Martinelli to run for party leadership, fight dictatorship

PANAMA’S  ex-president, Ricardo Martinelli, currently behind bars in Miami, will be running for leadership of the party he founded to enable his presidential ambitions.

From the  Cambio Democratico (CD) party’s headquarters in Obarrio, Luis Eduardo Camacho  Camachó  said that Martinelli’s public and civil rights are intact, as well as his leadership. “The leader of the opposition in this country is called Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal,” he said at a Monday, Aug. 14 press conference.

“There is nothing that prevents Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal from being nominated to be reelected as president of CD,” said Camacho, while recalling that there is no impediment for the former president to aspire to a position of popular election, With the exception of the presidency of the Republic.

When asked about the criminal situation of Martinelli and the extradition hearing he will face on August 23, Camacho said that the former president has full confidence in the respect of the rule of law in the United States, where he came after his rights Were “trampled” in Panama. reports La Estrella.

For Camacho, the government of President Varela, has been dedicated to “persecuting  Ricardo Martinelli and the CD”, even reaching the levels of a “military dictatorship”, with a Public Prosecutor (MP) that considers that she has been employed as a political tool.

“The dictatorship of Juan Carlos Varela, exercised through the MP, employs kidnapping as a tool of political persecution,” he said, referring to the provisional arrest of Silvana Manzini de Obarrio on August 8.