Panama’s supermarket magnate, Ricardo Martinelli, a center-right candidate, won in a landslide Presidential election over populist candidate Balbina Herrera a leftist, in a region that has most recently experienced a surge in left-leaning governments.

Electoral Tribunal President Erasmo Pinilla called Martinelli the “indisputable winner” after preliminary results showed him with 61 percent support and governing party candidate Balbina Herrera with 37 percent. Former President Guillermo Endara was a distant third. The winner was announced with 87 percent of the votes counted.

The U.S.-educated, pro-business Martinelli, 57, who owns Panama’s largest supermarket chain, said he would work for a national unity government because “that is what the country is counting on.”

“Tomorrow we will all be Panamanians and we will change this country so that it has a good health system, good education, good transportation and good security,” he said.

When I visited the country a few months ago, I wrote that Herrera was similar to Obama in experience (she had been a mayor and a housing minister but no real experience outside of government) and Martinelli built a supermarket empire in the tiny country from scratch.

My brother-in-law, a small business owner supported Martinelli, while my hippie sister-in-law who still preaches to me about US imperialism, was all-in for Balbina if that gives you an idea of who was in who’s camp.

Of course, with a Free Trade Agreement making it’s way through the US Congress, it was risky for Panamanians to vote in a right-leaning government that may suffer the ire of the leftist US government like the the Uribe government of Colombia has suffered. But, in the case of Panama, Congress may just push the isthmus into China’s sphere of influence. Let’s see if Obama can not screw this up.