Yesterday was election day here in Panama. I am pretty certain that most people associate Panama with Noriega who was a nasty dictator. However that was 15 years ago. Now Panama has a flourishing democracy. Yesterday as well as the whole campaign was proof of this.

I went with my wife to the local high school where she was going to vote and it was a great carnival like experience. Just about everyone went to vote. I believe the turnout was over 80%.

Everyone was laughing and smiling. Boy scouts were helping the elderly get up the steep hill to the school and to their voting booths. The Arnulfistas (set to loose big time) and the PRD (set to win big time) were joking between themselves.

In the end Martin Torrijos from the PRD won by a fairly big margin over Endara. The current presidents party the Arnulfistas were the big looser.

While things arent perfect yet and a democratic tradition will always take a while to get ingrained I would say that Panama can be proud of their election. They have definitely held the last government accountable for what they did wrong.

BTW. Check the jingles on Martin’s web site. We’ve been inflicted with these contantly on the radio over the past months. Some of them are pretty good though. Podemos is by Ruben Blades the famous Panamanian Salsero/Actor. The reggae ones arent bad either.