The front-runner in Panama's presidential election is the sensible but bland Laurentino Cortizo
the luckier countries in Latin America. Drug-traffickers mostly bypass the isthmus, preferring to ship cocaine to the United States through northerly neighbours. A forest protected the country from Colombia’s long-running insurgencies. Its canal provided $1.7bn to the treasury last year, an eighth of the government’s budget. Panama’s citizens are the second-richest in Latin America. Thanks partly to the canal, its economy is the fastest-growing.
The problem is that Panamanians have little political choice. In presidential debates the candidates agreed on tweaks to pro-market policies. There is little argument about the direction Panama should take, says Roberto Troncoso, a lawyer. It needs big changes. The next president will have to prove that those can happen without a change in the political consensus.
More colourful candidates are available. Rómulo Roux, whom the polls put a distant second, is the heir of Ricardo Martinelli, a former president who is in prison awaiting trial on charges that he spied on political foes. Despite that, many Panamanians remember the supermarket mogul’s presidency from 2009 to 2014 as a good time. The economy grew by nearly 8% a year and the capital got a new metro .
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