Mireya Moscoso

Mireya Elisa Moscoso RodríguezTemplate:Efn (born 1 July 1946) is a Panamanian politician who served as the President of Panama from 1999 to 2004. She is the country's first and to date only female president.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Born into a rural family, Moscoso became active in the 1968 presidential campaign of three-time president Arnulfo Arias, following and marrying him when he went into exile after a military coup. After his death in 1988, she assumed control of his coffee business and later his political party, the Arnulfista Party (PA). During the 1994 general elections for the presidency, she narrowly lost to the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Ernesto Pérez Balladares by 4% of the vote. In the 1999 general election, she defeated the PRD candidate Martín Torrijos by 7% to become Panama's first female president.

During her tenure in office, she presided over the handover of the Panama Canal from the US to Panama and the economic downturn that resulted from the loss of US personnel. Hobbled by new spending restrictions passed by the opposition-controlled Legislative Assembly, and her administration's corruption scandals, she had difficulty passing her legislative initiatives. Her popularity declined, and her party's candidate José Miguel Alemán lost to the PRD's Torrijos in the subsequent general elections to succeed her.

Background

Moscoso was born on 1 July 1946 into a poor family in Pedasí, Panama, as the youngest of six children.<ref name=Britannica>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref><ref name=CIDOB>Template:Cite web</ref> Her schoolteacher father died when she was ten, and Moscoso began working as a secretary upon completing her high school education.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She joined the 1968 presidential campaign of Arnulfo Arias;<ref name=Britannica /> Arias had already served two partial terms as president, both times being deposed by the Panamanian military. He won the presidency but was again deposed by the military, this time after only eleven days in office.Template:Sfn

Arias went into exile in Miami, Florida, in the US, and Moscoso followed, marrying him the subsequent year.<ref name=Britannica /> She was 23, and he was 67.Template:Sfn During this period, Moscoso studied interior design at Miami-Dade Community College.<ref name=E>Template:Cite news</ref> After Arias' 1988 death, she inherited his coffee business.<ref name=NYT>Template:Cite news</ref> On 29 September 1991, almost two years after the US invasion of Panama that overthrew Manuel Noriega, she became president of her late husband's Arnulfista Party.<ref name=CIDOB />

Also in 1991, Moscoso married businessman Richard Gruber. The couple adopted a son, Ricardo (born Template:Circa 1992).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Moscoso and Gruber divorced in 1997.<ref name=CIDOB />

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.Template:Sfn Moscoso and Blades sought to emphasize Pérez Balladares' connection with military ruler Manuel Noriega, broadcasting pictures of the two together,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> while Pérez Balladares worked to position himself as a successor to military ruler Omar Torrijos, who was regarded as a national hero.<ref name=WP1 /> Moscoso's campaign, meanwhile, was hindered by public dissatisfaction with the perceived incompetence and corruption of Endara's government.<ref name=WP1>Template:Cite news</ref> Pérez Balladares ultimately won the election with 33% of the vote, with Moscoso receiving 29% and Blades receiving 17%.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Moscoso was named the PA candidate again in the 2 May 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.Template:Sfn 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.<ref name=WP2>Template:Cite news</ref> She pledged to support education, reduce poverty, and slow the pace of privatization.<ref name=Britannica/> While Torrijos ran in large part on his father's memory—including using the campaign slogan "Omar lives"<ref name=WP2 />—Moscoso evoked that of her dead husband, leading Panamanians to joke that the election was a race between "two corpses".<ref name=NYT/> Torrijos allies also criticized Moscoso for her lack of government experience or college degree.<ref name=NYT/> 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%.Template:Sfn

Presidency (1999–2004)

Moscoso, Fernando De la Rúa and US president George W. Bush during the 3rd Summit of the Americas.

Moscoso took office on 1 September 1999.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Because she was divorced when she assumed the presidency, her older sister Ruby Moscoso de Young served as her First Lady.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Facing a PRD-controlled Legislative Assembly, Moscoso was limited in her ability to make new policy. She was also hampered by strict new restraints Pérez Balladares had passed on spending public money in the final days of his term, targeted specifically at her administration.Template:Sfn

