Martín Torrijos

Martín Erasto Torrijos Espino is a Panamanian politician who served as the 35th President of Panama from 1 September 2004 to 1 July 2009. Born on 18 July 1963 in Chitré, Herrera Province, he is the son of General Omar Torrijos, the military leader who negotiated the 1977 treaties returning the Panama Canal to Panamanian sovereignty.

Educated at St. John's Military School in Kansas and Texas A&M University, where he earned a degree in political science and economics, he later worked in the United States for the McDonald's Corporation before returning to Panama to enter politics through his father's Democratic Revolutionary Party. He served as deputy minister of government and justice from 1994 to 1998 under President Ernesto Pérez Balladares.

After losing the 1999 presidential election to Mireya Moscoso, he won decisively in 2004 with about 47 percent of the vote. His administration negotiated a free trade agreement with the United States, signed into law a fiscal and social-security reform, and most consequentially launched the Panama Canal expansion project approved by referendum in October 2006, a multi-billion-dollar undertaking that doubled the waterway's cargo capacity when completed in 2016.

Constitutionally barred from immediate re-election, he left office in 2009 and ran again in 2024 under the Popular Party, finishing well behind the winner. He has remained a significant figure in Panamanian opposition politics.

The name Martín is the Spanish form of Martin, derived from the Latin Martinus, itself from Mars, the Roman god of war. The fourth-century soldier-bishop Saint Martin of Tours popularised the name across Europe, and he has carried it through a political life dominated by his family's canal legacy.