Are your rights
as a human being divisible? Can you be somewhat free, and
somewhat in bondage? Are you really free if your liberty depends
on someone else’s oppression?
These are
philosophical questions that humanity has long debated, and
equally persistent practical considerations. Yes, Abraham
Lincoln was right to point out the futility of a nation’s
attempt to exist half slave and half free. But then no woman is
free when a serial rapist who ought to be confined behind bars
prowls her neighborhood.
Here in Panama,
we have plural news media. La Prensa and El Siglo tilt toward
the PRD-Partido Popular alliance as do the Telemetro and RPC
broadcast networks. El Panama America and La Critica are guided
more by family loyalties than partisan commitments, and are
generally conservative. La Estrella is Arnulfista, and the state-
owned Canal Once educational television network and Radio
Nacional are likewise Arnulfista and MOLIRENA propaganda
outlets. The Catholic Church has the FETV television station and
the weekly Panorama Catolico. For adolescent male humor and
satire that’s occasionally very good, there’s La
Cascara News. The TVN television network’s politics are
generally better understood in terms of kinship than party
affiliation, but they do tilt toward the PRD a bit. The Chinese
community has two newspapers and a radio station. Then
there’s this little publication, which is tries to serve
the English-speaking community and, to the extent that hard
times have turned it mostly into a one-man show, is too skewed
to the idiosyncrasies of the old hippie panagringo who wrote the
words you are presently reading. So yes, it might be said that
we have freedom of the press here.
Except that Jean
Marcel Chéry and Gustavo Aparicio were recently convicted
of a crime for their truthful report about a rural road project
that served the purposes of Supreme Court magistrate Winston
Spadafora (at the time of the story minister of government and
justice) and Comptroller General Alvin Weeden. The trial judge
didn’t want to hear truth as a defense --- after all, the
complainant, Winston Spadafora, is now his superior and he could
lose his job by ruling the “wrong” way. This is by no
means the only example of journalists facing unfair legal
harassment by the pompous political class or by economic
elitists who believe that reporters should be obedient lap dogs
and the law is their rolled up newspaper. More than one-third of
us face, or have faced, criminal defamation charges that would
be laughed out of court in most other countries.
Chéry’s and Aparicio’s conviction is the
subject of our Editorial, and of columns by Reporters Without Borders in our English-language
Opinion section and by Journalists Against Corruption in our Spanish-
language Opinion section. This journalist stands in full
solidarity with these wronged colleagues.
The New York-
based Committee to Protect Journalists
didn’t have any immediate reaction to the convictions, and
I wondered why. I asked them, via email. It turns out that they
are very concerned, but their Americas director was away in
Haiti, where journalists get assassinated and radio stations get
trashed and burned for expressing the “wrong”
opinions. While doing that, he was preoccupied with the
situation in Cuba, where Fidel Castro has recently jailed a
bunch of independent journalists under harsh conditions for long
terms, and in Colombia, where journalism is deformed by the
presence of many of its practitioners on paramilitary hit
lists.
So maybe we
journalists in Panama are “somewhat free.” Our
situation could be much worse. Still, Spadafora’s supposed
defense of his alleged honor is an affront to Panamanian
journalism and to free people everywhere.
And meanwhile in
the Darien, we have a pathetic legislator calling for ethnic
cleansing and inciting invasions of an Embera community’s
land. In my Opinion section column, I take a look at the whole
phenomenon of land invasions through the eyes of someone who once
served on a building code appeals board, and on a city council
in a community where enraged crowds would occasionally descend
on city hall to harangue us about planning and zoning issues.
The deputy from
the Darien was not to be outdone. An Arnulfista colleague from
the metro area, despite his six-figure annual legislative pay
and benefits package, was stealing electricity and pulled a gun
on the electric company workers who showed up at his home to cut
off his illegal hookup to the power grid. And meanwhile in the
PRD primaries, the discredited Legislative Assembly suffered the
first political casualties of the 2004 elections.
And then we have
new developments on the international arms for the Colombian AUC death squads scandal, and
another episode of the Marc Harris saga.
So you might
reasonably ask “Don’t you have anything positive to
report?” And in fact I do. Most of the original reporting
that I have done for this issue is upbeat. On the Community
page, I check out the efforts that Casa Esperanza is making for Panama’s neediest
kids and their families. The Internet sites, restaurant and concert that I review all struck me positively. My News
coverage of a talk that former Vice-President Ricardo Arias Calderón gave to the Panama Historical
Society, my Business section article on the various presidential
candidates’ positions on free trade talks, and my inclusion of Guillermo Endara’s column on the bus transportation
situation are all intended to allow the various contenders in
Panama’s political debate to have their say the way they
want to say it, setting aside my own skeptical attitudes and
snide comments for the time being.
The National
Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) recently
celebrated its 18th anniversary, a milestone that’s duly
noted in our Spanish section. Meanwhile, CBS just finished production
of its “Survivor” adventure show in the Perlas Islands
and will start to broadcast it in North America on September 18.
How are these stories related? Our neighbors will see Panama as
this tropical paradise, which is part of the truth, and ANCON
has been working all of these years to conserve and restore that
reality. For glimpses of what ANCON has been defending ---
photos courtesy of ANCON --- see our Travel and Outdoors pages.
This issue falls
in a month with five Fridays, which means that, in keeping with
our first and third weekend of every month publication schedule,
there will be three weeks rather than the usual two between this
issue and the next one. It will be a little bit of a respite for
me, at a time when I need one. Not that much of a respite,
however. If you check out our Calendar, you will notice a lot of upcoming fun things to
do, whether it’s our first international jazz festival
(September 4-6), Gary Stempel’s boys taking on Paraguay in
a friendly soccer match (August 20) or boxing action (August
28), or whether you are attracted to the bright lights of the
big city or quieter natural settings, there will be something
for you to enjoy, and for me to report.
Enjoy. See you
in September.
