From listening
to all the arguments, it’s about traffic problems and how
to best resolve them. Or about Colombians with no respect for
our laws taking over Panama versus claims that such allegations
amount to xenophobic stereotypes at their ugliest. Or about job-
creating enterprises and the politically motivated obstructions
they face. Or about whether one of Panama’s upscale
neighborhoods will again be flooded with raw sewage. Or about
judicial security and the rule of law.
However, if you
look at the sign above, a lot of the argument centers around
the fourth line, wherein it is noted that the project has the
approval of the National Environmental Authority (ANAM), which
accepted its environmental impact statement as a project in
“Categoria 1.” But Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos
Navarro, who went toe-to-toe with ANAM director Ricardo
Anguizola on TVN’s “30 Minutos” morning talk
show and by way of conflicting ads in the daily newspapers,
says that the classification is improper and that the
difference between 1 and 2 is vast.
Generally
speaking, Category 1 is for projects on private property while
Category 2 is for projects on public property. The Multicentro
shopping mall development is located mostly on private land
along an already dangerous and congested curve of Avenida
Balboa, across from the main entrance to the Punta Paitilla
neighborhood. The developer has obtained the rights from the
National Maritime Authority to build a 8,000 square meter
landfill on Panama Bay at the mouth of an open sewer otherwise
known as the Matasnillo River, which will serve as a platform
for an access ramp that will overpass Avenida Balboa, with
support beams on the public traffic island. In order to build
this, and without counting on municipal permits, the developers
smashed down the recently fixed railing along the Avenida
Balboa sea wall and crushed the recently installed sidewalk
under the weight of their dump trucks. Navarro says that
because the project involves the taking of public property ---
not only for the ramp construction, but also by effectively
claiming dibs on one of Avenida Balboa’s lanes, which will
be taken over by shopping center traffic, and by affecting a
navigable waterway, this is a Category 2 project, which, unlike
a Category 1 project, requires a public hearing before an
environmental impact study may legally be accepted. Any public
hearing would certainly be mobbed by Punta Paitilla residents,
who don’t appreciate the prospect of even worse traffic
congestion in their neighborhood.
John Bennett,
the president of the Panamanian Business Executives Association
(APEDE), says that the public outcry over the ramp is actually
only one small part of of a much greater problem. “They
didn’t comply with the environmental impact study
norms,” he alleged. “We have a serious urban problem
and the ramp isn’t the main thing, only the most
visible.” From a practical standpoint of great importance
to many of the businesses located in Paitilla, Bennett noted
that the environmental impact study accepted by ANAM provides
that the development will use septic tanks for its waste water,
but as it’s located a literal stone’s throw from the
beach the water table is much too high for such a thing.
If, as would be
expected, Multicentro’s contemplated septic tanks are only
spurious filler for the paperwork required for a permit, then
they would be far from the first area business dumping human
excrement into the Matasnillo River. However, what worries
Mayor Navarro is that the landfill at the mouth of that
waterway might slow the discharge into the bay during heavy
rainstorms. The city has experience with that, when a few years
ago a developer got the bright idea that covering the
Matasnillo with a concrete slab would mitigate the gross odors
passing by his property and thus increase its value. The slab
was installed, the river flow was just slightly affected, the
heavy rains came and Paitilla was inundated. The damage was in
the multiple millions, for which there has been no compensation
forthcoming from the business that caused it. The slab was
demolished but not forgotten, and the thought of the landfill
shown below causing a similar effect is cause for concern among
neighboring residents and business owners. The concern is
aggravated because broken or inadequate weather and river flow
monitoring devices in the neighborhood mean that the data
don’t exist to make an informed prediction about whether
the landfill would affect the Matasnillo’s rate of
discharge into the bay.
For Bennett,
the syndrome of ignored rules, leading to no effective rules,
is an obstacle to obtaining foreign investment in Panama.
“It’s a problem making investors play with
this,” he said, alluding to the increased business risk
inherent when the rule of law breaks down.
But for the
developer, Colombian attorney Pedro Gómez Barrero,
it’s the mayor and ramp opponents who are playing the
unreasonable “no se puede” game. He says that after a
day of meetings with the president and two government
ministers, his project had Moscoso’s personal approval,
something that she does not dispute. Manuel Vallarino, the
president of the Panamanian Construction Chamber (CAPAC), told
La Prensa that it would amount to intolerable judicial
insecurity if a developer obtained a permit, which was then
invalidated while construction was underway.
Construction is
proceeding at full speed as Gómez vows it will, and the
ramp will be a fait accompli well before any change of
government. However, that will be far from the last word on
Multicentro’s fate.
Most of Panama
City’s commercial and office space is vacant. Market
research hardly exists here, in large part due to the
monopolistic cultural tradition, wherein the people with money
to build big projects have traditionally expected that they
would use their influence to locate government offices in their
buildings or to establish monopolies by getting public
officials to suppress their competitors. Moreover, there’s
an instinct to get rich quick by going after the wealthiest
clientele and ignoring all others. (That attitude is not so
subtly evident in the ads that Multicentro put on the fence
around its project, which portrayed an all-white clientele in a
country that’s about eight percent white.) The problem for
Mr. Gómez is that just the other side of Punta Paitilla,
the Punta Pacifica commercial development is also under
construction, aiming at the same clientele. There surely
aren’t enough rich people in the city to allow both
developments to prosper.
