Caribbean & Central America
The party of former president Mireya Moscoso, the Partido Arnulfista, which suffered a heavy defeat in the presidential elections on 2 May, is no longer even the main opposition in Panama. A new political coalition has shunted the Arnulfistas into third in the pecking order. Meanwhile, the electoral tribunal is considering the legality of a petition drive headed by former legislator and 2004 Panama City mayoral candidate Marco Ameglio to call a special convention of the Arnulfistas. The movement, which has signed up most of the party's convention delegates, aims to replace Moscoso and her supporters in the Arnulfista leadership.
The new opposition coalition, Coordinadora Nacional de Oposición (CNO), which has 19 seats in the 78-seat legislative assembly, eclipses the Partido Arnulfista, which has 16 seats in terms of legislative representation. The CNO is composed of the Movimiento Liberal Republicano Nacionalista (Molirena), which has four seats; Partido Solidaridad (PS), nine seats; Partido Liberal Nacional (PLN), three seats, and Cambio Democrático (CD), three seats. The ruling coalition, which is made up of the Partido Revolucionario Democrático, with 42 seats, and its small ally, the Partido Popular, which has two seats, retains a majority in the legislative assembly.
The CNO roundly condemned the first 100 days of President Martín Torrijos's mandate. It said in December that the most notable features of his rule to date were secrecy and a lack of consultation. It is doubtful whether such a disparate coalition as the CNO will stay together for long. The candidate for the CD in the last elections, Ricardo Martinelli, for instance, was strident in his criticism of marriages of convenience after the elections. The PS had pretensions to surplant the Arnulfistas as the main opposition party itself. However, the PS lost its way in June 2004 when former president Guillermo Endara, who ran on the PS ticket in the presidential elections - finishing runner-up to Martín Torrijos, split from the party after falling out with the leadership committee. Endara applied to the electoral tribunal on 24 November for permission to set up a new party: Vanguardia Moral de la Patria. He said that he wanted to give Panamanians a party without owners.
Ditching Moscoso
The move to replace Moscoso and her closest associates is picking up momentum. Her government has become linked to a growing number of scandals as the Torrijos administration carries out its electoral promise to root out corruption. The rumour mill has it that Ameglio is receiving support from a number of old hands in the Partido Arnulfista, who feel that dropping Moscoso is the only way to distance the party from the damaging corruption scandals.