by Panama’s electoral court disqualified former President Ricardo Martinelli from running in the May presidential election in light of a 10-year sentence he received for money laundering.
The body that oversees the country’s electoral process made the decision Monday night after 10 hours of debate. In a statement, he said his disqualification was because he had been sentenced to more than five years in prison for an intentional crime.
Last month, Panama’s Supreme Court denied Martinelli’s appeal of his money laundering conviction in a case in which prosecutors said funds were obtained from government contractors for the 2010 purchase of a publishing house.
A few days after the court ruling, Martinelli, 71, a conservative businessman who led Panama from 2009 to 2014, received asylum from Nicaragua and fled to its embassy in Panama City, the capital.
Panama’s Foreign Ministry rejected Nicaragua’s request to allow Martinelli to leave the country, citing an international agreement on political asylum that states that countries cannot grant asylum to people who have been “duly prosecuted” for non-political crimes.
Martinelli has said he is innocent and a victim of political persecution, accusing the current president and vice president of trying to kill him to prevent him from taking office.
Martinelli’s spokesman, Luis Eduardo Camacho, described the court’s decision as “illegal” on Tuesday and accused the agency of procedural violations. “In Panama the rule of law does not exist and we are in the middle of a civil dictatorship,” he told the New York Times.
The electoral court allows Martinelli’s running mate, a former public security minister named José Raúl Mulino, to run for president in his place.
“Martinelli is Mulino and Mulino is Martinelli,” Camacho said simply.
Erasmo Pinilla, a former member of the electoral tribunal, said Martinelli’s team could ask the court to reconsider its decision. But he said there were no grounds for a revocation because Panama’s Constitution prohibits anyone who has been sentenced to five years or more for intentionally committing a crime from becoming president.
“Like any decision, it can be reconsidered by the people who make it, but in this case they cannot change anything,” he said. “There is a constitutional mandate, a legal mandate and a court decision.”
The decision leaves a handful of other presidential candidates. One of them, Ricardo Lombana, a former diplomat, wrote on the social media platform X: “This is the beginning, now let all the others who have stolen money from the people fall.”
Polls had shown Martinelli as one of the main contenders in the elections. His supporters had noted that he presided over Panama during a period of strong economic growth, including a multibillion-dollar expansion of the Panama Canal.
He has faced previous criminal investigations. In 2021, he was acquitted of charges of wiretapping opponents and journalists. He was also implicated in a pending legal case related to a multinational bribery scandal involving Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
As the political drama unfolds, Martinelli appears to feel at home at the Nicaraguan Embassy. A video on his X account shows him exercising on a treadmill. In a photo posted Tuesday morning, he lay smiling in a hammock with Bruno, his dog, cradled in his arms.
In apparent reference to the electoral court’s decision, he wrote: “I woke up happy. People who think this is the epilogue of a book should know that this is the prologue of the same book.”
