Editorial

No Sympathy

As the Moscoso administration approaches its final quarter, supermarket baron Ricardo Martinelli has pulled out of the unpopular governing alliance in hopes of salvaging a political future. In Panama City's municipal government, Jair Martínez and Joaquín Vásquez of the PRD city council caucus have joined with the Arnulfistas and MOLIRENA to oppose their own party's mayor and advance their personal fortunes.

Thus President Moscoso purged members of Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party from the national payroll. Thus Mayor Navarro fired Martínez's and Vásquez's followers from the jobs they held with the city. We're now hearing shrill protests in each case.

There are valid arguments for and against political patronage. A city's or nation's top executive has a legitimate interest in hiring people who will carry out his or her policies. However, people who get their jobs on the basis of loyalty to a political leader often act as if their positions are rewards for campaign work that imply no commitment to public service.

In Mireya Moscoso's case, there has been no executive control over the negative aspects of political patronage. She tolerates just about every scam in which her entourage indulges. She let everyone know this early on in her administration, when her immigration director summarily deported his Nicaraguan maid over a labor dispute and had a job the next day.

Juan Carlos Navarro also runs a political patronage system, but for him anything does not go. When a functionary ordered a house razed while the court case about the matter was still pending, that person's prompt dismissal sent the message that Mireya's standards don't apply in city government.

At both the municipal and national levels, we need to replace the political patronage system with a civil service meritocracy. Given the accumulated abuses of successive administrations, it will take some extraordinary transitional measures to get from the current messy situation to where Panama should be.

Let us ponder the necessary reforms without shedding tears for the Cambio Democratico members who lost their jobs at the Ministry of Canal Affairs. Jerry Salazar's crowd is surely no improvement, but none of Ricardo Martinelli's minions thought it so unjust when people from the prior government were sacked to make space for them.

We also shouldn't be moved by the protests of representantes Martínez and Vásquez and their followers. They played the game of spoils to the victor and it was fine with them until their winning streak came to an end.

The basic fallacy that underlies the former political patronage recipients' complaint is the idea that a public sector job is a political activist's private right. There is no such right.

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