom of a decade ago and stop irregular migration through the Darién – could become president of the Central American country.
Mulino has the support of former president Ricardo Martinelli, whom he replaced as presidential candidate with a view to next Sunday’s elections, and leads the voting intention polls over the other seven candidates in one of the most complex elections in Panama.
His closest rivals – who are almost tied for second place – are former president Martín Torrijos (2004-2009); Ricardo Lombana, a candidate who promises to fight corruption with the Other Path Movement, and Rómulo Roux, a lawyer from Cambio Democrático, Martinelli’s former party that is in alliance with the Panameñista, which brought former president Juan Carlos Varela to power in 2014. The latter two finished in third and second place in the 2019 general elections.
Mulino was not in the plans to integrate Martinelli’s presidential ticket. Initially, the duo of the former president with his wife, Marta Linares, was outlined. However, the former first lady gave up seeking the vice presidency in October, arguing that the electoral authorities would put an obstacle in her way due to her affinity with the former ruler, and Mulino was approved in her place.
At the beginning of March, Martinelli was disqualified to continue in the race after confirming a sentence against him of more than ten years in prison for money laundering in relation to the purchase of a media conglomerate and after which He took refuge in the Nicaraguan embassywhere it still remains.
Mulino then received authorization from the Electoral Court to take the former president’s place on an unprecedented list, since he does not have a candidate for the vice presidency. Almost immediately, lawyer Karisma Etienne Karamañites filed, as she said independently, an unconstitutionality lawsuit against that decision, arguing that Mulino is not eligible because his list was not submitted to primaries by Martinelli’s party, Realizing Goals. The Supreme Court of Justice processed it, although it has not specified whether it will issue a ruling before or after the elections.
Aside from all that, Mulino — a lawyer specialized in maritime law from Tulane University in New Orleans — threw himself into the campaign with a very clear strategy: attract the electorate with his promise of returning to the good economic times and the generation of employment that characterized the management of Martinelli, a supermarket magnate.
The Panamanian economy was the fastest growing in Latin America during the Martinelli administration (2009-2010), as a result of the construction of large works such as the expansion of the Panama Canal and the first line of the capital’s Metro, the first in Central America.
“We attack unemployment and poverty like never before,” Mulino stressed to his supporters at his campaign close in a hotel in the capital on Sunday, in which a video was played with a message from former President Martinelli supporting him. “He is a man of integrity who will deliver for all Panamanians… I only trust him for president, he is a fighter who will continue my legacy.”
This growth, however, was punctuated by allegations of cost overruns in many of the works and bribe payments by the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Martinelli and his two sons are among a group of defendants who will have to face trial for this international corruption scandal between July and August. The former leader insists that he is politically persecuted for the changes he promoted.
But despite his problems with justice and being identified by the United States as a corrupt former ruler, Martinelli has been the great protagonist in this campaign. from the Nicaraguan embassy. Panama has protested several times before the Nicaraguan government, accusing it of maintaining a “permissive attitude” regarding the political-partisan activities of the former president.
“Most Panamanians are in a bad mood and angry with the country’s political class,” says Michael Shifter, an associate professor at Georgetown University. “Mulino benefits from Martinelli’s image and the perception that the country was much better under the former president’s rule.”
At a recent rally in a town on the outskirts of Panama City, Mulino — wearing as always a blue cap that says “Martinelli Mulino 2024” — stressed that the message he is carrying to the entire country is that of “a government of hope.” , employment… because we are going to work, work and work to restore faith and confidence in our system and strengthen our democracy.”
One of his campaign initiatives, which also appears in the plans of some of the other candidates, is to extend the passenger train line that Martinelli started from the country’s capital to the province of Chiriquí, bordering Costa Rica.
However, experts warn that the current reality is very different from what Martinelli found in 2009. The country of more than four million inhabitants is going through fiscal problems and an economy that will slow down in 2024 due to the closure of a Canadian copper mine. at the end of last year after multimillion-dollar protests and the drought that reduced transits through the Panama Canal for the first time in history.
Mulino and Martinelli insist there is money. In a spot of both on television, the former ruler proclaims that they would promote the “largest first job program in the history of this country and ‘buco chen chen’ (a lot of money) for you.”
“Mulino is a person who can remove the country from the scourge of crime and this downturn we have, which is the lack of work,” he told AP Adriano Cueto Valencia, a 61-year-old informal worker during a recent walk by the candidate in a neighborhood of the populous capital district of San Miguelito, considered one of the most unsafe in the country.
Former President Torrijos, in his closing campaign on Saturday, told Panamanians: “you have the opportunity to decide if you want the substitute for corruption… or if you choose those of us who are committed to making a decent government.”
Mulino served in the Martinelli administration as Minister of Government and Justice, which was later divided into two portfolios to form the Public Security portfolio, which brought together all security forces, and which the current candidate occupied.
One of the achievements that Mulino proclaims of his security management was expelling a front of the now extinct guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) from the jungle province of Darién, on the border with Colombia, although experts affirm that it was precisely in that period when irregular migration emerged through that inhospitable and lawless area, where – they say – drug, weapons and later migrant traffickers continued to operate.
“We are going to close Darién and we are going to repatriate all these people accordingly, respecting human rights,” Mulino launched in a recent campaign activity. Experts see it as difficult to close a dangerous jungle through which more than half a million people crossed last year. migrants, a record number.
As Minister of Security, Mulino was the target of harsh criticism and complaints for the police repression of a protest by indigenous banana growers in the northern provinces of Bocas del Toro and Chiriquí in 2010 that left two dead and more than 100 injured by pellet shots, among them with eye injuries.
Some of his rivals have criticized Mulino for this repression, demanding that he participate in the debates to respond to that and other issues, but the candidate declined to attend the three debates held.
Mulino has said that if he wins the presidency he would help Martinelli, 72, get out of his troubles with justice, but he has ruled out a possible pardon. In his closing on Sunday he said that “Ricardo (Martinelli) cannot be sharing with us because of the unjust political persecution against him.”
“There are too many unknowns regarding Mulino,” says the analyst and columnist of the Panamanian newspaper The Press, Rodrigo Noriega. “The whole anti-corruption issue, the issue of social protests, let us remember that it was extremely severe with the indigenous protests in Changuinola (Bocas del Toro) and San Félix (Chiriquí). Also, the soft touch of the issue with the corruption of Ricardo Martinelli.”
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