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Giving credit...
The painting shown above is not the work of a professional artist. It was done for high school credit by Marlenis Martínez, a student artist who is profiled in the Arts section of this issue. Our Travel section is also about the arts, and about giving credit to one of Panama's main historical figures, Dr. Arnulfo Arias. Is the monument in Balboa a gaudy monstrosity or recognition due a man who was four times elected president, but never allowed to serve a full term? That's a heavily loaded question, and the answer that any individual Panamanian gives is very likely to be a reflection of his or her politics.
In this issue, the Editorial questions the policies of Dr. Arias's widow with respect to Colombia, and my column in the Opinion section casts doubt on her capacity to defend Panamanian interests in free trade negotiations. But even though I didn't and wouldn't vote for her, President Moscoso ought to get credit where it's due.
And it is due to her for recent strokes of her veto pen. The Legislative Assembly, scraping the bottom with single-digit approval ratings in recent public opinion polls, closed out its last regular session with a series of unwise and demagogic measures, four of which the president vetoed.
In the face of its unanimous approval by the legislators, she disallowed the press law, which even in its watered-down form was obnoxious and insulting. Mireya rightly pointed out the similarities of the proposed National Journalism Council with the Noriega-era journalist licensing board. Had she wanted to get really strident about it, she could have truthfully said nasty things about several of its principal proponents. She passed on the vilification but called the legislation "inconvenient" and cast her veto. Good for her.
The president also vetoed a measure that would have forgiven the home loans that the state-owned Banco Hipotecario has made. This giveaway, which would have largely gone to people who obtained loans via their political connections, would have effectively destroyed the bank. Moscoso wants to reform the bank rather than make it disappear, so she couldn't approve the legislation.
Was that an act of hypocrisy, given the president's giveaways to port companies? Probably. Still, it was the right thing to do, even if some of the other things she has done have been wrong.
Our Letters section this time includes a most interesting letter from former employees of the Marc Harris Organisation. It feels good to see an unsolicited defense when I get accused of yellow journalism. Our Letters section is open to people who take the opposite point of view, so maybe we'll read more about this subject in upcoming issues.
The Opinion section is also open to diverse points of view. I believe that we are unique in having among our regular columnists someone who was a publicist for the State of Israel (Willy Gutman) and someone who did publicity work for the Palestinian cause (me). In this issue Willy takes a stand on US moves to depose Saddam Hussein, an opinion that I don't particularly share. We also hear a most eloquent plea from a leader of the Israeli peace movement, Yitzhak Frankenthal.
Also in this issue's Opinion pages, we begin The Caribbean This Week as a regular feature. Most Panamanians who speak English as their first langauge trace their roots to the Antilles. Despite the government's refusal to acknowledge it, Panama is a Caribbean country too.
In our Spanish-language Opinion section, current and former phone utility workers go public with their protest against Cable & Wireless. On the News side of our Spanish section, we document a flagrant health hazard --- created by the Ministry of Health, not far from the US Embassy.
Our lead Business story is about ourselves. We reveal some of the data about The Panama News's online circulation, and talk about some of the figures that we don't have but wish we did. I think this makes us the only Panamanian online publication that comes clean about our readership. I am fairly certain that some of the claims made by other websites that make their money from ad sales or government sponsorship are wildly exaggerated, but so be it. Any advertiser who wants complete access to all the web activity figures we have should contact me about it. I'm not hiding anything.
This issue's Review section features a worthy Vietnam memoir by Patrick Dockery, who grew up in Margarita.
Notice the new buttons in the News and Opinion sections. I aim to make this newspaper more complete, and I hope you like it.
Eric Jackson
the editor
