The master and teacher Enrique Banista Escobar considered that the Electoral Tribunal would be making a mistake and violating due process if it disables Ricardo Martinelli’s presidential candidacy in the elections next May.
In his Tik Tok account, and after consultations with his followers about the case, Banista Escobar pointed out that from his point of view, the former president can run, and that a disqualification at this point is illegal and unconstitutional.
In an “express” process full of irregularities and taking “for the pieces” the legal times and procedures, the Judicial Body condemned Martinelli for the so-called New Business case and the Supreme Court did not admit an appeal, a day before the start of the campaign for the election.
According to Martinelli and his defense, the hand of the Executive Body has been behind this process, with the sole purpose of disqualing it, because it is the one who marks first in the preferences of the electorate, and by street.
For Master Banista Escobar, the ruling in the New Business case is not final, because after the appeal, the parties can still file the appeal for review, which has not yet been filed by the RM defense.
He adds that article 1206 of the Judicial Code states that: “To file the Review Appeal, the term of one year is granted, which will be counted from the day on which the documents are recovered or the fraud is discovered or the declaration of falsehood has been made or the conditions on which it must be based are met.”
This means, the lawyer explains, that RM’s defense has until February 2025 to file this review appeal.” The election is in May 2024.
He adds that if RM was to be disqualified, the electoral justice system must conduct a process that involves notifying the parties of the disqualification demand, allowing the parties to respond, presenting evidence, counter-evidence and the parties exercising their remedies.
“If the judges disable him, they would be clearly violating the law and the Constitution,” the lawyer said, given that the sentence is not yet final.
“The period for disqualifications and challenges expired last year, in 2023, and now they took a ruling of 2024. Grabbing the time machine and traveling to 2023 to disable it is impossible, unless you give retroactive effect to a sentence, and then you are violating due process,” he reiterated.
For his part, Professor Miguel Antonio Bernal warned that the case against the presidential candidate, Ricardo Martinelli, has been “political for a long time” and said that Panama – based on International Law – is obliged to issue the safe-conduct, after the diplomatic asylum granted by Nicaragua. For Bernal, since you are Olympicly violated by due process, you leave the legal world to fall into political revenge and that is what has happened with Martinelli.
The doctor of law said that it would be to blind himself not to realize that the “metiche” is stuck up to the slipper in denying the safe conduct and they told Cortizo: “you will not give the safe conduct” and I want someone from the government to come and tell me that what I am saying is not true. What happens here is that they think we are stupid.
Bernal also questioned some media “directors” who are sowing hatred and grudges to provoke confrontations.
The lawyer also highlighted that after the US invasion of Panama, the Endara government had to grant safe-conducts to desirable figures, torturers and murderers of the military regime, because the 1954 Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum establishes it.
Bernal is mortified by the seriousness with which some opinologists say a series of incredible torrances with earing, and stressed that the way Panama approaches the asylum to Martinelli, will undoubtedly be a subject of analysis for serious academies and universities, because sooner or later he will have to comply with International Law to give the safe conduct.