“Incapacitated” ex-president Martinelli holds court

Flanked by a group of admiring cheerleaders from the  National Assembly former president Ricardo Martinelli who on June 30 presented a medical disability certificate to avoid trial for illegal wiretapping, forgot his health problems on July 7 to pose for pictures and plot strategy with deputies from his old party, Democratic Change (CD).

There were two items on the agenda: the fate of his sons Luis Enrique and Ricardo Alberto Martinelli Linares,  imprisoned for a year in Guatemala, awaiting extradition to the United States and a political alliance between CD and Realzando Metas (RM), the new party created by Martinelli.

The first was resolved  by pledging support for the Foreign Ministry to “take an interest in the fate” of the brothers facing trial for money laundering

The meeting was held at the Martinelli family clubhouse in Altos del Golf. He arrived in a Lexus van, from which he greeted and smiled at the journalists covering  the activity

In the meeting with his former supporters, he was seen to speak effusively. There was laughter and a lot of camaraderie, reports La Prensa. It contrasted the diagnosis that his followers proclaimed after the neurosurgeon Waltter Kravcio performed a “major surgery” on his spine on June 20, the day before the new wiretapping trial which he did not attend.

At that time, his spokesman Luis Eduardo Camacho said that Martinelli would have a six-month recovery period and should subsequently receive therapy. But on Wednesday the ex-president sitting in an armchair and flanked by the deputies Yanibel Ábrego and Mayín Correa, as a father, urged the Government to take steps so that his children, “deputies of the Central American Parliament (Parlacen) ”, face justice in Panama.

At the meeting, it was report3ed that on July 5 Correa sent a note to the president of the National Assembly, in which the asked to create an investigative commission to inquire about the legal situation of the brothers.

At the meeting, Martinelli also spoke about his health. “It is a painful, tedious process,” he said, and added that “that situation is not desired even on his worst enemy.”

Martinelli said he loved them “like his children.” “In this room are the people who will govern in 2024,” said Martinelli, and predicted that the next president of CD will be Yanibel Ábrego. Currently, the president of CD is Rómulo Roux.

Martinelli  will have to face trial for the political espionage case on July 21, for which public defenders have been assigned.