Panama’s electoral tribunal disqualified former President Ricardo Martinelli from operating within the May presidential election in mild of a 10-year sentence he obtained for cash laundering.
The physique, which oversees the nation’s electoral course of, reached the choice on Monday night time after 10 hours of debate. In an announcement, it stated his disqualification was the results of his having been sentenced to greater than 5 years in jail for an intentional crime.
Panama’s Supreme Court final month denied Mr. Martinelli’s enchantment of the cash laundering conviction in a case through which prosecutors stated funds had been obtained from authorities contractors for the 2010 buy of a publishing home.
A couple of days after the courtroom ruling, Mr. Martinelli, 71, a conservative businessman who led Panama from 2009 to 2014, was granted asylum by Nicaragua and fled to its embassy in Panama City, the capital.
Panama’s Foreign Ministry declined Nicaragua’s request to permit Mr. Martinelli to go away the nation, citing a global settlement on political asylum that states that nations can not grant asylum to individuals who have been “duly prosecuted” for nonpolitical crimes.
Mr. Martinelli has stated that he’s harmless and a sufferer of political persecution, accusing the present president and vice chairman of making an attempt to kill him to stop him from taking workplace.
Mr. Martinelli’s spokesman, Luis Eduardo Camacho, known as the tribunal’s choice “illegal” on Tuesday and accused the physique of procedural violations. “In Panama the state of law doesn’t exist, and we’re in the middle of a civil dictatorship,” he advised The New York Times.
The electoral tribunal is permitting Mr. Martinelli’s operating mate, a former public safety minister named José Raúl Mulino, to run for president in his place.
“Martinelli is Mulino and Mulino is Martinelli,” Mr. Camacho stated merely.
Erasmo Pinilla, a former member of the electoral tribunal, stated that Mr. Martinelli’s workforce may ask the tribunal to rethink its choice. But he stated no grounds existed for a reversal as a result of Panama’s Constitution prohibits somebody who has been sentenced to 5 years or extra for deliberately committing a criminal offense from turning into president.
“Like any decision, it can be reconsidered by the people who adopt it, but in this case they can’t change anything,” he stated. “There’s a constitutional mandate, a legal mandate, and a decision by the court.”
The choice leaves a handful of different presidential candidates. One of them, Ricardo Lombana, a former diplomat, wrote on the social media platform X, “This is the beginning, now let all the others who have robbed money from the people fall.”
Polls had proven Mr. Martinelli as a high contender within the election. His backers had famous that he presided over Panama throughout a interval of sturdy financial development, together with a multibillion-dollar enlargement of the Panama Canal.
He has confronted earlier prison investigations. In 2021, he was acquitted on prices of wiretapping opponents and journalists. He was additionally implicated in a pending authorized case associated to a multinational bribery scandal involving the Brazilian building firm Odebrecht.
As the political drama unfolds, Mr. Martinelli seems to be making himself at house within the Nicaraguan Embassy. One video on his X account reveals him exercising on a treadmill. In an image posted Tuesday morning, he lay smiling on a hammock with Bruno, his canine, cradled in his arms.
In obvious reference to the electoral tribunal’s choice, he wrote: “I woke up happy. The people who believe this is the epilogue of a book should know that this is the prologue of the same book.”
