Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. I'm John Batche with my colleague Professor Aven Ellis of the US Army War College Strategic

Studies Institute, Panama.

In the news because of a drought, the drought feeding the two lakes that contribute to the locks,

that drought is continued and reduce the traffic possible to go through the canal.

All of that contributed to a drop in income.

In addition, there is the ongoing saga of a mine

that may or may not be open. And then we have the Darien Gap, the hundreds of

thousands of seekers of a better life coming through Panama headed to the United States and now a former president condemned to be

jailed Martinelli's his name in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City defying demands by the government of Panama

to come out and begin his jail sentence. To my knowledge professor when he was

condemned he was the leading candidate for the presidency.

Is his presence in Panama City disrupting the election process?

Well, John, it could, but for the moment it has not. This is not unlike the situation in Ecuador with Julian Assange, who remained, I don't recall how many years, you know, in the Ecuadorian embassy in the United

Kingdom, essentially bothering the But the standoff could be there for quite some time because on the one hand the

Panamanian government clearly is not going to give a safe passage to Nicaragua for

for Martinelli.

And at the same time, he is clearly not going to come out

and surrender himself to Panama Authority

as an in-face the 11-year prison sentence.

And so I hope he's got a comfortable room there.

But the diplomatic tradition is that while a leader

is given asylum in an embassy. The expectation is that they will not do things to interfere in the internal politics of the country in which they're located.

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