On April 10 at
ATLAPA, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) presented its
secretary general, Martín Torrijos, with the certificate
acknowledging that he had won its March 30 presidential
primary. More than 3,000 people, not only the party faithful
but also leaders of the allied Partido Popular, notable
independents who are supporting Torrijos and many foreign
diplomats attended. They were treated to a campaign speech that
at times seemed fiery, but which was actually very cautious.
Just about
everyone in Panama who is not on Mireya’s payroll
characterizes the current administration as corrupt and inept.
Off the record, even some of her political appointees will
admit it. This makes a tempting target for opposition
politicians, and Torrijos, the son of the late military
strongman General Omar Torrijos, didn’t resist. “In
my government,” he pledged, “the maleantes will lose
the right to visit the Presidency.”
Adding a bit
more substance to his anti-corruption platform, Torrijos said
that his first decree in office would be the repeal of
regulations that effectively make Panama’s freedom of
information legislation a dead letter. (At about the same time
that Torrijos spoke, the Supreme Court was handing down another
5-4 decision based on those regulations, holding that because
members of the general public don’t have a personal stake
in it, we have no right to know who is on the presidential
payroll or what sorts of salaries such officials make.) The PRD
standard bearer for the 2004 election also promised that his
appointees for judicial and prosecutorial posts will not come
from the legislature or the cabinet.
The anti-
corruption rhetoric, however, may not be a good vehicle to get
Torrijos to the Palacio de las Garzas. One reason for this is
that his principal rival in recent opinion polls, former
President Guillermo Endara, broke with the Mireyista wing of
his own Arnulfista Party for many of the same reasons and
accepted the Solidaridad presidential nomination. The day after
Torrijos’s speech, Endara was hanging out as he often does
at the El Trapiche restaurant on Via Argentina when an
Arnulfista delegation served him with official notice that he
had been thrown out of the party he helped found. “I
laugh,” Endara told the purge committee. Polls indicate
that no matter which of the three officially approved
Arnulfista hopefuls gets Mireya’s endorsement and hence
the party’s nomination, most rank-and-file Arnulfistas are
likely to vote for Endara. His expulsion mainly serves to set
him apart from an unpopular administration.
What pollsters
find is that Panamanians are frustrated with and disgusted by
corruption, but they are most concerned about the economy in
general and unemployment in particular. “We are going to
inherit 170,000 unemployed,” Torrijos said.
“Unemployment isn’t a statistic, it’s a
humiliation. Because of that, for me there’s no greater
priority than generating jobs.” But he didn’t say how
he might do that.
Given that the
PRD, an affiliate of the moderately leftist Social Democratic
International, is going into next year’s elections in an
alliance with the Partido Popular, who are part of the
moderately rightist Christian Democratic International, it was
prudent to be vague. Even more so, when one considers that the
PRD has a strong base of support among the poor but is led by
the rich. And then it wouldn’t do to say the wrong thing
in front of foreign diplomats, as outside economic pressures
brought to bear by foreign governments who dislike a
president’s policies can wreck the Panamanian economy and
block any effort to improve the employment situation.
On the economic
front, Torrijos did promise to repeal the tax increases that
recently went into effect. He didn’t say what his tax
policy would be, and didn’t talk about the huge tax and
rent breaks given to Panama Ports, the local subsidiary of Hong
Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa.
Torrijos also
didn’t have anything of substance to say about
Panama’s foreign policy.
A “new
social pact,” better education and less crime were all
duly promised. In the days that followed, no supporters of the
current social hierarchy, organizations of the militantly
ignorant or prominent hoodlums openly took him to task for
these declarations.
We are more
than one year away from the voting. The Arnulfistas have yet to
pick their presidential candidate and the PRD won’t fill
out the rest of its ticket until it holds another primary,
which as this issue was being uploaded El Panama America
reported will be postponed from June 29 until August 10.
Torrijos has a double-digit lead over Endara, with the
Arnulfista hopefuls all registering in single digits and
supermarket baron Ricardo Martinelli well positioned to move
into third place. All of that can change dramatically by
Election Day, so between now and then Martín Torrijos
may yet be forced to put more of his cards on the
table.
Also in this
section:
Panama News Briefs
Martín Torrijos kicks
off his campaign
