Panama’s political institutions are democratic, with competitive elections and orderly rotations of power. Freedoms of expression and association are generally respected. However, corruption and impunity are serious challenges, affecting the justice system and the highest levels of government. Discrimination against members of ethnic and racial minority groups is common, and Indigenous groups have struggled to uphold their legal rights with respect to land and development projects.

• In February, the Supreme Court of Justice upheld a 10.5-year prison sentence against former President Ricardo Martinelli (2009–14) for money laundering. Days later, the Nicaraguan government granted him asylum. Other court cases involving Martinelli and his associates were ongoing at year’s end.
• In the May general elections, José Raúl Mulino of Martinelli’s conservative Realizing Goals (RM) party won the presidency with 34 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates. His closest challenger was Ricardo Lombana of the anticorruption Another Way Movement (MOCA), who took nearly 25 percent. Organization of American States election monitors praised the process as successful and well organized. In concurrent legislative elections, the RM led with 14 seats, the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party took 13, and the remainder was divided among smaller parties and 20 independents; Lombana’s MOCA secured only 3 seats. Women candidates won 15 of the National Assembly’s 71 seats. Despite an effort by LGBT+ activists to promote an “ethical electoral pact” in which different political and institutional actors would agree to protect the rights of Panamanians regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, the pact received little political support during the campaign.
• In late June, shortly before the new president formally took office, Attorney General Javier Caraballo dismissed senior prosecutors Zuleyka Moore and Adecio Mojica, who had worked on high-profile corruption cases that implicated Martinelli and his associates. The move raised concerns about the future of anticorruption safeguards.
• In July, the government began installing barbed-wire barriers at several access points near the border with Colombia, to obstruct the irregular movement of migrants across the Darién Gap area on their way north toward the United States. Separately in August, President Mulino announced nightly curfews in the province of Colón and the district of San Miguelito, near the capital, in a bid to control drug- and gang-related crime.
• Also in July, the government adopted a resolution that would make all minutes of cabinet meetings since 2014 available to the public.

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For additional background information, see last year’s full report.