Democratic Revolutionary Party
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- Panama's Partido Revolucionario Democrático should not be confused with Mexico's Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution), with which it shares the acronym PRD.
| Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Democrático) |
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| Leader | Martín Torrijos |
| Founded | March 11, 1979 |
| Headquarters | Azteca Building, Mexico Avenue and 27th Street |
| Political ideology | Social democracy |
| International affiliation | Socialist International |
| Website | http://www.prd.com.pa |
The Democratic Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Democrático, or PRD) is a Panamanian political party. It was founded in 1979 by Omar Torrijos Herrera, and is generally described as a party of the centre-left of the political spectrum.
This party was associated since its creation with the military regime that ruled Panama since the military coup of 1968. With the death of Omar Torrijos, the situation in the country deteriorated under the rule of Manuel Noriega until the U.S. military invasion in December 20, 1989.
Since democracy was restored, the PRD has shown a great deal of organization skills and is the biggest political party of the country. The party has to carry the stigma of being the party created by the military regime, but has become a really democratic party by making primaries for all its candidates, a strategy not followed at first by its opponents, but that helped a great deal on the party's biggest electoral victory on 2004. Since then, its opponents are following these primary strategies too.
In the 2004 general election, Martín Torrijos won the presidency with 47.4 percent of the vote, running as the candidate for the Patria Nueva ("New Fatherland") electoral alliance between the PRD and the smaller People's Party (PP). In the same election the party won 37.8 percent of the popular vote and 41 out of 78 seats in the National Assembly of Panama.
The PRD won the first post-invasion democratic elections in 1994, when the winner was Ernesto Pérez Balladares.
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