Panama

In January 1989, Panamanian officials asked the Carter Center’s Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas to monitor the voting process for general elections held on May 7.

Former U.S. Presidents Carter and Gerald Ford led a 22-member delegation organized by the National Republican Institute for International Affairs and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. This was the Carter Center’s first election observation mission. After Gen. Manuel Noriega nullified the results, President Carter denounced the election as fraudulent and encouraged the Organization of American States to mediate a solution. Eventually, Noriega was ousted by U.S. troops. 

Carter Center observers returned to monitor other elections in 1994 and 2014.  

More information about all of these elections is available in our publications section.

The Carter Center’s Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas was a group of current and former heads of government from the Western Hemisphere who united to promote democracy and the peaceful resolution of the region’s conflicts. Former Panamanian Presidents Ernesto Pérez Balladares and Nicholas Ardito-Barletta were members.

How It Started

Since the 1990s, The Carter Center and its Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas — a group of current and former heads of government from the Western Hemisphere — has worked with elected officials and civil society organizations to develop strategies for fighting corruption and ensuring government transparency.

Former Panamanian President Nicolas Ardito-Barletta and other leaders from across the hemisphere came to The Carter Center in May 1999 to evaluate anti-corruption efforts and seek commitments from other governments to implement similar strategies in their own countries.

President Carter led a 29-member U.S. delegation to the 1999 official ceremony handing over the Panama Canal to Panama, ending almost 100 years of U.S. administration of the waterway.

At the Miraflores Locks, where the canal meets the Pacific Ocean, President Carter — who had negotiated the transfer treaty while in office in 1977 — called it a “historic occasion, perhaps one of the most significant that has ever occurred in this hemisphere. A new relationship now begins between your country and mine. Today we come together with a spirit of mutual respect, acknowledging without question the complete sovereignty of Panama over this region.”

Impacts

Panamanians celebrated the transfer of the strategic 51-mile waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The canal remains one of the chief revenue sources for Panama. 

Concerned about an arms race in Latin America, the Carter Center’s Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas urged governments in the region to pause before embarking on major arms purchases. Between April 1997 and March 1998, 28 current and 14 former heads of government — including Panama’s — signed a pledge to accept a moratorium of two years on purchasing sophisticated weapons.

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