“”Caudillo” Martinelli and the Wall Street Journal

PRESIDENT Ricardo Martinelli's love of quickfire responses to critics via Twitter, has set him up for worldwide attention to a  spat with The  Wall Street Journal.

After publication of an article condemning him for attempting to skirt the constitution and retain power with his wife as vice-president, he fired off a Tweet attacking the writer.

It earned him a sharp response on the newspaper's digital site, referring  readers to an editorial to be published on Tuesday, April 15.

WSJ Editorial

Our columnist Mary O´Grady scored a direct hit on Monday when no less than Panama´s President Ricardo Martinelli tweeted a personal response to her column on his designs to skirt the law and hold power for another five-year term ("Panama´s King Moves the Queen"). That´s called getting results, though we wish the president would get his facts straight.

Mr. Martinelli´s term ends July 1 and Panama´s constitution says he can´t run again. Ms. O´Grady exposed and criticized his plan to evade that restriction by putting his wife up as a vice-presidential candidate for the May 4 election. That´s unconstitutional. A sitting president also isn´t supposed to be involved in the current campaign, but Mr. Martinelli has been promoting presidential candidate José Domingo Arias, who is running with Mrs. Martinelli on his Democratic Change party ticket. El presidente has also attacked the independent electoral tribunal.

Like many a politician, Mr. Martinelli responded by attacking Ms. O´Grady´s motives. "This WSJ journalist once interviewed me because she was a close friend of Jimmy Papadimitriu, who now advises Varela," Mr. Martinelli wrote on Twitter. Allow us to correct the record.

He is referring to Juan Carlos Varela, who is Mr. Martinelli´s vice president and former foreign minister. Mr. Varela broke with Mr. Martinelli and is now running to succeed him as the presidential nominee of a competing party. We don´t know if Mr. Papadimitriu advises Mr. Varela, but we can say that Ms. O´Grady is not and has never been a friend of Mr. Papadimitriu. She did interview Mr. Martinelli–in 2010 when Mr. Papadimitriu was his chief of staff.

No doubt Mr. Martinelli was upset that Ms. O´Grady called out his electoral power play. Panamanians remember, and not fondly, military dictator Manuel Noriega, who was removed by U.S. troops in 1989. If Mr. Martinelli has designs on becoming one more caudillo, he ought to man-up and tell the voters rather than hide behind his wife´s illegal candidacy.