{"id":13109,"date":"2026-05-06T19:26:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/?p=13109"},"modified":"2026-05-05T16:32:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:32:24","slug":"platform-money-route-lifts-the-veil-on-panamas-political-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/politics-government\/platform-money-route-lifts-the-veil-on-panamas-political-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Platform ‘Money Route’ Lifts the Veil on Panama’s Political Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panama City, Panama. A new digital tool now shows exactly how much private money funded the campaigns of Panama’s current elected authorities. The platform called “The Money Route” (La Ruta de Plata)<\/a> launched this week to bring transparency to political financing.<\/p>\n

The Electoral Tribunal of Panama<\/a> already held this data but it remained scattered across paper documents. The Foundation for the Development of Citizen Liberty collected and organized nearly 18,000 records from the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n

Olga De Obald\u00eda serves as executive director of the foundation. She explained that the information covers 153 winning candidates including the president, all national deputies and all 81 mayors across Panama.<\/p>\n

“Private financing of candidates who ran in the 2024 election, this information is already public, it already belongs to citizens, it is already transparent and it is based on reports that the candidates themselves submitted,” De Obald\u00eda said. “Today it is being presented as open data.” [Translated from Spanish]<\/p>\n

\"Analizados
Analizados la ruta de plata money route<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Platform Tackles Campaign Finance Transparency<\/h2>\n

The foundation built the platform to strengthen campaign finance transparency<\/a> during electoral processes. Users can search contributions and expenses reported by each candidate who now holds public office.<\/p>\n

De Obald\u00eda clarified the scope of the project. “It is being presented in open data but only for a group of candidates, all the deputies who are in their seats today, all the mayors, the president of the republic and all the presidential candidates,” she detailed. [Translated from Spanish]<\/p>\n

The data covers all candidates who competed in the 2024 general elections. This includes presidential hopefuls who did not win alongside those who secured office.<\/p>\n

\"elections\"<\/p>\n

Digitization Process Overcame Major Challenges<\/h2>\n

The project required collecting and digitizing documents that existed in handwritten format. This created significant obstacles for organizing and analyzing the financial records.<\/p>\n

Foundation staff worked extensively to convert paper reports into searchable digital files. The open data<\/a> approach now makes this information freely available to all Panamanian citizens.<\/p>\n

Individual citizens can access the financial records through the foundation’s online portal. Each candidacy has detailed financial reports showing exactly who provided private funding.<\/p>\n

The foundation aims to promote greater citizen oversight through this initiative. They want to make key information about political financing easily accessible to everyone.<\/p>\n

Journalist Jocelyn Mosquera contributed reporting on the platform launch. The Citizen Liberty<\/a> foundation continues advocating for government transparency in Panama.<\/p>\n

Users can visit the foundation’s website to explore the complete database. The tool allows searches by candidate name, political party or geographic region.<\/p>\n

Election observers have praised the initiative for closing information gaps. Private campaign funding<\/strong> has long been a sensitive topic in Panamanian politics.<\/p>\n

The 2024 election cycle saw record spending across multiple races. This new platform finally lets voters trace exactly where that money came from.<\/p>\n

De Obald\u00eda emphasized that the data belonged to citizens all along. Her foundation simply made it usable and understandable for ordinary people.<\/p>\n

“This information was already public, it already belongs to citizens, it is already transparent,” she repeated. “Now it is being presented in a way that people can actually use.” [Translated from Spanish]<\/p>\n

The platform represents a significant step forward for governmental accountability in Panama. Similar tools exist in other Latin American countries but this is a first for the nation.<\/p>\n

Foundation staff continue updating the database as new information becomes available. They plan to add historical data from previous election cycles in future phases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Panama City, Panama. A new digital tool now shows exactly how much private money funded the campaigns of Panama’s current elected authorities. The platform called “The Money Route” (La Ruta de Plata) launched this week to bring transparency to political financing. The Electoral Tribunal of Panama already held this data but it remained scattered across<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,87,392],"tags":[4151,4152,50,4150],"class_list":{"0":"post-13109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics-government","8":"category-featured","9":"category-technology","10":"tag-campaign-finance","11":"tag-campaign-finance-transparency","12":"tag-panama","13":"tag-private-campaign-funding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13114,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109\/revisions\/13114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expat-times.com\/panama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}