Panama: Political Parties & Elections

Panama's party system took shape soon after its 1903 separation from Colombia, when the Liberal and Conservative parties inherited from the Colombian era dominated public life. These two factions, split further by personal rivalries among Panama's political elite, competed for influence through the early twentieth century, often amid contested and sometimes fraudulent elections overseen by shifting constitutional rules. Political competition remained largely confined to this small circle of elite-led parties for decades, even as new social and commercial pressures reshaped the isthmus.

The military governments that followed the 1968 coup interrupted electoral politics for over a decade. When General Omar Torrijos consolidated power under the 1972 constitution, he later founded the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in 1979 to institutionalize his populist movement, blending nationalist and centrist currents that would outlast his own rule. Electoral competition resumed unevenly through the 1980s, constrained by military influence, before the U.S. invasion of 1989 removed General Manuel Noriega and cleared the way for a fuller democratic transition.

Since the 1990s, Panama has operated as a multiparty democracy in which no single party reliably governs alone. The PRD, the Panameñista Party, Democratic Change, and smaller groups like MOLIRENA regularly form shifting alliances to win the presidency and seats in the National Assembly, both elected to five-year terms. This coalition-dependent pattern, born from the fragmentation of the old two-party order, continues to define how power changes hands in Panama today.