By Dr Aparaajita Pandey
Panama recently played its role in the great Latin American Election Supercycle. While the country would not be called large geographically, it has managed an economic feat that few have managed to achieve. The Central American nation, also home to the Panama Canal has been acknowledged as one of the most stable economies not just in Central America but across the western hemisphere. It has the US Dollar as its legal tender and has managed to keep its inflation in check over the past years and can also boast about the lowest inflation rates in the Americas in the past 50 years.
The elections, however, have been quite an interesting event to watch and seem to play into the Latin American version of anti-incumbency quite well.
An election that started with robo pero hizo which is roughly translated to ‘he stole but he delivered’; has ended in a last-minute candidate sweeping the polls and sitting on the proverbial throne.
For the longest time the former Panamanian President, Ricard Martinelli was leading the polls, and it was being prophesied that he would be swearing in to a familiar chair soon enough. However, there were some obvious obstacles in this race which were a money laundering case against him that came to light in 2023. According to the Panamanian law, a person convicted of money laundering is punished with ten years of imprisonment which would have made him ineligible to run for elections. However, during the polls it was being argued that the law could be tweaked to favour his prospects of running for the President.
During the beginning of the season, Martinelli had asked Jose Raul Mulino to be his running mate. Mulino is not the most charismatic politician and most in Panama believe that he rode Martinelli’s proverbial coat tails and profited off of his popularity this election season. The presidential campaigns in Panama have been nothing short of a Latin soap opera. Martinelli had been campaigning from the Nicaraguan embassy where he was seeking asylum and was quite sure that by the end he would manage to shift the winds in his favour. But with the biggest plot twist revealing itself in the end- Martinelli saw his running mate shout Mission Accomplished from the stage as he was announced as the next President of the country.
Watching this unfold must have been interesting for the Panamanian people nevertheless, what degree of actual change such a change manages to deliver is still under review. The Panama elections are another example of the Latin American version of anti-incumbency where the face of the President changes but they still belong to the same school of thought as the previous head of state. We see it in the potential Mexican Presidential results too, with Claudia Sheinbaum leading who is a candidate supported by AMLO, the current Mexican President.
By no means is this a new phenomenon either, Dilma Rousseff the former President of Brazil, was Lula’s prodigal daughter who was also the President of Brazil. Luis Arce may not have been from Evo Morales’s bandwagon but he was certainly another indigenous man from Bolivia who promised to deliver inclusive governance.
With Mulino replacing Martinelli, one can expect a continuation of policy which would in turn support stability in the state. Such a continuation of policies is a favourable sign for India. Panama is a country that is quite centrally located and enjoys great connectivity with the Americas, this was one of the reasons that the country was chosen for the location of the Panama Canal that connects the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic and is an extremely important connection for international mercantile trade. These two factors among others do make Panama an attractive destination for investors. This was highlighted in the recent visit of the Panamanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Janaina Teawaney to India where the two countries discussed greater collaboration and closely working together specially increasing trade.
As India and Latin America start looking at each other as obvious partners, we see an increase in Indian brands in Panama. Indian names like TVS Motors, and in the pharmaceutical sector – Hetero Drugs, MSN Labs, Dr Reddys, and, also Tech companies like Prodapt have become household names in Panama nowadays. It would also not be too far-fetched to speculate that this trend indicates a continuation of growing proximity between India and Panama. The recent Presidential elections in Panama don’t show any obvious signs of a changing policy towards the rest of the world, especially not towards India.
The author has a PhD in Latin American Studies, from School of International Studies, JNU.
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