The PRD
presidential campaign is now tacking against a strong
headwind.
For months The
Panama News had been trying to get questions answered by the
PRD, and to get on the Torrijos campaign’s contact lists,
without apparent result. Way ahead in the polls, Martín
Torrijos was seen and heard only at carefully scripted events,
generally through those mass media with a partisan alignment
toward the Partido Revolucionario Democratico-Partido Popular
alliance. Never mind not being able to get an invitation to a
press conference, much less an interview: we couldn’t even
get a list of the candidates running in the PRD primary, and it
wasn’t a matter of discrimination against the English-
language media.
Prior to mid-
October, Torrijos and his followers were mostly ignoring
Guillermo Endara, playing up José Miguel Alemán
as their principal adversary in next May’s presidential
election, brushing off questions about how and whether
allegations of bribery in the passage of the CEMIS project
reflected on the PRD’s legislative caucus and the party
leadership by saying that the prosecutors and courts would sort
it out, and insisting that now isn’t the time for
constitutional change. In a large percentage of his carefully
staged campaign appearances, Torrijos appeared on TV with
legislators at his side.
For awhile, it
seemed as if Martín might coast into the presidency
without expending much effort or taking a position on anything
of consequence. He was way ahead in the polls throughout the
first half of this year, even though the same public opinion
surveys indicated that most Panamanians wanted a constituent
assembly to write a new constitution and wanted to see the
subject submitted to them in next May’s elections, and by
an even greater margin most voters despised the present
legislature.
Then the
Mireyistas fired Dr. Juan Jované as Social Security
director and raided the Social Security Fund’s cash
reserves to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the
labor movement and the left erupted onto the streets and
Torrijos mostly pointed out that he had neither hired nor fired
Jované while PRD and PP pundits joined the Mireyistas in
chanting “Jované is a leftist ideologue.” But
after all that, the polls showed that about two-thirds of
Panamanians believe that Jované should get his job back
and most people consider the economics professor and erstwhile
Seguro director to be exactly in the center of the political
spectrum.
Then the
Supreme Court, including some PRD appointees, threw out the
investigations of legislative bribery scandals on grounds that
were condemned as specious by virtually all credible legal
scholars. A broad coalition of professional, civic, religious,
business and labor groups erupted with demands for the
resignations of Attorney General Sossa and several high court
magistrates and insisted on the convocation of a constituent
assembly. “Leave the scandals to Sossa and the
courts” and “now’s not the time to change the
constitution” were no longer marketable in the bazaar of
Panamanian public opinion.
After the court
had made its decision but before the public found out, the US
ambassador blasted political corruption and legislative
immunity. A few of the most obnoxious Arnulfista deputies
denounced Ambassador Watt and a couple of people mentioned as
possible running mates for Torrijos criticized her statements,
but Torrijos admitted that she had told the truth in her talk
to the Chamber of Commerce and since then hardly any of the PRD
legislators have shown their faces at the Palacio Justo
Arosemena.
Meanwhile,
pollsters for CID/Gallup (chartered by El Panama America) and
Dichter & Neira (chartered by La Prensa), and no doubt
other opinion researchers for the various campaigns, were going
about the country and finding a surge in support for Guillermo
Endara, mainly at Martín Torrijos’s expense. La
Prensa showed Endara nearly within the margin of error, with 32
percent to Torrijos’s 35.9. El Panama America showed the
percentages at Torrijos with 41, Endara at 35, Alemán at
7 and Martinelli in the basement with 4. Martín had
blown his huge lead of earlier in the year.
It was against
this backdrop of events that The Panama News received an email
from veteran PRD activist Nils Castro, inviting us to attend an
October 14 forum on public safety at the Hotel Continental,
featuring Martín Torrijos.
When I got
there, two women working the press table were eager to get my
name and number, and those of my colleagues, on their contact
list. There was none of this Toro-era “you’re not a
real journalist” or “the English-language press
isn’t Panamanian” denigration. The woman who had
tried to shake me and several other colleagues down at the 1997
Universal Congress on the Panama Canal (who is on the public
payroll in one of the PRD-PP government enclaves these days)
wasn’t there. Neither was the guy with whom I pleaded to
get on the contact list at the PRD office a few short months
ago.
