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Weekly Report - 20 July 2017 (WR-17-28)
PANAMA: Congress presidency election exposes opposition disarray
President Juan Carlos Varela has received a boost as he enters the penultimate year of his five-year term in office. At the start of this month, Yanibel Abrego, a dissident member of former president Ricardo Martinelli’s (2009-2014) Cambio Democrático (CD) party, was elected president of the 71-member unicameral national legislature for the 2017-2018 period. Abrego’s election came after Varela’s Partido Panameñista (PPA) struck a deal with a dissident faction of the CD days before the vote, whereby in exchange for backing Abrego (and not fielding its own candidate), the PPA would receive the first and second vice presidencies. With divisions within the CD intensifying amid the ongoing threat of prosecution against Martinelli, who was arrested last month in the US on charges of illegal espionage [WR-17-23], the vote has served to expose the continued difficulties facing the opposition.
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