Bad move, President Varela

Two heads of state are meeting and celebrating in Panama. The local Venezuelan community, strongly anti-Chavista, cheers one and is annoyed by the other. President Juan Carlos Varela joins with Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s Mauricio Macri to call for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government. Pope Francis, elected monarch of a tiny physical realm in the Vatican but commanding vast property holdings and a huge loyal following around the world, declines to intervene.

Panama has its interests and imperatives, and so does the Holy See. What we see is the pope more effectively defending what is Catholic than the president defending what is Panamanian.

Vladimir Putin is warning against foreign military intervention in Venezuela. Mostly it’s a bluff. In the short run there is little he could do. He could, however, in the wake of an invasion send money and guns to insurgents in Venezuela and all around the region, causing a lasting series of headaches and heartaches.

So do we hear, from the USA, neoconservatives cheering for an intervention and a Cold War II? Those people urged a prolonged war and “nation building” remake in Afghanistan, which the United States has effectively lost. They were architects of the invasion of Iraq, which the United States lost. They cheered on the invasion of Libya, which has resulted not in a stable government there but jihad across much of Africa and a terrible refugee crisis. They were for the Syria intervention, which the United States has lost. They were among the instigators of the Ukrainian coup, which led to Ukraine’s dismemberment.

Through its long history, the Catholic Church has also dealt with comparable fanatic factions. In its more recent history it teamed up with conservative politicians, the CIA and gangsters to organize a network of Christian Democratic parties, originally for the purpose of keeping communists from winning elections in Italy in the aftermath of World War II. It eventually morphed into many a scandal in many a nation that featured misbehaving center-right politicians hiding behind religious labels and symbols. The Vatican now pronounces on many moral issues with political angles, but stays out of partisan politics. The Catholic Church still holds to the doctrine that sometimes war is justified, but it has been a long time since it has pronounced that some armed conflict is one of these.

Who else is staying out of the Venezuelan dispute? China is. Although it has large investments there and President Xi has shown cordial relations with President Maduro, you don’t hear belligerent warnings from the Forbidden City, like you do from the Kremlin. China is in the region to do business, not to impose political solutions. They will deal with whoever is in control of a government with few moral or ideological constraints. But Beijing, not Moscow, is the predominant Old World power in the Americas now. In the economic sphere they have already eclipsed the United States.

It’s not a matter of a few powers bullying Venezuela while another power rants and most others stand by. Juan Guaidó’s claim the presidency of Venezuela gets scant international recognition. If Varela is siding with Brazil and Argentina on this question, he’s also siding against Mexico and Uruguay. The Panamanian position is controversial right across the region, both among heads of state and in the internal politics of Latin American nations.

So is Panama gambling, betting that Maduro will fall? Perhaps it may even be a winning bet. Perhaps, even before any foreign mobilization, the Venezuelan military will take over.

But Panama’s neutrality is once again compromised by Varela. That nobody should have a reason to attack the Panama Canal, or shut off commerce with or through Panama, is one of the cornerstones of Panamanian national security. Whether it’s backing this intervention or hobnobbing with oil sheikhs who are waging a genocidal Sunni jihad against Yemen, Varela’s aligning foreign policy moves are unwise.

He picks a fight with Nancy Pelosi? That’s not smart. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

A time to fight, not cave

No money for a wall. No approval for a distracting war. No free pass for criminal activity, past or ongoing. Democrats in Congress should stand together and hold out.

Yes, there are limitations to the power of a House of Representative as lined up against the Senate and the White House. But the House does hold the purse strings.

Are figures of the past, Democrat and Republican, talking about both parties bickering and urging one party to capitulate? With a foreign-backed grifter in the White House, this is not the time to cave.

To fight does not mean to punch away all energy in the first round. Hold on until the government reopens without wall funding, then dig into all the data, question all witnesses, explore all angles in an impeachment process that may take two years before any vote. 

A worthy impeachment investigation would involve so much more than inviting foreign meddling, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, fraud, money laundering and racketeering. To deal with the full enormity, whether to impeach or to form a record from which to legislate, representatives should look at many hues and shades of conflict of interest, some involving the foreign emoluments clause and some not. Whether the deployment of bots under faked or stolen identities for the purpose of social media campaigns amounts to a high misdemeanor under the Constitution needs to examined by legal, technical and communications experts. Whether the delegation of power to send US forces to war in any African country to a military officer is an impeachable infringement of the reservation of war powers to the Congress is one matter, but it also may be a proper subject of legislation.

