(Panama Digest) Reacting to the dismissal of Vice President Juan Carlos Varela as Foreign Minister, seven ministers resigned from their jobs with the Ricardo Martinelli administration.
These include Alberto Vallarino, Minister of Economy and Finance; Carlos Duboy, Minister of Housing and Land Use Planning; and the vice ministers of health, government, finance, social development and exterior relations.
President Martinelli says that he called for Varela to step down from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for wearing too many hats as Vice President, Minister of Foreign Affairs, president of the Panameñista party and presidential candidate. Varela maintains that the move was purely political.
“The President was chosen by the people to govern, not to take care of me,” he told reporters on Thursday. “I know how to take care of myself.”
The change of personnel represents a rupture of the alliance between the Vice President’s party and President Martinelli’s Cambio Democratico.