Independent presidential candidates must unite or the corrupt will win – Rubén Blades  

The Panamanian singer-songwriter and former presidential candidate (1994), Rubén Blades, highlighted that the groups considered independent have not yet agreed to present a joint offer for the 2024 elections, which favors “corruption candidates ”.

In a message posted on social networks, Blades raises a series of questions about the fact that one year before the elections, independent political movements continue each on their own.

“I am writing these lines one year after the elections to express the obvious and so far ignored: the ‘independents’ are not all unified on the same page, nor are they consulting the same little book. That is a formula for failure. Do not blame anyone if corruption represented by the traditional party-ocracy wins, or by proposals without imagination and without emotion that seek to safeguard the ‘status quo’ by providing it with more efficiency but keeping intact the functioning of the failed administrative scheme of the clientelist state

Blades, who came third in the 1994 elections, heading the now-defunct Papá Egoró Party, stressed that the Movimiento Otro Camino party, chaired by Ricardo Lombana, and the independent groups Vamos and MovIn, have not specified a common plan that will lead to the victory of the independents at the polls. He stressed that if they continue with separate strategies, “they will end up facing each other, dividing the independent vote and thus favoring the candidates of corruption.”

The singer-songwriter raises questions related to why these movements have not created a common front that unites independent voters, the undecided, and those who are in political parties but are disillusioned.

He asks when the Vamos and Movin groups will support the candidacy of Ricardo Lombana, who is emerging as the presidential candidate of the Movimiento Otro Camino party.

He proposes that these movements should present the reasons why they would not be sure to support Lombana and what they need to do so.

 Blades warns that these three groups must understand that the longer they take to come together to present a proposal the more support they will lose.