Word: martinelli
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...leading candidate in this year's Brazilian presidential election, Dilma Rousseff, hails from the leftist Workers Party. At the same time, Kaufman notes, Chinchilla follows a string of recent center-right presidential victors in the region, including Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Ricardo Martinelli in Panama, after a decade of leftward inertia. "Her election sends important signals to women around the region in that regard," says Kaufman...
...Martinelli's party, Democratic Change, and other allies also won a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, which may make it easier for him to realize his aggressive reform agenda. That includes budget reductions, more business-friendly labor reforms as well as financial and tax changes. Still, Martinelli's affable but strong executive personality - he's known as an imperious, sometimes right-wing businessman accustomed to seeing his orders carried out immediately - will have to battle Panama's notoriously slow and entrenched government bureaucracy...
...Martinelli, who takes office July 1, will also have a delicate U.S.-related issue atop his desk: pushing the U.S. Congress to ratify the separate, bilateral free-trade agreement that Panama City and Washington signed in 2006. President Barack Obama favors it, but its passage in the U.S. has been in doubt because many in Congress are angry that Pedro Miguel Gonzalez - who has been indicted in the U.S. for the killing of a U.S. soldier in 1991 - remained president of Panama's National Assembly (until September 2008) amid the controversy. Gonzalez lost his Assembly seat in Sunday's election...
...chief of Panama, but only the nominal boss of the canal authority, Martinelli will have little technical control over what will be the nation's most important order of business during his five-year presidency (he is constitutionally limited to one term). That's the Panama Canal expansion, a massive dig that will add a third set of locks able to handle the supersize, "post-Panamax" ships. Those vessels can hold up to 12,000 20-ft.-long containers and are considered the future of commercial-cargo shipping...
...Martinelli may well be the President who cuts the new locks' ribbons. That moment could make Panama the kind of player in the western hemisphere that Singapore is in the eastern - provided Panama finally has a competent, trustworthy administration in place. "Panama is already becoming a type of counterpole to Miami in terms of where Latin Americans are looking to park their resources," says Kaufman Purcell. "Voters chose Martinelli in large part to see that through." Panamanians will have to hope now that by the time the locks' expansion and Martinelli's presidency are finished, they'll have both...