President José Raúl Mulino joined the debate about the Municipal Police of the Mayor’s Office of Panama.
He did so on Saturday August 8 through his X account, with a message that requested that his new security body “lay down.” “I’m against the new concept of municipal police. That was born to care for parks and monuments and cannot be transformed into another police,” the president wrote.
Mulino went beyond and described the body as unconstitutional and warned about its impact on the rest of the country.
“Besides unconstitutional, every mayor can do the same and would be a disaster, apart from uniforms that get confused with the PRI. I hope that will come to an end,” he added, with reference to the Institutional Protection Service, the office with responsibility for his office’s security.
That was the most powerful decision of the Executive since his Ministry of Public Security, by Frank Abrego, filed with the Third Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court an application for nullity against Agreement 162 of 2025, the rule that gave life to the Municipal Police.
The case, admitted on 3 July, is at the hands of the judge María Cristina Chen, President of the Court.
The Agreement 162, adopted by the Municipal Council on June 17, 2025 at the request of the mayor Mayer Mizrachi, transformed the old body of municipal monitors, established to safeguard parks, markets and property of the municipality, into a structure with ranges of police and military tradition.
The law also allows its agents to carry “short and long firearms, other than war weapons,” conduct body searches, search vehicles and apprehend citizens, powers that, according to the Ministry of Security, invades powers that are reserved by the Constitution to state security stations.
The National Police had earlier filed an application for an unconstitutionality against the same agreement and that had been rejected.
The role of the Municipal Police was at the centre of the public agenda after the events of Monday 3 August, when the former mayor’s office Alberto Llerena was wounded at his head after a tripple with local officials at the Hatillo Building, headquarters of the Municipality of Panama, during a protest about payment of benefits.
Llerena remains hospitalized at St. Thomas’s Hospital.
Mizrachi himself recognized that “the performance of the Municipal Police was not exactly what I have been expecting from a police force that’s deterring.” The Office of the Ombudsman opened an investigation into his assault and his lawyer and his former officials have accused his mayor, his mayor and his agent.
The deputy mayor on leave Roberto Ruiz Díaz has said that the agreement invades the powers of the National Police and that the body “loses the reason for its creation, that it was to safeguard the local property.” To date, the mayor’s office of Panama has not responded to the president’s message.
