The other day while riding the bus down the Transistmica, I saw the student radicals marching to protest the electricity shutoff at the University of Panama's Curundu campus. The usual suspects --- the Revolutionary Student Front, the Popular University Bloc, Thought and Transformative Action et al --- were aiming most of their wrath at the Union FENOSA electric company rather than the national government or the university administration.

Because the former Curundu Middle School was designed to depend on central air conditioning, its three weeks without lights did quite a bit of damage, some of it irreparable. The campus is mainly occupied by the fine arts and physical education departments, and the lack of air conditioning meant that artwork, computers and a lot of other equipment became covered with mildew. The forced removal of classes to the great outdoors was extra reason to complain.

Thus the young leftists had a good issue around which to mobilize the university, but there were significantly fewer than 100 people in the march.

That day, the daily newspapers and morning TV news shows brought word of how the night before former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares was embarrassed in a local PRD election. The party faithful in the Panama City corregimiento of San Francisco defeated Toro and his slate of would-be convention delegates, in favor of a ticket headed by former Papa Egoro legislator Bernabé Pérez.

The pundits debated what it all meant. Pérez Balladares hasn't been getting along with current party leader Martin Torrijos, and that may have been a factor. That Toro was, in his capacity as former president, assured a delegate's spot at the upcoming party convention might have also been a factor.

To me the most significant thing about Toro's setback was the 26-18 margin. About 10 percent of all Panamanians are members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, including thousands in San Francisco. Yet this was the turnout for internal elections when the party is facing some severe challenges.

Also on the TV news lately, Panamanians got to see in living color the actual theft of a ballot box for internal Arnulfista elections in Puerto Armuelles. The culprits were apparently supporters of San Miguelito legislator Gloria Young, and in the voting that was re-run in that part of Chiriqui, her faction was stomped again.

Some observers concentrated on what the funny stuff in the selection of Arnulfista convention delegates might mean for the national elections in 2004, especially when taken together with recent actions of the Electoral Tribunal and the Supreme Court. Though speculative, these are interesting and relevant conversations.

The most important thing about the Arnulfista internal elections, however, was that fewer than 10 percent of party members bothered to participate.

Panama is not beset by feverish political agitation and rioting in the streets at the moment, but do not be deceived by the calm. The lack of citizen participation in public affairs is not a matter of widespread satisfaction with the way things are, but rather of pervasive despair about the possibility of changing an unsatisfactory situation.

International business analysts and the talking heads on Panamanian television would no doubt disagree with me, but I see the widespread public apathy as a symptom of political instability. Nothing's changing, and it seems like nothing ever will, but the conditions are there for a leader or movement to come from out of nowhere and upset the precarious balance. A political system that few people are doing anything to defend is one that's amenable to collapsing like a house of card whenever the political winds pick up.

All this is a good argument for a new constitution --- or for those with public offices or political patronage sinecures to protect, a good argument against raising the subject at all. What's at stake here is the viability of Panama's democratic institutions, and the future of Panamanian democracy itself.

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