Reflecting on the political landscape ahead of the 2024 elections, Panamanian singer-songwriter Rubén Blades called on independents to unite in a common front to try to alter the prevailing corruption and administrative mediocrity with ideas and concrete proposals.
He stated that he does not anticipate running as an independent presidential candidate.
“Doing so would compete with the chance of victory for the new Otra Camino party and that would weaken its candidate,” Blades said in a text he published on his website, titled About Panama and the 2024 election.
In Blades’ opinion, all of us independents “should close ranks around a single presidential candidate in 2024, whoever is the designated one.”
“The independents should go prepared and united with a single purpose: to replace the patronage state. They should present and explain, in their respective electoral campaigns, a new administrative scheme and the replacement of current norms and laws that favor corruption and the impunity of the corrupt. Everyone should arrive at their new positions with those proposed changes already drafted, including reforms to the legislative and judicial codes,” he said.
He stated that he is not considering being part of any presidential payroll. “I have received calls and requests for meetings in this regard and I have declined, not considering them appropriate,” he said.
He specified that Otro Camino, with Lombana, has 46 thousand 615 members, while Realizing Goals, of former president Ricardo Martinelli, has 134 thousand 842 registered. “That describes the current reality and challenges us: does the country really want to end corruption and administrative mediocrity? Although at the moment everything tells me no, we independents must continue trying to alter that situation with ideas and concrete proposals”, he affirmed.
Blades –who was a presidential candidate for the Papa Egoró Movement in the 1994 elections– reiterated that nothing is going to change in the country as long as “political patronage” continues, with its structures and norms, its laws and codes, sustaining the impunity of the administrative corruption that paralyzes the creation of the possible and better Panama.
“Currently, our situation is difficult, with criminality infiltrated and associated with corrupt politicians, with a significant percentage of the population accustomed to ‘what’s up for me today’, incredulous, disqualifying reason, devoted to appearances and with the low self-esteem of those who do not believe in their ability to do something positive with their lives, having become accustomed for decades to depending on the corrupt politician,” he wrote.
For Blades, that is the reality that today electorally feeds Martinelli and the traditional party democracy.
It is one thing to claim that the ‘Panama Papers’ and the ‘Pandora Papers’ demonstrate the existence of an international plot to discredit Panama and thus favor the interests of other economies. Another thing is that the Panamanian people themselves, through the democratic exercise of the vote, voluntarily elect a corrupt as president. Panama throughout its history has been economically subject to the United States and its influence. Having as the country’s first president someone who has been found to be the direct beneficiary of an act of corruption, exposed and proven in a North American court of justice, would expose Panama and its entire economic class to permanent investigation and examination by authorities and institutions. international finance,” he wrote.
In the end, he wondered, “Will we be able to change such a scenario in the next two and a half years?”
