Panama's ruling party begins to elect presidential candidate
PANAMA CITY, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Panama's ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) opened polling stations on Sunday to elect its presidential candidate for the general election scheduled for May 3, 2009.
Nearly 670,000 PRD members cast their ballots. Voting centers opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) and were to close at 4:00 p.m. (2100 GMT).
There are 13 "pre-candidates" for the presidential candidate, with the front-runners being former Housing Minister Balbina Herrera and Panama City's mayor Juan Carlos Navarro.
Preliminary results would be announced at 7:00 p.m. (2400 GMT).
Herrera, 53, is an agronomist engineer. She entered politics in1979,and had served as mayor of the San Miguelito district, president of the Assembly and the housing minister.
Navarro, 46, the three-time mayor of Panama City, is regarded as the leading environmental leader in Panama.
One of his main social contributions was the creation of the National Association for the Conservation of Nature in 1985, which is Panama's leading non-profit environmental NGO.
