The debate about whether to call a constituent assembly as a means to reform the current Panamanian Constitution is becoming more widespread and more animated.

The Panama News approached various politicians and constitutional experts to get their opinions, above all about whether it's better to call a constituent assembly or to simply make modifications within the framework of the present constitution.

Rigoberto González Montenegro, a constitutional law professor at the University of Panama, took a cautious approach: "The constituent assembly has become so relevant and necessary a method of reform since on two distinct occasions the Legislative Assembly has approved constitutional reforms with similar results, that is, rejection or failure to gain ratification. Once it was by means of a defeated constitutional referendum and the other time for lack of majority backing in a second Legislative Assembly for constitutional reforms passed in a prior one, as happened in 1994. Thus neither reform proposal was incorporated into our constitutional order. "

"For more than 100 years, and still today, the question to answer is whether Panamanians in another epoch believed in democracy so much that they had the foresight to create a mechanism of this nature, as a peaceful and democratic means to introduce reforms in future generations. If that was not the case, then our thoughts and actions about installing a constituent assembly as a method to propose and approve constitutional reforms are the products of our own fears and uncertainties," González said.

The president of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission and former rector of the University of Panama, Carlos Iván Zúñiga, is more and more in favor of calling a constituent assembly, he said, because every constitution must represent the will of the nation.

He argued that the present constitution doesn't represent the popular will, because it's a document that was approved by a sector of the Panamanian people that was following a military movement. "A new constitution would have to count on the support of all political and social sectors to represent the national will," Zúñiga said.

According to Zúñiga, the first thing that people need to do is to erase the idea that a constituent assembly is a coup d'etat. "On the contrary," he argued, "this can be a society's most civilized work, without the need for traumas of any sort." He said that what's lacking is a consensus to begin such a national labor of political thought.

"I believe," he added, "that our country has to look to its own history. The Constitution of 1904 reflected Liberal and Conservative thinking, that is, that of the two contending forces." Now, however, Zúñiga sees a need for a wider consensus and "more participation by Panamanian society in public life."

Balbina Herrera, president of the PRD and legislator from San Miguelito, said that she supports constitutional reform and that she feels optimistic about the chances for the country to see some positive changes. "The fact that the current constitution was drafted by PRD leaders doesn't mean that we mustn't change it. If the nation demands it, we have to accommodate that," she said.

As an example of change that's needed, the legislator argued that because male chauvinist concepts still exert a strong hold on Panamanian society, women remain excluded from many opportunities. "Panama has to listen to the symphony of our new cultural reality," Herrera said.

One of the reforms that Herrera thinks is most important is to establish a new method of selecting Supreme Court magistrates. She also thinks it would be a good idea to create a Constitutional Tribunal, a court that deals exclusively with cases involving constitutional rights.

Attorney and law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal was the first prominent person to call for a constituent assembly, and he noted the public and now formal debate about a political process than can culminate in a national constituent assembly, which he said has defenders and detractors of many stripes each. "This is normal and helpful, given that such a debate is an essential part of the reflection and contest of opinions that citizens need to face the question of what kind of country we want."

The very existence of the debate that's underway, according to Bernal, shows that whether some people like it or not, a political process is necessarily leading us toward meaninful constitutional change. "Thus the detractors, conscious of the inevitable, now worry not about how to stop it but how to control it, to castrate it from the outset to get rid of its profound renovative effects." It's a matter of "change, so that nothing changes," Bernal said about the new leaf that some of the old order's defenders seem to have turned with respect to the constitution.

Arnulfista deputy José Isabel Blandón, who heads his party's caucus in the Legislative Assembly, was guarded in his opinion about whether a constituent assembly ought to be called. "It's important to call a constituent assembly," he said, "but I don't think that this is the appropriate moment to do it. To do this you must exhaustively study the changes that are going to be made, and in what sectors you are going to make them." Blandon added that if there is to be a constituent assembly, it must be due to a national consensus and must respond to the demands of the Panamanian people.

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