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News Business Editorial Opinion Letters Arts Reviews Community Fun Travel Galleries Calendar Outdoors Dining Science Sports Español Archive Front Page |
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The organizers of the recent human chain against corruption along Avenida Balboa didn't accomplish their announced goal of forming a human chain from the Mercado de Mariscos to the Hotel Miramar. They did, however, bring well over 1,000 people onto the streets, and this is just the middle class end of the movement --- the militant SUNTRACS construction workers union and its leftist allies didn't take part in organizing the protest and only put in a token appearance, and so far it has been precisely the leftists who have proven to be far and away the most effective at turning people out to repudiate the corruption that has Panama's public institutions in a strangle hold.
However, some of the pillars of society were to be seen in the Avenida Balboa human chain, which means fewer pillars holding a roof over the arena in which juega vivo is played. Former President Guillermo Endara and former Vice-President Ricardo Arias Calderón, erstwhile running mates and later political foes, were both there, and the nation's bar association, the Colegio de Abogados, was one of the organizations sponsoring the event. Though there might be an inclination to chalk it all up to opportunism, what the protest really meant was that politicians and professionals who have lived very well off of the unsavory way things have been for a long time are belatedly recognizing that the game has gotten way out of hand and can't continue this way for much longer.
A week later the left and the labor unions, led by the radical priest Conrado Sanjur, took to the streets to demonstrate against corruption. The politicians and professionals didn't show for that event, but there were at least three times as many people as turned out for the Avenida Balboa protest. In addition to sharing the Avenida Balboa protesters' demands that the legislators drop their immunity and corrupt individuals be run out of public life, the unions were also opposing the use the Fiduciary Fund for Development to pay off the foreign debt, neo-liberal privatization policies and "government and business arrogance."
Meanwhile, the region and the world seem to be getting less stable.
In Peru, a car bomb went off near the US Embassy, killing nine and wounding many others, and it looks like the work of Senderista rebels. That Maoist faction hadn't staged a similar attack in Lima for five years.
In Colombia the ELN rebels are about to throw in the towel (which probably won't stop the government-backed AUC paramilitary death squads from killing those who lay down their arms), while the war between FARC on the one side and the Colombian Army, AUC and US forces (most of whom are mercenary "civilian contractors") on the other is heating up. It appears that Alvaro Uribe, the independent right-wing former governor of Antioquia province who promises to fight for victory against the leftist guerrillas, will be Colombia's next president. This will make the pretense, so often asserted in the US Congress, that the conflict in Colombia is all about drugs even less tenable. A feisty little award-winning website, The Narco News, has some interesting things to report about the drug ties surrounding Uribe.
To the east of Peru and Colombia, Venezuela is seeing the sort of destabilization campaign that typically precedes a military coup. There are signs that President Hugo Chávez, who knows a thing or two about coup attempts but was democratically elected in two straight landslides, is beginning to annoy rather than inspire the public with his long-winded speeches. The most vehement opposition to Chávez, however, comes from the Caracas oligarchy whom he displaced and Miami Cuban exiles who dislike Venezuela's role as Cuba's oil supplier.
Across the Pacific Ocean, US forces are getting directly involved in the Philippines, where the government in Luzon is fighting against the Abu Sayyaf rebels on the southern islands. Abu Sayyaf is a Muslim separatist group and part of Osama bin Laden's network. Very much like the FARC, they're a bunch of thugs who count among their kidnap and murder victims a number of American citizens. There's another disturbing parallel with the Colombian situation at work here as well: the United States is stumbling into a war that has been underway, with only occasional pauses, for a very long time, and the historical realities are not being considered by American policy makers or by the mainstream news media in the states. That's foolhardy, considering that in the early part of the 20th century the United States fought a ferocious war with Filipino Muslim separatists (that's where the phrase "running amok" comes from), and considering that while Colombia has been immersed in civil conflict since 1830, the Muslim rebellion in the Philippines has been going on for some 400 years. Check out these links for American academic and Filipino Muslim perspectives on the background to the fighting into which US forces have been recently reinserted.
And what can one say about the bleeding Holy Land? Michelle Lescure touches upon that subject in our Spanish-language Opinion section. The lead article in the Spanish-language News section is Willy Carrera's coverage of the United Nations Development Program's assessment of Panama.
Willy's contribution to our English-language Business section is about recent public hearings on the subject of nuclear waste shipments that occasionally pass through the canal. Also in that section is my photo story of the Avenida Balboa anti-corruption protest.
Not everything that's happening here or in the world is negative, however. In this issue's News section we cover a small but positive factor in Panama's economic development, the work that the US Peace Corps does here.
This is cayuco racing season, so look to our Sports section if that interests you. I review a Spanish bar and restaurant on the Dining page, and our Letters and Opinion sections are, as usual, wide-ranging. The Outdoors page covers a presentation on Coiba's ecological attractions that the director of the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) made at a recent Audubon Society meeting. You should also check out the goodies in the Arts, Review and Community sections.
Is there anything to report about The Panama News? We're still deep in a financial hole, but look for an important announcement in the next issue. And by the way, we publish on the second and fourth complete weekend of each month and since March has five Fridays this year, that next issue will appear three weeks after this one, on or about April 14.
Enjoy.
