Panama, Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)

The Democratic Revolutionary party (Partido Revolucionario Democratico—PRD) was the progovernment party of the Torrijos and Noriega regimes between 1978 and 1989. Created as part of the liberalization of the late 1970s, the PRD was designed to coordinate political activity among government employees and supporters and to mobilize voters for elections. Operating by means of official patronage, for ten years it managed to retain a majority in the legislature and to dominate most municipal elections. Not a genuine party, it generally espoused the programs and principles of the president in office. It drew on such a wide variety of groups and sectors—labor, peasants, women, young people, civil servants—that it could not generate any ideological unity.

After the U.S. invasion of 1989, the party remained moribund for a time. Squabbling with the government coalition, however, allowed the PRD to rebuild its leadership and image. Civil servants and labor unions, in particular, supported its resurrection in order to protect their jobs. To the surprise of many observers Ernesto Pérez Balladares, the PRD candidate for president in the May 1994 elections, won a plurality and took office on 1 September. The party also won nearly half of the seats in the Legislative Assembly. The PRD's electoral strength has continued into the early twenty-first century. In 2004, the PRD candidate Martín Torrijos won the presidency with nearly 50 percent of the vote.

See alsoNoriega Moreno, Manuel Antonio .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Steve C. Ropp, Panamanian Politics: From Guarded Nation to National Guard (1982); Panama, a Country Study, 4th ed. (1989); Margaret E. Scranton, The Noriega Years (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Harding, Robert C. "The Military Foundations of Panamanian Politics From the National Police to the PRD and Beyond." Ph.D. diss., University of Miami, 1998.

López Tirone, Humberto, and Omar Torrijos. Panamá, una revolución democrática. Lisboa, Portugal: Joan Boldó i Climent, 1995.

                                         Michael L. Conniff