Spadafora's unfit for the high court
Granted, there is the occasional phenomenon of the sleazy politician or mediocre
individual who gets appointed to a judicial post and then surprises everyone
by shedding old prejudices and acquiring previously hidden wisdom on the bench.
Possibly the most outstanding example of that in Anglo-American law was Franklin
Roosevelt's appointment of Hugo Black to the US Supreme Court. Shortly after
Black's confirmation to that lifetime post, it was revealed that he had been
a member of the Ku Klux Klan as a young adult, and there was a great hue and
cry. Years later, when the struggles for civil rights made their way to the
high court, it turned out that Hugo Black was no friend to the cause of white
racism, but rather was one of the great champions of equal justice under the
law.
Still, a potential member of any nation's supreme court should be subjected
to great scrutiny before ascending to the bench, because a judicial system's
reputation, from its top tribunal down, is one of the principal factors that
determines whether a democracy is strong or ephemeral. In Panama the rule of
corruption and influence in the judicial and prosecutorial branches of our legal
system is probably the single factor that weakens our democracy more than any
other, and that needs to change if the post-invasion democracy is to consolidate
and endure.
Former Government and Justice Minister Winston Spadafora, who quit that post
in anticiaption of President Moscoso's nomination to become a magistrate on
the Supreme Court, is not the man Panama's legal system needs to lead it to
credibility. He showed no inclination toward reform as a minister, when there
were many things he could have done to reduce the systematic corruption that
plagues this country. His campaign for the high court is as unbecoming as it
is unprecedented, especially when he accuses the PRD and Partido Popular caucuses,
who say that they have a majority of Legislative Assembly votes lined up to
block him, of undermining Panama's governability.
His jailing of the publisher of the satirical La Cascara News for criminal
defamation and crimes against state security belie the same egotistical confusion
of personal interests and the public business. The offending items may have
been in bad taste, but Spadafora's use of state power to strike out at those
who insulted him and the president he serves was a flagrant example of how the
legal system is abused by government officials who put private interests and
allegiances ahead of the public interest.
It's really not possible to minimize Spadafora's reaction to La Cascara's
cover as a mistake made in anger over an insult, when one considers the criminal
charges he brought against El Panama America journalists for reporting the construction
of a rural road that mostly serves his farm and one owned by Comptroller General
Alvin Weeden. And then there was Spadafora's attempt to license journalists,
using criteria that would conveniently ban most of his critics.
We need to eliminate that sort of thinking from our courts, and for that reason
the Spadafora nomination should be soundly rejected.
Bear in mind...
If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends.
You talk to your enemies.
Moshe Dayan
Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
Elizabeth I
To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything
else.
Burnadette Devlin McAliskey
