Panama May 5th 2025

[jimros]

There is an election coming up in less than three weeks. In Panama they have one election every five years for every position. So President, Diputados (federal MPs), Mayors of every district, and councilors representing each ward on the district councils.

All registered parties can run candidates for every position, some of them have competitive internal primaries for some positions, others do not. In addition, up to three independent candidates can run for each position, to qualify you need signatures representing at least 2% of the electorate for the position, and also to be in the top three for signatures for the position.

It is also possible for two parties to run the same candidate, or for a candidate to be on the ballot as an independent as well as for a party.

The Presidential race is interesting. The incumbent PRD is very unpopular and their candidate (Jose Gabriel Carrizo) is likely to not be in contention. No party has every won back to back elections in the modern period, and the PRD is particularly unpopular for a controversial mining contract that they needed to walk back that led to weeks of protests and strikes in late 2024.

The frontrunner (former president Ricardo Martinelli) was disqualified for being convicted of corruption, and is currently hiding in the embassy of Nicaragua so as not to go to jail. He founded his own party RM (Realizando Metas, which means "achieving goals" but they just wanted something that could be abbreviated as RM because it is not legal to name a party after a living person) because he was unable to regain control of his former Party, Cambio Democratico. His replacement Jose Raul Mulino as the RM candidate is generally considered to be one of the frontrunners.

Outside of that the other major candidates are:

Romulo Roux, leader of CD, who also has the support of el Partido Panamenista. He almost won the 2019 presidential race. Depending on the pollster, he is either the main contender to Mulino, or one of a few candidates in a relatively distant second. These two parties, along with the PRD, have historically had the strongest ground organization and are the second and third largest parties in the current assembly. Romulo won a hard fought primary campaign against the candidate of Martinelli, and afterwards was able to make an alliance with the Panamenistas.

Martin Torrijos, former president and leader of the Popular Party (PP). The PP is relatively weak, but Martin personally is fairly well liked and has run a strong campaign.

Ricardo Lombana, who came 3rd in the 2019 presidential race as an independent and has since founded Movimiento Otro Camino (Another Path Movement). It's a mostly urban based party with an anti-corruption focus.

There are a few other independent candidates or minor party candidates. The most interesting is Zulay Rodriguez who is currently a PRD Diputado but is running for President as an independent, Mayor of San Miguelito for RM, and Diputado, I think as an independent.

She is quite colorful. She got in trouble for stealing gold from a Mexican jeweler, somehow settled this without criminal charges, at a recent debate she wouldn't respect the rules and another candidate brought up her legal situation. She kept trying to talk after her time ran out and then showed up at the office of the other candidate with a megaphone to talk about all the things she didn't like about him. When the media asked about it and why she wouldn't follow the rules, she gave my favourite quote of this election, translates roughly as "They knew what I'm like, so why did they invite me?".

There are also highly competitive mayoral races in the two largest districts, Panama City, and San Miguelito (which is its own municipality that is entirely surrounded by the District of Panama).