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Panama’s former president Ricardo Martinelli will be unable to run in May elections despite leading the polls ahead of the vote, experts said, after the Supreme Court threw out a final appeal over his money laundering conviction.
Martinelli, a conservative supermarket tycoon who governed Panama from 2009 to 2014, had been filing legal challenges to overturn the final decision or delay it enough to be able to run in the campaign, which officially begins on Saturday.
On Friday, the Supreme Court threw out his appeal, confirming the conviction. That meant he was constitutionally barred from running, experts said. Martinelli had been leading the polls by double digits.
“It’s a historic day that allows us Panamanians to start to believe that the end of impunity is possible,” said Lina Vega Abad, president of the Fundación Libertad Ciudadana, the local chapter of Transparency International. “Martinelli used all the resources available to him to stop justice working.”
Martinelli’s de facto disqualification leaves the race for Panama’s presidency wide open: another former president, Martín Torrijos, is running, along with ex-foreign minister Rómulo Roux and independent candidate Ricardo Lombana.
Martinelli has faced multiple allegations of corruption relating to his time in office, while he and his family are barred from the US for his involvement in what the country called “significant corruption”.
He was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for money laundering in a case that found public funds had been used to buy a media conglomerate and give him a majority stake. He has not been jailed as the appeals process was ongoing.
Martinelli’s conviction came shortly before the country was removed from a global financial crime grey list as it tries to shake its reputation as a haven for shady money.
Martinelli has said he thinks the charges against him are politically motivated. On Friday he posted a video on Instagram of himself on a private jet with colleagues, in which he did not mention the decision.
One of his lawyers, Sidney Sitton, told local media on Friday that he did not believe that Martinelli was disqualified from the race by the Supreme Court decision and that the electoral tribunal was yet to rule.
Panama’s next president will face multiple challenges as the country undergoes a slowdown after years as one of the most successful economies in the region.
“Panama has been a poster child within Latin America . . . [but] we think that growth will disappoint in the coming years amid mounting headwinds,” Elias Hilmer at Capital Economics said this week.
The next government will have to seek a solution to severe water shortages in the Panama Canal, which is operating at severely reduced capacity because of a drought. Meanwhile the recent cancellation of the contract underlying one of the world’s largest copper mines means Panama faces potentially costly arbitration cases.
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