The party alliance of the second-placed Roux is expected to receive 18 seats with 25 percent, whereas the alliance of the current president Varela will only receive 11.3 percent of the votes and thus take 8 seats. With the 40.8 per cent of the PRD and the 1.4 per cent of MOLIRENA (Movimiento Liberal Republicano Nacionalista), the alliance has won 29 of the 71 seats in parliament by the time of this report. In parliament, the newly elected president can probably count on a clear, albeit not an absolute majority of his party alliance. In Panama, there is no binding regulation on a certain quota of women in the nomination of candidates, but the electoral court does call on the parties to comply with the principle of gender parity. According to the President of the National Forum of Women in Political Parties (FONAMUPP), Juana Herrera, the nomination bulletin of the Electoral Court, in addition to two female vice-presidential candidates for all mandate posts at both national and municipal level, showed the modest proportion of women at 16 per cent, although more women are active in political parties than men. In general, the percentage of women among the candidates for the mandates to be filled was disappointingly low. Her score of 4.8 percent and thus 5th place can be considered a respectable achievement. As a novelty in Panama's electoral history, this time three non-party candidates competed, the only woman in the carousel of candidates being Ana Matilde Gómez, a 56-year-old lawyer who had carried out a variety of legal activities in Panamanian government institutions during her professional career and was the first woman to hold the post of Attorney General since Panama's independence in 1903. For example, before these elections, two parties agreed on a common candidate for each of the elections, only the clearly left-wing Frente Amplio por la Democracia (FAD) entered the race without a political partner. Moreover, since six of the seven traditional parties are located in the vicinity of the political centre and do not differ much in their political programmes as well as in their respective clientele (urban-rural, middle-class and lower class, regional affinities), new coalitions are negotiated before each election and are often only maintained for one legislative period. Likewise, members of parliament cannot be directly re-elected, which is often reflected in a lack of professionalism in parliamentary action, especially at the beginning of a legislative period. Panama's constitution prohibits the re-election of the president after a five-year term. With 31 percent, Roux was only 2 percent behind the election winner. But for hours it was by no means clear whether Nito Cortizo or Rómulo Roux, the candidate of the Cambio Democrático (Democratic Change) and the Partido Alianza (Alliance Party), an alliance of parties with support mainly in rural areas and in the lower middle class, would win. Elections in Panama have so far always produced clear winners. Nevertheless, the whole election night was full of tension like never before. The candidate of the current government coalition of President Juan Carlos Varela between the national-conservative Partido Panameňista (PPa) and the small Christian Democratic Partido Popular (PP) José Blandón therefore only made it to 4th place with 10.6 percent of the votes. The outcome of the presidential elections is no surprise for the Panamanians: For one thing, Nito Cortizo had been leading all polls for months with a double-digit margin over his competitors, and for another, it is part of Panama's tradition to vote out the current government alliance.
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