As the presidential campaign
took shape, two candidacies
emerged from the broad coalition
behind incumbent president
Guillermo Endara: Mireya
Moscoso de Gruber of the traditionalist
Arnulfista Party led a
coalition called the Alianza
Democritica, and Ruben Dario
Carries of the conservative
Nationalist Republican Liberal
Movement Party (MOLIRENA)
led Cambio 94. Two major candidates
built their campaigns
around the widespread dissatisfaction
with Endara: Ernesto
“Toro” Perez Balladares of the
Democratic Revolutionary Party
(PRD)-the eventual winnerled
a coalition called Pueblo
Unido, and salsa singer Rub4n
Blades created his own party
called PapA Egor6 (“Mother
Earth” in the indigenous Embar6
language.) In the final count,
P6rez Balladares received 33.3%
of the vote, and his party, the
PRD, won 31 of 71 seats in the
National Assembly. Mireya
Moscoso de Gruber got 29.1%,
and her Arnulfista Party, 14 legislative
seats. RubLn Blades and
Papa Egor6 came in third with
17.1% of the vote and six legislative
seats. RubEn Dario Carles
got 16.1% of the vote and his
MOLIRENA Party, five seats. Minor
candidates and parties split the
remaining votes and assembly
seats.
Blades, the musician and Hollywood
star, aroused great
hopes at the beginning of the
campaign, but finished a disappointing
third. There are several
reasons why his party did not do
better. Blades proposed a progressive
social agenda but was
not very different from the main
contenders on economic and political issues. Early in the cam- paign, Pap6 Egor6 suffered internal divisions when many of its progressive members left the
The Arnulfista Party
remains the most
important party
after the PRD.
So far it has
decided to play
loyal opposition.
party, accusing Blades of author- itarianism. Blades was also hurt when, during the last days of the election campaign, he came under sudden attack from the pro-government parties for hav- ing “Communist advisers” and for alleged cocaine use. Mireya Moscoso de Gruber, the
46-year-old widow of the late caudilo-and three-time presi- dent of Panama-Arnulfo Arias, received 30% of the vote, a solid 12 percentage points more than “any of the major polls had pro- jected. Her surprising showing was due to several factors. The polls had failed to accurately reflect the support that the Arnulfistas had in the interior provinces, and a relatively large pool of undecided voters seem to have been impressed and
ers to imports. Most controversial
of all, the plan proposed a flexible
labor code, which would abolish
many protections won over years of
trade-union struggle. The Endara
swayed by the tens of thousands
of people the Arnulfistas mobi- lized in a rally two days before
the elections. Equally important was the “soft,” essentially anti- PRD, vote, which was bent on
stopping Perez Balladares. This vote oscillated between Blades and Moscoso de Gruber until the last weeks before the election when it settled on the latter after being negatively influenced by a series of events, including tthe attack s against the salsa singer. The Arnulfista Party remains the most important
party after the PRD. So far it has decided to play loyal opposition rather than accept Perez Bal- ladares’ offer to participate in a PRD-led government of national reconciliation and unity. Rub6n Dario Carles, Endara’s former comptroller, was consid- ered the candidate of the United States. A long-time manager of the Chase Manhattan Bank in Panama, Caries opposed the mil- itary governments since 1968, and was the only candidate who
campaigned to retain the U.S. military bases in exchange for greater access to U.S. markets. As comptroller, Caries gladly dis- bursed hundreds of millions of dollars in debt service to the international financial institu- tions. At the same time, he repeatedly refused to release allocated funds for social ser- vices and domestic investment, alleging that he had insufficient information about those pro- jects. His electoral campaign emphasized his honesty, frugali- ty and decisiveness, but despite a high-profile television cam- paign, his bid for the presidency fell far short.
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