Juan Carlos Navarro applies for PDR Presidency

Tuesday, November 21st Juan Carlos Navarro announce via social networks, that he will compete in the primaries of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).

"I am going to be a candidate in the PRD primaries to take Panama forward," he wrote briefly on Twitter. If Navarro wins the primary he will become the leader of the PRD and run in Panama’s general elections to take place May 2019. 

Navarro joins Laurentino Nito Cortizo, Gerardo Solis, Zulay Rodriguez, Guillermo de Saint-Malo Eleta, and Rolando Mirones, who have announced that they aspire to be the standard bearer of the PRD in 2019.

Navarro, who in the 2014 elections won 521,842 votes from Panamanian voters, which brought him to third place, says that he learned from his mistakes, that he has met with people and that he will be doing things differently. ’I have learned to listen and to simplify things’ he says. 

Another issue he addressed during his television interview was the payment of bribes from Odebrecht. "What happened to the money from Odebrecht to Varella? I in any other country, he would be dismissed from his position and probably imprisoned, in China where he is right now,  they would have taken him to court and possibly  be executed (...), "said Navarro, who also said that during his 2014 presidential campaign he received no donations from the Brazilian construction company.

With a degree in geography and government, Navarro was mayor of Panama City for two consecutive periods. From 1999 to 2009.

The PRD, the largest party in the country with 462,395 members, has not been in power since the government of Martín Torrijos (2004-2009). The party was defeated in the 2009 elections, with Balbina Herrera as a candidate, and in the 2014 elections when Navarro competed.