On 31 December 1999, Moscoso oversaw the handover of the Panama Canal from the US to Panama under the Torrijos–Carter Treaties.<ref name=Britannica2>Mireya-Moscoso Template:Webarchive, Encyclopædia Britannica , Retrieved 7 July 2007</ref> Her government then faced the challenge of cleaning up environmental problems in the Canal Zone, where the US Army had long tested bombs, biological agents, and chemical weapons. Remaining issues included lead contamination, unexploded munitions, and stockpiles of depleted uranium.Template:Sfn Though Moscoso fired all of Pérez Balladares' appointments from the Panama Canal Authority<ref name=Britannica /> and appointed supermarket magnate (and future president) Ricardo Martinelli as its head,<ref name=E /> the Authority retained its autonomy from her administration.<ref name=Britannica /> At the same time, Panama's economy began to struggle due to the loss of income from American canal personnel.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Moscoso worked to end Panama's role in international crime, passing new laws against money laundering and supporting tax transparency.<ref name=E2 />Template:Sfn The legislation allowed Panama to be removed from international lists of tax havens.Template:Sfn Meanwhile, violent crime rose sharply during Moscoso's tenure.Template:Sfn In September 2000, under pressure from the US and some Latin American governments, Moscoso's government gave temporary asylum to former Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who had fled Peru after being videotaped bribing a member of its congress.<ref name=E2>Template:Cite news</ref>

In December 2000, human remains were discovered at a Panamanian National Guard base, incorrectly believed to be those of Jesús Héctor Gallego Herrera, a priest murdered during the Omar Torrijos dictatorship. Moscoso appointed a truth commission to investigate the site and those at other bases.Template:Sfn The commission faced opposition from the PRD-controlled National Assembly, who slashed its funding, and from PRD's president Balbina Herrera, who threatened to seek legal action against the president for its creation. It ultimately reported on 110 of the 148 cases it examined, of which 40 had disappeared and 70 were known to be murdered. The report concluded that the Noriega government had engaged in "torture [and] cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment", and recommended further exhumation and investigation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

During her term, Moscoso was often accused of nepotism for her administrative appointments<ref name=Britannica /> and faced several corruption scandals, such as the unexplained gift of US$146,000 in watches to Legislative Assembly members.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> By 2001, her second year in office, Moscoso's approval rating had fallen to 23%, due to corruption scandals and concern for the economy. That year, she attempted to pass a tax reform package through the Legislative Assembly, but the proposal was opposed by both the private sector and organized labor.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2003, the US ambassador publicly criticized Moscoso for the growth of corruption during her term.<ref name=E58>Template:Cite news</ref> By the end of her term, her presidency was "criticized as rife with corruption and incompetence"<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and "widely regarded as weak and ineffectual".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

She was criticized in 2004 when the press revealed that she had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at public expense on luxury clothing and jewelry during her presidency.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Herself barred by the Constitution of Panama from a second consecutive term, Moscoso was succeeded by her former rival Martín Torrijos in the 2004 election. Shortly before leaving office, Moscoso sparked controversy by pardoning four men—Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez, Pedro Remon, and Guillermo Novo Sampol—who had been convicted of plotting to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro during a 2000 visit to Panama. Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with the country, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recalled the nation's ambassador.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Moscoso stated that the pardons had been motivated by her mistrust of Torrijos, saying, "I knew that if these men stayed here, they would be extradited to Cuba and Venezuela, and there they were surely going to kill them there."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Moscoso also issued pardons to 87 journalists for defamation convictions dating back as far as 14 years. On 2 July 2008, all of the 180 pardons Moscoso had issued were overturned as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Post-presidency

During the Torrijos presidency, Moscoso remained an active member of the opposition. In September 2007, she criticized the appointment as the head of the National Assembly of PRD politician Pedro Miguel González, who was wanted in the US for the murder of US Army sergeant Zak Hernández.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In the same year, she joined Endara and Pérez Balladares in lobbying the Organization of American States to investigate the Hugo Chávez government's refusal to renew the broadcasting license of opposition station Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional in Venezuela.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Since leaving office, Moscoso has also served as a member of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Council of Women World Leaders,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a network intended "to promote good governance and enhance the experience of democracy globally by increasing the number, effectiveness, and visibility of women who lead at the highest levels in their countries."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honors

Foreign honours

• Template:Flagicon Royal House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies:
  • Knight Grand Cross of the Two Sicilian Royal Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, Special Class<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Template:Flag:
  • Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saint-Charles<ref>Nomination by Sovereign Ordonnance n° 15902 of 25th July 2003 Template:Webarchive (French)</ref><ref>Nomination by Sovereign Ordonnance n° 15576 of 26th November 2002 Template:Webarchive (French)</ref>
• Template:Flag:
  • Grand Cordon of the Order of Brilliant Jade

Bibliography

• Template:Cite book
• Skard, Torild (2014) "Mireya Moscoso" in Women of Power – Half a century of female presidents and prime ministers worldwide, Bristol: Policy Press Template:ISBN.

External links

• Biography by CIDOB (in Spanish)