Presidential Campaigns
In 1994, Moscoso ran as the presidential candidate of her deceased husband's Arnulfista Party (PA) in the general election, seeking to succeed PA president Guillermo Endara. Her main rivals were Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Ernesto Pérez Balladares and salsa singer Rubén Blades, who was then president of the party Papa Egoro. Moscoso and Blades sought to emphasize Pérez Balladares' connection with military ruler Manuel Noriega, broadcasting pictures of the two together, while Pérez Balladares worked to position himself as a successor to military ruler Omar Torrijos, who was regarded as a national hero. Moscoso's campaign, meanwhile, was hindered by public dissatisfaction with the perceived incompetence and corruption of Endara's government. Pérez Balladares ultimately won the election with 33% of the vote, with Moscoso receiving 29% and Blades receiving 17%.
Moscoso was named the PA candidate again in the 1999 general election. Her main opponent this time was Martín Torrijos, Omar Torrijos' son, named to represent the PRD after the failure of a constitutional referendum that would have allowed Pérez Balladares to run for a second term. Torrijos was selected in part to try to win back left-leaning voters after the privatizations and union restrictions instituted by Pérez Balladares. Moscoso ran on a populist platform, beginning many of her speeches with the Latin phrase "Vox populi, vox Dei" ("the voice of the people is the voice of God"), previously used by Arias to begin his own speeches. She pledged to support education, reduce poverty, and slow the pace of privatization. While Torrijos ran in large part on his father's memory—including using the campaign slogan "Omar lives"—Moscoso evoked that of her dead husband, leading Panamanians to joke that the election was a race between "two corpses". Torrijos allies also criticized Moscoso for her lack of government experience or college degree. However, unlike in 1994, it was now the PRD that was hampered by the scandals of the previous administration, and Moscoso defeated Torrijos with 45% of the vote to 37%.
Read more about this topic: Mireya Moscoso
Famous quotes containing the words presidential and/or campaigns:
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)