Inside, the
Partido Popular was out in force, including both of its
legislators, Rubén Arosemena and Teresita de Arias.
There were hardly any PRD legislators in the room, and none of
them would be on the dais with Torrijos.
Neither former
President Ernesto Pérez Balladares nor many of his
apparatchiki were present. Rigoberto Paredes, Nils Castro and a
bunch of other long-time PRD stalwarts who hadn’t
especially cashed in during Toro’s time in office were
there. Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro was pressing the
flesh near the door.
This was a
rainbow-skinned crowd of men in blue suits and well-dressed
women. Although the PRD leads among younger voters and holds
its own in the city slums, among the campesinos and in the
indigenous comarcas, these segments of the electorate
wasn’t in the room. This was a crowd of middle-aged
doctors, lawyers, university professors and business owners.
In the front
row, to the speaker’s left, sat a bearded Rubén
Blades.
A few weeks
ago, at the press conference in which it was announced that
Guillermo Ford would be Endara’s running mate, a crowd of
remarkably similar size and social composition showed up.
Solidaridad held its event in a tiny room, leaving most of the
crowd to greet the candidates out in the halls. From the
photographic perspective, overflowing a small room gave the
impression of leaders mobbed by enthusiastic supporters. The
Torrijos campaign, on the other hand, had rented a large room
that accommodated everybody with seats to spare. As the
commercial TV networks here lean toward the PRD, they got away
with it --- there were no shots of empty seats on the
newscasts.
Finally the
candidate made his entrance, was introduced, took the podium
and, after a joke about the teleprompter, got into the
substance of his speech.
“Insecurity in Panama is more than a
perception,” Torrijos said. “The Panamanian family
lives in fear.”
Twice this
year, Juan Carlos Navarro has had his days disrupted when
gunfights have broken out between youthful street gangs during
his appearances in the capital’s slum neighborhoods. The
mayor didn’t need convincing when Torrijos lamented that
gangs are taking over the streets in too many communities.
“In less
than 15 years,” Torrijos claimed, “the crime rate has
tripled,” adding that it has become steadily worse under
the present Arnulfista government.
“Under my
government, there will be a hard hand against crime,”
Torrijos promised. He vowed to “act against corruption in
all its forms, both in the public and private sectors.”
So was this the
dictator’s kid promising more repression?
Not according
to the candidate. “Hiring more police, buying more arms
and building more prisons won’t solve the problem,”
Torrijos said. He denounced the televised police invasion of a
hospital (which featured the beatings and arrests of ambulance
drivers) during the recent Social Security protests, and vowed
to keep the police off of the University of Panama campus. He
called for a “democratic safety policy” with
“absolute transparency.” He advocated social programs
to strengthen families and give youth more hope to go along
with a series of changes in law enforcement and the justice
system.
“I believe
that the law should allow the president to opt for a civilian
or a police officer for National Police Chief,” Torrijos
said. So much for the campaign strategy of saying nothing that
might possibly offend anybody. Critics immediately portrayed it
as a proposed return to the militarism of his father’s
time.
Torrijos also
called for the computerization of police operations, a series
of prison reforms and measures to improve security along the
border with Colombia.
“Under our
government, we will retake control of the streets,”
Torrijos vowed, promising “a society that’s stable
and peaceful.”
After the
advertised discourse on public safety, the candidate had a few
things to say about constitutional reform.
There was no
longer any claim that “now is not the time.” The new
Torrijos position is that a constitutional process that begins
with a May 2004 vote about whether to convoke a constituent
assembly won’t be soon enough. He called for the present
assembly to immediately act on specific proposals to end
legislative immunity and reform the method by which Supreme
Court magistrates are chosen. If that happens, the next
assembly could vote to ratify the changes and the constitution
would be changed as early as September of next year. Torrijos
also said that if he’s elected president he will convene a
constituent assembly.
