Executive Committee, the PRD's top governing organism. In 2008 he was re-elected into the National Executive Committee as the most voted member. In September 2008, he participated in his party's primaries for President against the then Housing Minister, Balbina Herrera. He was defeated by 4%, thus losing an election for the first time in his political career. Even though he had lost the primaries, he had almost half the party supporting his candidacy and this led Balbina Herrera to nominate him as Vice-Presidential candidate in the PRD ticket for the 2009 presidential election. In that election the PRD and Balbina Herrera lost to Ricardo Martinelli and Juan Carlos Varela by a wide margin. This led Juan Carlos Navarro to call for all the National Executive Committee members to resign based on the poor election results. In October 2009, Juan Carlos Navarro resigned his post as First Under Secretary in the National Executive Committee and shortly thereafter all other members resigned, including Balbina Herrera and then Secretary-General Martin Torrijos. In 2012, Juan Carlos Navarro was elected Secretary-General of the PRD, the top post in the party's structure. The political movement he led won all 10 posts of the National Executive Committee; it was the first time in history that all 10 posts were held by the same party. In March 2013 he participated once again in his party's primaries for President against 17 other candidates and won with over 95% of the vote. In the 2014 Presidential elections, he came third with 28% of the vote. Even though Navarro lost the election, the party won a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly. For this reason, after the election Navarro negotiated a legislative pact called "Panama Primero" with President-elect Juan Carlos Varela to secure that many of the projects proposed during his campaign would become a reality. These proposals include the Minister for Environmental Issues and a complete decentralization of the government. Once the legislative pact was finalized, Navarro resigned his post as Secretary General of the PRD accepting his responsibility for the election results. On July 10, 2018, Navarro once again registered to participate in the PRD primaries, which were to be held on September 16 of the same year. He aspired to be chosen as his party's presidential candidate for the General Elections to be held on May 5, 2019. Navarro announced on August 21, 2018 that he was