President Moscoso and the Supreme Court have again demonstrated why we need a new constitution, with a series of court decisions and presidential regulations that turn the Transparency Law that was signed this past January into just another lie.

Mireya took a huge delegation of more than 50 people to a summit in Madrid, and when she came back she signed regulations that make information about public officials' travel and travel expenses "confidential." She also decided that those who want information will have to show that they have some relation to the data sought, which means that the press and the general public will have no access to information about the looting that Mireya's people are carrying out as you read these words.

The time will come when this nation will have to decide how Mireya and the people around her should be punished for what they have done, and how the public trust will be reimbursed for what they took. But meanwhile the orgy of corruption continues, because the system is set up and the people are in place so that nobody has to answer for anything.

The Panamanian people need some new ways to break the politicians' stranglehold.

One reform that we need is the possibility of citizen-initiated recall elections. Panama would be a much better place if 100,000 voters' signatures on a petition could oblige Mireya Moscoso to face a recall election. She'd lose badly. Most of the legislators would be unable to withstand a recall election either. But of course, we don't have recalls, but rather a highly politicized Electoral Tribunal and an incompetent hack of an Electoral Prosecutor; an Attorney General who wears his partisan stripes on his sleeve and specializes in cover-ups; a Supreme Court that runs a legal system on the principles of bribery and influence peddling; and thus a political class with a permanent sneer stuck on its face.

The power of party caucuses to remove legislators from office is a much-criticized part of Panama's constitutional system, and it ought to go. However, the Panamanian people ought to have a constitutional right to promptly and democratically remove those politicians who serve them badly.

Another democratic reform that would help end the politicians' impunity would be initiative and referendum by voters' petitions. So a project that's against the interest was approved by a bought legislature? Those who object should have a right to put the matter to a public vote, if they can get enough signatures on a position. So the assembly won't take on some powerful special interest? Concerned voters ought to be given a way around such a legislative roadblock, by initiating legislation by petition, and having it approved or rejected by the people.

Of course, sometimes the public makes mistakes at the polls. Mireya's an excellent example of that. In places with other systems, politicans sometimes get unfairly recalled, or unwise laws get passed or worthy ones repealed by the initiative and referendum process.

In the end, we're not going to get a government that's much better than we are ourselves. But the Panamanian people ARE better than the bozos who are currently running the government. We need, and we deserve, the democratic tools to scatter the entrenched cliques and thwart their greedy plans.

The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.

Larry Niven

We have no objection to discuss the question of equality, for we feel that the weight of argument lies wholly with us, but we wish the question of equality kept distinct from the question of rights, for the proof of the one does not determine the truth of the other.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stone, and the oil age will end, but not for a lack of oil.

Zaki Yamani

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