Acknowledging
that the Legislative Assembly “is under question,”
Torrijos said that with support from civil society the PRD-PP
alliance has a good chance to “pressure the assembly to
make changes now.”
After the
candidate’s presentation the gathering turned into a town
meeting of sorts, with much of the talk from the floor in the
form of attacks on Guillermo Endara and absolutely no mention
of José Miguel Alemán.
El Siglo
publisher Ebrahim Asvat, a PP member who served as National
Police chief for awhile after the 1989 US invasion, said
“I was part of Guillermo Endara Galimany’s
government. I know what it’s like to work with
incompetents.”
Rigoberto
Paredes accused Endara of advocating a police withdrawal from
the border areas that would abandon everything east of Chepo to
Colombians.
There were
repeated references to the slate of Guillermo Endara, Guillermo
Ford and Alejandro Posse as dissidents from the ruling
Arnulfista and MOLIRENA parties. Endara was called a
“clown” who thinks that winning the support of young
voters is a matter of being seen playing video games.
There was also
some serious discussion about public safety and constitutional
reform.
There were
repeated pleas for the PRD-PP alliance to give proper
recognition to the problem of domestic violence.
An architect
complained of cities that are designed for cars rather than
people and a Housing Ministry staffed by clueless and
unconcerned political activists, with the result being urban
neighborhoods whose architecture make them difficult to defend
against crime.
One woman
who’s active in her local neighborhood watch group called
for stiffer sentencing of criminals, alleging that “the
maleantes are laughing at us.” However, another speaker
argued that it’s all well and good to take a “hard
hand against crime,” but it would be a betrayal of the
PRD’s traditional principles “to criminalize
poverty.”
Rubén
Blades, a police officer’s son who grew up in humble
circumstances in San Felipe, noted a process of social decay.
While he was growing up, he said, people in the neighborhood
were poor, but they had a sense of honor and solidarity.
“All that has been lost,” the entertainer and
activist argued, arguing that if the situation isn’t
reversed “we’ll go on creating criminals.”
Blades is best
known as an entertainer, but he’s educated as a lawyer and
while studying law at the University of Panama visited the
Coiba Island penal colony three times and worked on a project
to review the files La Modelo, the most notorious hellhole in
this country’s prison system until its 1996 demolition.
Two major problems Blades cited were that, first, “you
can’t rehabilitate someone who’s never been
socialized in the first place,” and second, not only is
“prison overcrowding unacceptable in a democracy” but
it also gets in the way of rehabilitating those who could
otherwise be turned away from a life of crime.
Martín
Torrijos says he won’t announce his running mates until
early next year and brushed off all questions on the subject
after the forum. However, in the photo opportunities on the way
out he posed with Rubén Blades and Rubén
Arosemena, and more than one observer would bet that this will
be the PRD-PP slate for next May’s election.
The bottom
line? Martín Torrijos is now in a tight two-way race
with Guillermo Endara and he’s no longer hiding from the
issues and the press.
Right after the
event described above, Endara criticized Torrijos’s
proposals to allow promotion of a police officer to National
Police chief and for a constitutional reform process, and
Torrijos replied that he’s willing and eager to debate
Endara.
José
Miguel Alemán’s name didn’t figure in this
discussion, and in the days that followed the forum in which
Torrijos unveiled his new campaign look, PRD and PP pundits
began to dismiss the Mireyista campaign as a mere effort to
retain a few seats in the legislature. That amounts to a tacit
acceptance that the Mireyistas have collapsed under the Endara
challenge and a consequent abandonment of the tactic of
splitting the anti-PRD vote by pumping up the weaker
candidate.
But why would
Martín’s people mention Mireya’s candidate at
all? Because she and her followers are political buzzard chow
and it now appears possible to eliminate them as a factor in
the next assembly, even given the likelihood that most of the
incumbent PRD legislators will fail to win re-election.
It all adds up
to a rather sudden political sea change at 9°N.
Also in this
section:
Panama News
Briefs
Cascading scandal envelopes
all three government branches
Polls indicate political sea
change
Torrijos shifts
gears
On the campaign
trail
