Exacerbation of divisions within the ruling party in Panama

For La Prensa, the final presidential race promoted by a group supporting the current Vice President of the Republic, José Gabriel Carrizo, ahead of the 2024 elections, will have to resist tensions between the executive, the legislature and an internal sector. will make the opposition.

The newspaper reported that one day after the 11th Ordinary Congress, where Representative Benicio Robinson became president of the Committee for Europe, Pedro Miguel Gonzalez, former Secretary General of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, announced that he would tour the country to speak with the grassroots about the truth of the Torrijista project and to confront the Carrizo which It has the support of the Laurentino Cortizo government.

Gonzalez also announced to radio station Omega Estero that he is not a leader who needs CEN to get a drop and assured that he will find the number that will be the replacement in the 2023 primaries and have a chance in the 2024 general election.

Among these potential candidates he even advanced the former Minister of Health, Rosario Turner; and to Martín Torrijos, former Secretary General of the Party of the Democratic Revolution and former President of the Republic.

Another announced that she would fight for the primaries, Representative Zulay Rodriguez, who lost the Women’s Front on May 15 to Ariles Gonzalez, with support from the executive and legislative wings.

For political analyst Edwin Cabrera, son of one of the party’s founders, Gerardo Gonzalez, he is part of a sector that does not see Carrizo as the leader of the PRD, because Carrizo does not have a track record and, therefore, will not be a binding figure.

The researcher also considered that this love-hate relationship between the current members of the National Election Commission will lead to strained relations between the government and the National Assembly, and even worse, it will make the MPs take the parliament’s agenda to the party. While Gonzalez believes that power and its benefits will eventually lead to a closer unification of the executive and the legislature.

For the caller Jose Didemo, of El Periódico de Panamá, on May 15 the fear of some and the long wait of others was confirmed: the PRD signed the death certificate and fell into patronage networks after winning by force the presidency of Benicio Robinson, Crispiano Adams and Raúl Pineda, all of whom were deputies in the National Assembly lost its credibility.

Those who controlled this group, according to Didimo, are part of a conscience-buying style that understands politics only as the ability to gain power to do business at the expense of the state and to abandon people to their fate. .

He emphasized that the current situation constitutes a major challenge for the popular movement to be able, in the long run, to find a unifying alternative that can guide the Panamanians in the midst of a serious structural crisis.

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