Even those with the most stamina and tolerance get tired. Mary
Ellen Powers, who put in a long run after a long swim and a long bicycle ride
at the Portobelo Triathlon, demonstrates that
concept above. It also applies to other aspects of life. To wit:
• News media get tired when, instead of reporting the
news and letting the chips fall where they may, they constantly twist the
facts and omit important details in order to support some leader or faction.
This country's oldest newspaper, La Estrella, is now Arnulfista but
has never recovered from the time that the Duque family made it an apologist
for Manuel Antonio Noriega. Panama's leading broadsheet daily, La Prensa,
has just changed its political orientation from Bobby Eisenmann's to that
of the Christian Democrat - PRD alliance. If the overt campaign pledges to
cut the top-salaried people, get rid of foreign journalists and take foreign
news off the front page are carried out, La Prensa's decline will be
acute. The winning side's implicit promises to end all reporting that makes
Christian Democrat or PRD politicians look bad will, if kept, gradually drive
many readers away. If the losing side's prediction that La Prensa will
now become a cheering section for one Ernesto Pérez Balladares comes
to pass, the readers won't be slow about changing their habits. On the other
hand, if the new management wants to maintain profits and readership, it will
have to disappoint folks like Toro and Ricardo Arias Calderón in the
long run.
• A regime gets tired, no matter its political orientation
or the nature of its leaders' intentions, after being in office too long.
Fidel Castro, for example, is a healthy septuagenarian, but the party structure
that upholds his rule is riddled with weak sycophants who have always said
what their superiors wanted to hear, but probably won't be able to face the
challenge of the post-Castro era. In the long run that will be a blessing
for the Cuban left, which will remain an important political force long after
the caudillo has passed from the scene and his party has lost its power.
• Aristocracies get tired, even provincial ones like Panama's
elite families. Panama has a whiter cabinet than the last apartheid-era South
African government did, and with the results we see, the notion that only
members of a few dozen elite families from among this country's less than
10 percent white minority are capable of leading should now be discredited
for at least another generation.
• Unwinnable wars generally tire several entire nations
at a time. The question now before this region is which impossible mission,
the US War on Drugs or Colombia's never-ending civil conflict —both of
which are manifestly futile and covered with furry mold —will crumble
into dust first. My hunch is that a generation from now the War on Drugs will
be talked about in the past tense but rural Colombia will still live in terror.
Ah, but I hope that The Panama News doesn't get tired.
We're into our seventh year of publication, and though times are hard, we
plan to be around for many years to come.
After several strongly cultural issues in a row, this edition
of The Panama News Online goes heavy on the sports, such that some
stories that would normally go in the sports section have been placed elsewhere
for convenience. Our cover story on the Portobelo
Triathlon is in the sports section, but we have more coverage of the athletic
and cultural action from Portobelo over in the travel
section. Look for the report on the Gamboa
cayuco regatta, held this year at the beautiful and well maintained Gamboa
Rainforest Resort, in the outdoors section. The International
School's walkathon for literacy was arguably an athletic endeavor, but
it's covered in the community section.
And yes, we do cover the news, the economy and the arts in
this issue. G. Vega takes a glance at an anti-abortion
march (it's illegal here, and the marchers want to keep it that way),
Willy Carrera previews the upcoming CADE national
business executives' summit, and we go to the San Felipe Festival to see
architect Ignacio Mallol as an artist. I briefly
review a Lebanese restaurant in Colon and the
Theatre Guild of Ancon's rendition of the female version of
"The Odd Couple."
Our opinion and editorial
sections both touch on the critical national issue of modernizing the Panama
Canal, the former with a Catholic perspective on the charge that Mexico's
Zapatista guerrillas are infiltrating communities in which most people don't
want to be displaced, the latter with an editorial about transparency in the
process. The letters touch upon that mundane
but no less infuriating irritant, the IDAAN water utility, and journalist
Gary Webb's appeal for a colleague faced with legal harassment.
In our fun section we not only feature the wit and wisdom of
Sparky the Wonder Dog, but we also have buttons
that link you to a great selection of comic
strips, editorial cartoons
and crosswords from the English-language
press all over the world. Check them out —you may want to bookmark them,
or even set your browser to open on one of these links pages. It's hard to
get tired when you're laughing.
