MEDIA WATCH: Broken dreams – Martinellli and the 40 thieves

Hoy por Hoy, La Prensa, Aug.18

ON MAY 3 2009, 60.31% of voters elected President Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal. Voters were enamored by the promise that the state would be ruled by the best and that such a wealthy businessman would not let public finances be stolen.

What happened in the next five years defies the public imagination. That administration coincided with the period of greatest prosperity in the history of the country. The monumental works and rigged contracts intoxicated the Panamanian economy and society. With each new journalistic report, or by the grace of judicial investigations abroad, we discovered that the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights were reduced to one: Ali Baba and the 40 thieves. His followers have been able to evade justice, join him or find their own hiding abroad. Our nation, betrayed by the politician who received most votes in history, suffers because of him a lag of widespread inequality that reminds us every day the missed opportunities for his misrule.