Panama had a chance to elect a multimillionaire supermarket magnate as president yesterday, as conservative Ricardo Martinelli’s knack for business draws poor voters worried about an economic crisis and high inflation.
Martinelli was leading polls by double digits ahead of the vote, bucking a left-wing trend in Latin America, as support waned for the left-of-center government that is struggling to rein in street crime and rising food and fuel prices.
Balbina Herrera, of the ruling Revolutionary Democratic Party, has an anti-US past and old ties to a former military strongman that rankle with some voters.
The flagging economy — with growth set to slow sharply this year as the global crisis hits trade through the Panama Canal — has also turned some supporters away.
“Our most serious problem is the cost of living, which is what leads to crime because people don’t have enough money to eat,” said shoe shiner Aladino Inestrosa, 67, in the Panama City suburb of San Miguelito, where Herrera was once mayor. “A banana now costs 45 cents when before it was 10 cents. That’s why I’m voting for Martinelli.”
One recent poll showed Martinelli backed by 53 percent of voters in the lowest income bracket and with a huge 45-point lead over Herrera in poor rural areas west of the capital.
Nationwide, an April 23 survey gave Martinelli a 14-point lead.
Both candidates plan to use infrastructure projects to inject some life into the economy and both will push ahead with an ambitious US$5.25 billion expansion of the canal.
But neither is expected to run up a big budget deficit, which could worry foreign investors drawn for years to the country’s booming service and property sectors.
Fueled by US-Asia trade through its transoceanic canal and robust banking activity, Panama’s dollarized economy has led Latin America with growth of near or above 10 percent in recent years. But this year’s growth could slow to 3 percent or less as the global crisis hits credit and shipping.
Martinelli, 57, a US-educated and self-made businessman who owns the dominant Super 99 supermarket chain, wants to build ports, highways and a Panama City subway if he wins. He would also impose a flat tax of between 10 percent and 20 percent to appeal to foreign investors keen for a clearer tax code.
“To run this country you have to know about international business, you have to know how to be a good administrator,” bank employee Julio Flores, 25, said of Martinelli.
Both want to finalize a free trade accord with the US that has been held up in the US Congress.
Herrera, 54 years old, clashed with Washington when she led protests against former US president George H.W. Bush, who visited after a 1989 US invasion to oust General Manuel Noriega, a dictator now in a US jail for drug trafficking and money laundering.
Herrera has tried to play down old links to Noriega, who has said he hid in her home from US soldiers during the invasion.
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