Mireya Elisa Moscoso Rodríguez de Arias (born July 1, 1946) is a Panamanian politician who served as the President of Panama from 1999 to 2004. She is the country's first female president. Born into a rural family, Moscoso became active in the 1968 presidential campaign of three-time president Arnulfo Arias, following and marrying him when he went into exile after a military coup. After his death in 1988, she assumed control of his coffee business and later his political party, the Arnulfista Party (PA). During the 1994 general elections for the presidency, she narrowly lost to the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Ernesto Pérez Balladares by 4% of the vote. In the 1999 general election, she defeated the PRD candidate Martín Torrijos by 8% to become Panama's first female presi