This tawdry hustler has done so many improper things in so short a time, and back over many decades. There would be a temptation to match his pace. It would be better to take the time to fully document the things that he has done and expose them before the American people.

It’s a time to fight, yes. But to fight smart.

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Should Panamanians postpone all arguments for the pope’s visit here?

There are calls — for the sakes of politeness, Panama’s reputation, the economy, security against subversives and terrorists and what have you — to put off political disputes while the many thousands of pilgrims and Pope Francis whom they have come to see and hear are in this country. 

We could embarrass ourselves in the eyes of the world in many ways. Panama has a talent for that which surfaces from time to time anyway.

However, retirees say that during the papal visit they will continue their protests for a raise in their benefits. Members of the local Venezuelan community are annoyed at the Vatican’s decision to be represented at Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration — even though the opposition that most of that community here supports decided to boycott the elections. A lot of other people, some due to basic theological differences, others incensed by the child abuse scandals that have been rocking the church for years, are taking this as the season to say nasty things about the Catholic Church or its pontiff.

Nobody should lose his or her freedom of expression on account of a religious event. As a matter of law — if Panama actually does have the rule of law — no such ban could be legally enforced. Righteous criticism of religious authorities is at least as old as Christianity. If you look at world or Panamanian history, it’s something for which many people died.

However, as a matter of persuading people to support a cause, it’s smart politics to tone down any protests as the World Youth Day pilgrimage unfolds. It’s a matter of ordinary politeness to do so.

What’s the biggest danger? We will probably know that in hindsight. But one foreseeable problem would be that one or more of the branches of government would use the distraction of the papal visit to do some infamous thing. Better if the National Assembly and the Supreme Court hold no sessions, and President Varela issue no decrees, while Pope Francis is here.

They shot the man dead. But not his dream.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of rather ordinary frailties, a mortal who could be and was killed. The spiritual heirs of those who hated him have finally placed one of their champions in the White House.

Lots of damage has been and is being done, but that’s likely to be ephemeral. For every white supremacist there are two Americans who have taken the most salient points of King’s message to heart.

We pay our respects on what would have been the birthday of a man who was slain nearly 51 years ago. But wherever there are Americans, his truth goes marching on. 

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Let’s behave well for our young visitors

 The kinds of ugliness that might happen are predictable in our times and place. Young Catholic pilgrims from all over the world, coming to Panama for World Youth Day. The kids getting gouged on taxi and even bus fares. Businesses raising their prices for the occasion, mostly at the expense of people who live here but with this, that or the other excuse. Vile xenophobes venting against the young foreigners.

Mostly these young people will not have much money. But if they are treated will and enjoy their stay they may come back in a few years as more ordinary tourists with more money to spend.

 World Youth Day will be a fleeting event. It will not be a sufficient show of piety to maintain Juan Carlos Varela’s Panameñista Party in control of the presidential palace. It may, if things turn out right, be a worthwhile investment in that intangible but quite valuable asset, Panama’s reputation.

Be courteous, be helpful, be protective.  It’s not only the decent thing to do, it’s a necessary defense of Panama.

Continuing crimes against privacy and election integrity

In the run-up to the 2014 elections we learned that the Martinelli team was using a sophisticated computerized campaign list that contained data that could have only come from the government, which by law had a duty to keep that stuff confidential. Who was on the government payroll, who received which public benefits, who is related to whom, those sorts of things from the Electoral Tribunal and from the various ministries.

At the time the response was that Martinelli did not abuse the public trust in the way that it appeared, that such lists can be privately bought. But then, that would just mean the receipt of stolen property, if one wanted to look at it that way. Buying a list of stolen government data is still the illegal use of confidential information.

Ricardo Martinelli’s Electoral Prosecutor Eduardo Peñaloza could not be bothered. 

Now we have seen more than a million signatures submitted by independent candidates for president, and several of these hopefuls have submitted forged signatures of names taken from confidential Electoral Tribunal data. One candidate even admitted it, and a couple of others are likely to say that they paid these contractors to gather signature and know nothing about how they did it.

So the election crimes of 2014 continue into 2019, with little prospect of any serious and impartial investigation, let alone enforcement of our laws. It’s somewhere along the slippery slope from a flawed democracy to a failed state.

Bear in mind…

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