Winners, Losers and disappeared

 All elections produce winners and losers, but sometimes those on the flip side of the coin gain a hidden prize.

In Panama’s election, the electorate became big winners with the success of the no to reelection campaigners and the ousting of many lawmakers who spent decades feeding at the public trough.

La Prensa lists Nito Cortizo and the PRD  as winners because, although e victory was by a narrow margin, the party won the Presidency, City Hall and a majority in the National Assembly. The PRD learned from the lessons of the past and “joined forces” around a conciliatory-looking candidate with a history without peaks, but no blemishes either.

Cortizo won with 33.11% of the votes cast, that is, 624,316, which represents 60 .316 over the total of adherents (564,000) of his party.

The other winner, says La Prensa was Rómulo Roux . After winning the primaries, he  took the reins of the CD and, already in campaign, managed the political patrimony of the Madman,(El Loco) Ricardo Martinelli  in a masterful way: he got his voters to associate him with “the good” that the Martinelli administration was supposed to have, while distanced from the negative. He led an agile campaign that, despite dragging so many skeletons, attracted a part of the young vote. With 585,462 votes, Roux exceeded by 234, 462 the number of adherents of his party (351,000).

Ricardo Lombana  is, possibly, the great winner of the day. With a discourse on democratic values, a campaign devoid of client promises and a budget of public money that did not reach $200 ,000(compared to $12.38 million and $11.41 million dollars granted to the PRD and the CD, respectively) the independent candidate captured the 19.27% ​​of the votes,

The biggest loser says La Prensa was José Isabel Blandón. The Panamanian candidate obtained 10.49% of the votes, that is, 197, 910. The figure is low if one takes into account that in 2014 Varela won with 724,000 thousand votes, that the party had $9 million in public financing and that the party’s membership exceeds 350,000.

The electorate punished the governing party with force, evident in the fact that José Luis Varela, brother of the president and veteran deputy of Pesé, lost the seat he had for decades.

The other big loser is Saúl Méndez, from FAD. This party managed one and a half million dollars of public financing, an amount 10 times higher than that managed by Lombana, and obtained 0.67% of the total votes, equivalent to 12,587. This represents one-third of the party’s membership and less of 1% of the total number of members of the Single Union of Construction Workers (Suntracs), of which he is general secretary. Its failure is so spectacular that it is very likely that the party will disappear.