Panama’s electoral tribunal disqualified former President Ricardo Martinelli from working within the Might presidential election in gentle 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 evening after 10 hours of debate. In an announcement, it mentioned 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 docket final month denied Mr. Martinelli’s enchantment of the cash laundering conviction in a case wherein prosecutors mentioned funds have been obtained from authorities contractors for the 2010 buy of a publishing home.
A number 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 Metropolis, the capital.
Panama’s International Ministry declined Nicaragua’s request to permit Mr. Martinelli to go away the nation, citing a world settlement on political asylum that states that international locations can not grant asylum to individuals who have been “duly prosecuted” for nonpolitical crimes.
Mr. Martinelli has mentioned that he’s harmless and a sufferer of political persecution, accusing the present president and vice chairman of trying to kill him to forestall him from taking workplace.
Mr. Martinelli’s spokesman, Luis Eduardo Camacho, referred to as the tribunal’s choice “unlawful” on Tuesday and accused the physique of procedural violations. “In Panama the state of legislation doesn’t exist, and we’re in the midst of a civil dictatorship,” he advised The New York Occasions.
The electoral tribunal is permitting Mr. Martinelli’s working 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 mentioned merely.
Erasmo Pinilla, a former member of the electoral tribunal, mentioned that Mr. Martinelli’s crew might ask the tribunal to rethink its choice. However he mentioned no grounds existed for a reversal as a result of Panama’s Structure prohibits somebody who has been sentenced to 5 years or extra for deliberately committing a criminal offense from changing into president.
“Like all choice, it may be reconsidered by the individuals who undertake it, however on this case they will’t change something,” he mentioned. “There’s a constitutional mandate, a authorized mandate, and a call by the courtroom.”
The choice leaves a handful of different presidential candidates. Certainly one of them, Ricardo Lombana, a former diplomat, wrote on the social media platform X, “That is the start, now let all of the others who’ve robbed cash from the individuals fall.”
Polls had proven Mr. Martinelli as a prime contender within the election. His backers had famous that he presided over Panama throughout a interval of robust financial development, together with a multibillion-dollar growth of the Panama Canal.
He has confronted earlier prison investigations. In 2021, he was acquitted on costs 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.
Because the political drama unfolds, Mr. Martinelli seems to be making himself at residence 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 awoke blissful. The individuals who imagine that is the epilogue of a e book ought to know that that is the prologue of the identical e book.”
