There's a dance band on the Titanic...
Its conductor is Mireya Moscoso. Despite any dissonance you may hear on the surface, the band comes from across the partisan spectrum and plays in tight harmony on the corruption issue.
According to the president, it's just an internal problem for the PRD when there are allegations that an important piece of legislation, one by which Panama incurs obligations for decades to come, has been procured by bribery. By sharing her thought with the nation, Mireya Moscoso emphasized her failure as a leader.
Panama is stuck in a bad economy, all attempts to get out of the rut are sabotaged by persistent corruption in the government as well as in the private sector, and meanwhile the woman who is supposed to be our leader tells us that all is well.
Beyond all the mudslinging, the tacit agreement among factions of Panama's political class is shown most clearly by both the administration's and the legislature's decision to renege on this country's treaty commitment under the Inter-American Anti-Corruption Convention to make it a crime for a person to amass unexplained wealth while holding a public office. The political parties, while brawling with one another for the TV cameras, are maintaining a wall of silence in defense of their illicit privileges, and thus the legislation required by the treaty will come before neither the assembly nor the cabinet.
All is NOT well, and waiting until 2004 for a new party to take the presidency is only an attractive solution for fools.
Martin Torrijos will have his party purge, and PRD legislators accused by Afú will be "exonerated" after an "investigation" that is already biased on its face. All for naught --- people will still know that although the presumptive PRD presidential candidate shares his father's surname, he hasn't shown much in the way of leadership. If it's not too late, it's time for the PRD to start looking for another standard bearer in the next elections.
It's also time for the Panamanian people to think about conducting the next elections under different rules, and maybe at a different time. The nation should convene a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, and it would be best if that body displaced the Moscoso administration, the current Legislative Assembly and our discredited Supreme Court before 2004.
And what of the current flurry of accusations that has captured the nation's attention? We should examine not only at the allegations, but also pay attention to the explict admissions, the implicit admissions, and the accusations that have been met with counter-charges or insults but not forthright denials. To wit:
* Carlos Afú has admitted that he took money that was intended as a bribe. That may call his other claims into question, but those allegations are serious, may well be true and should be fully investigated by competent and trustworthy people.
* Mireya Moscoso, Miguel Bush and Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque have all implicitly admitted that they violated the Constitution, by holding or approving public concessions in which legislators own interests. Note that among Miguel Bush's red herring "defenses" he claims that a company owned by Arnulfista legislator Francisco Ameglio has the contract to collect garbage in the Colon Free Zone, and that the latter's "response" was not a denial, but an offer to put aside his legislative immunity if Bush does likewise. ALL of the unconstitutional government contracts and concessions must be revealed and voided.
* Mireya Moscoso's stonewalling in the infamous HP-1430 helicopter incident is just one more indication that she or people at the top of her administration are parties to an insurance fraud scheme. Her refusal to talk about it should in no way be allowed to end the matter.
* Accusations by the PRD's leadership that the votes of Carlos Afú, Carlos Alvarado and Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque for Mireya's high court nominees were obtained by bribery, blackmail or conflict of interest ought to be investigated. However, such charges can't stick if all there is to back them is a presumption that these three legislators must have had corrupt motives. Afú explicitly denies the charge, so now it's up to the accusers to show some proof.
Bear in mind...
The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.
Celia Green
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee
By the protection of the law human rights are secured; withdraw that protection, and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers, or the clamor of an excited people.
US Supreme Court,
in ex part Milligan (1866)
