These are challenges for which the opposition has already announced that it will closely monitor the management of the considered dolphin of former president Ricardo Martinelli, disqualified after being convicted of money laundering, whom he replaced as a candidate and promised to help during his campaign, an issue that for some analysts consulted by EFE “have to clarify.”

Martinelli has been holed up in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Panama since last February 7, after his sentence of more than 10 years in prison for alleged money laundering became final.

Mulino, analysts say, should try to guide his management towards respect for the constitutional order and the separation of powers, and manage a Government of national unity, as he announced in his victory speech.

“Here you will have a president of great respectful conciliation (…) I respect the autonomy of each State organ, but it is up to the Executive, and it will be, to direct the destinies of the Panamanian nation,” stated Mulino .

His Government, which will take office on July 1, will find the country in an economic crisis expressed in the fall in the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is expected to be around 2.5% this year compared to 7, 3% from 2023, which is attributed to the consequences of the pandemic and its management.

The economy and employment have not fully recovered after the 17.9% drop in GDP in 2020, to which is added the water crisis in the interoceanic canal that will reduce the income of the road and its contributions to the State, and the closure at the end of 2023 from the large Cobre Panamá mine, a subsidiary of the Canadian First Quantum Minerals (FQM).

In this sense, Panamanian economist Felipe Chapman told EFE that the new Government has “a number of challenges that are not unknown, clearly identified,” but for which “it is required that there be some steps or prerequisites that can allow us to successfully face those challenges.” “challenges.”

The first of the challenges, according to Chapman, is “to regain trust in a country in which surveys reveal that distrust towards the different actors in society has increased significantly.”

The economist assessed that this can be achieved if the president-elect is successful in “fulfilling” his announcement of creating “a Government of national unity, which entails forming a truly multidisciplinary work team without any partisan political ties, and attached to what “He said last night about attracting the best talent with the most technical capacity in the country.”

“If he achieves it, it would be a fundamental step in the right direction to address that, and in turn, I think that message would also benefit him in the work he will have before a new, quite heterogeneous Assembly, with important groups of deputies who were not elected in the same Assembly. political platform, Chapman indicated, counting his electoral alliance with 15 deputies out of 71, with a Congress also with 21 independents.

In that same perspective, the constitutionalist and deputy elected by Movimiento Otro Camino (Moca, opposition) Ernesto Cedeño told EFE that the first thing the new Government must do is “motivate itself” to respect the rule of law and the constitutional order.

“He has to respect the constitutional order, but additionally, to minimize acts of corruption he has to be attentive to strengthening the separation of powers, that is, now the Assembly is going to play a counterweight and he has to respect that counterweight,” Cedeño noted. .

For the constitutionalist “that means that it must allow the Assembly, freely, with the appropriate budget to function and to exercise its role without any restrictions. That is the main challenge,” he noted.

Regarding respect for the rule of law and the constitutional order, Cedeño insisted that the new administration “should not promote norms that deviate from the constitutional tenor, for example, promoting a pardon for issues that are not political, or that its deputies provide an amnesty . in the Assembly” for cases linked to corruption.

Mulino, who won the general elections on Sunday by obtaining more than 34% of the votes, said during his campaign that if he triumphed he would help Martinelli, without specifying how, but many have thought that it could be through a pardon or safe passage for that I can travel to Nicaragua.

For his part, analyst José Eugenio Stoute told EFE that at the moment he does not doubt the words of the president-elect that he is coming to work “very hard” to solve the country’s main problems, but that he will wait for his “ “first steps, because there are situations, there are very important unknowns regarding their intentions.”

“He has talked about helping a convicted criminal who has taken refuge in an embassy, ​​no one understands what it means to help, that has to be clarified,” said Stoute, and that “everything is an unknown.”