Panama's electoral court docket has disqualified former president Ricardo Martinelli from working in Could's 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 after 10 hours of debate. In a press release, he mentioned his disqualification was the results of his sentence to greater than 5 years in jail for an intentional crime.
Panama's Supreme Court docket final month denied Mr. Martinelli's enchantment of a conviction for cash laundering in a case by which prosecutors mentioned the funds have been obtained from authorities contractors for procurement 2010 of a publishing home.
Just a few days after the court docket's choice, 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 rejected Nicaragua's request to permit Mr. Martinelli to go away the nation, citing a global settlement on political asylum that claims nations can not grant asylum to individuals who have been “duly prosecuted” for non-political crimes.
Mr. Martinelli mentioned he’s harmless and a sufferer of political persecution, accusing the present president and vice chairman of attempting to kill him to stop him from taking workplace.
Mr. Martinelli's spokesman, Luis Eduardo Camacho, known as the court docket's choice “unlawful” on Tuesday and accused the physique of procedural violations. “In Panama the rule of regulation doesn’t exist, and we’re in the course of a civilian dictatorship,” he informed the New York Occasions.
The electoral court docket permits the candidate of Mr. Martinelli, a former minister of public safety 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 court docket, mentioned Mr. Martinelli's crew might ask the court docket to rethink its choice. However he mentioned there are not any grounds for a reversal as a result of Panama's Structure prohibits anybody who has been sentenced to 5 years or extra for deliberately committing a criminal offense from changing into president.
“Like several choice, it may be reconsidered by the individuals who undertake it, however on this case they can’t change something,” he mentioned. “There’s a constitutional mandate, a authorized mandate, and a choice by the court docket.”
The choice leaves a number of different presidential candidates. One in all them, Ricardo Lombana, a former diplomat, wrote on the social platform X: “That is the start, now let all of the others who stole cash from the folks fall.”
The polls had proven Mr. Martinelli as the primary candidate for the election. His supporters famous that he presided over Panama throughout a interval of sturdy financial progress, together with a multibillion-dollar enlargement of the Panama Canal.
He has confronted earlier legal investigations. In 2021, he was acquitted of fees of wiretapping opponents and journalists. He has additionally been implicated in a pending authorized case associated to a multinational bribery scandal involving the Brazilian development firm Odebrecht.
Because the political drama unfolds, Mr. Martinelli appears to be making himself at residence within the Nicaraguan embassy. A video on his X account exhibits him exercising on a treadmill. In an image revealed Tuesday morning, he lay smiling on a hammock with Bruno, his canine, cradled in his arms.
In obvious reference to the choice of the electoral court docket, he wrote: “I awoke joyful. Individuals who imagine that that is the epilogue of a ebook ought to know that that is the prologue of the identical ebook.”
