Political parties with more than 100,000 adherents begin to organize with a view to holding their primary elections to choose the candidates who will represent them in the general elections on May 5, 2024.

The first political group to publicly announce the date of its primary elections was the Panameñista Party, whose president José Isabel Blandón reported that the primaries of this group will be on Sunday, July 16, 2023.

Meanwhile, the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), anticipating that the call for the primary elections of all the parties will be in February of next year, through the vice-ministry of the Presidency, it was communicated that the officials with political aspirations for the elections of May 2024, they must submit their resignation no later than January 15, 2023.

Officials who make the decision to participate as candidates in a primary and general election must announce it to the Ministry of the Presidency no later than November 15, 2022.

In fact, the veteran leader of the PRD, Balbina Herrera, posted on her social networks an image of the Vice President of the Republic, José Gabriel Carrizo, with the phrase “Let’s go with Gaby… join us and follow us”, captured in the colors that represent this political group, in what would be the preamble to his political campaign in his aspiration to be the presidential standard bearer of this party.

For its part, the Democratic Change Party (CD) is debating in an internal dispute between the current leadership of the collective led by Rómulo Roux and the so-called dissident deputies led by deputy Yanibel Ábrego.

The CD has already set the dates to choose the conventional members of the party who will then elect their new board of directors, to subsequently carry out their primary elections to choose their electoral offer for the 2024 elections.

Critics of Roux, including Deputy Ábrego, insist that an Extraordinary Convention be convened. In this sense, a group of conventional members of the party went to the party’s headquarters on Wednesday to present a request in this direction. This petition was signed by 70% of the conventional ones.

While the Realizing Goals (RM) party is beginning to formalize the directives of its internal party structures, they have not yet set a date for their primary elections.

What do the election rules say?

The Electoral Code, in part of its article 352, establishes that: “Parties with a membership of less than 100,000 adherents as of January 31 of the year prior to the elections, will choose their presidential candidate in a national convention or congress.”

According to the electoral calendar, the closing date of the electoral roll of the political parties for the purposes of the primary election processes will be Tuesday, January 31, 2023.

The next day, Wednesday, February 1, 2023, will be the call and opening of the internal party processes for the selection of their candidates for elected positions.

On this date, all political parties must convene their internal party processes to choose their candidates for popular election positions; either by primary or other internal party process.

Meanwhile, from Thursday, June 1, 2023 to Monday, July 31, 2023, it will be the period that political parties have to choose their candidates for popular election positions through primary elections