PANAMA CITY — Conservative supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won Panama’s presidential election in a landslide Sunday, taking office as the Central American nation carries out an ambitious project to expand the Panama Canal.
Martinelli, 57, of the opposition Alliance for Change, had 61 percent of the votes against 37 percent for ruling party candidate Balbina Herrara, Panama’s Electoral Tribunal reported with 63 percent of the votes counted.
Tribunal president Erasmo Pinilla called Martinelli the “indisputable winner” and said he had telephoned the candidate to inform him of his victory.
Martinelli, who owns Panama’s largest supermarket chain, said he would work for a national-unity government because “that is what the country is counting on.”
Herrara, a 54-year-old former housing minister, hadn’t commented on the election results. For mer President Guillermo Endara was a distant third in voting.
The winner, whose term ends in 2014, will have to guide Panama through the world economic crisis and the $5.25 billion expansion of the canal to increase its capacity and accommodate larger ships.
Both Martinelli and Herrara supported the canal expansion, but recent world economic woes have generated uncertainty over the project, which is receiving $2.3 billion in international financing.
The project, approved in a 2006 referendum, is expected to create about 5,000 direct jobs in the small nation between 2010 and 2011, when construction is at its peak, according to authorities.
Martinelli has promised to push the project forward.
