Presidential Campaigns
After the failure of a constitutional referendum that would have allowed PRD incumbent Ernesto Pérez Balladares to seek a second consecutive term, Torrijos was named to represent the PRD in the 1999 general election. Torrijos was selected in part to try to win back left-leaning voters after the privatizations and union restrictions instituted by Pérez Balladares. His main opponent was Arnulfista Party candidate Mireya Moscoso, widow of former Panamanian president Arnulfo Arias, who had been deposed in the military coup that had brought Torrijos's father Omar to power. Moscoso ran on a populist platform, beginning many of her speeches with the Latin phrase "Vox populi, vox Dei" ("the voice of the people is the voice of God"), previously used by Arias to begin his own speeches. She pledged to support education, reduce poverty, and slow the pace of privatization. While Torrijos ran in large part on his father's memory—including using the campaign slogan "Omar lives"—Moscoso evoked that of her dead husband, leading Panamanians to joke that the election was a race between "two corpses". Torrijos and the PRD were ultimately hampered by the corruption scandals of the previous administration, as well as a scandal in which La Prensa reported that two members of his campaign had been bribed by Mobil to sell a former US military base. Moscoso defeated Torrijos with 45% of the vote to 37%.
Torrijos ran again in the 2004 presidential election on a platform of strengthening democracy and negotiating a free trade agreement with the US, and was supported by popular musician and politician Ruben Blades; Torrijos later made Blades the nation's tourism minister. Torrijos' primary rival was Guillermo Endara, who had served as president from 1990 to 1994. Endara ran as the candidate of the Solidarity Party, on a platform of reducing crime and government corruption. Endara and the other candidates also ran a series of negative ads highlighting the PRD's connections with former military ruler Manuel Noriega. Endara finished second in the race, receiving 31% of the vote to Torrijos' 47%.
Shortly before leaving office, Moscoso sparked controversy by pardoning four men—Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jimenez, Pedro Remon and Guillermo Novo Sampol—who had been convicted of plotting to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro during a 2000 visit to Panama. Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with the country, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recalled the nation's ambassador. Moscoso stated that the pardons had been motivated by her mistrust of Torrijos, saying, "I knew that if these men stayed here, they would be extradited to Cuba and Venezuela, and there they were surely going to kill them there."
Read more about this topic: Martín Torrijos
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