President Moscoso complains that she’s getting blamed for everything these days, and the Mireyistas are going to great lengths to prove that it’s all a bum rap.
For example, in rejecting allegations that government actions and inactions had something to do with the November 11 overflow of the Matasnillo River and consequent flooding of several parts of Panama City along its banks, Mireya sarcastically told La Prensa that “It appears that I also tell God when to rain and when not to rain.”
For another example, Vanesa Spadafora, the daughter of Supreme Court magistrate and former Minister of Government and Justice Winston Spadafora who heads the Office of the Casco Viejo, went on RPC’s “Debate Abierto” talk show to argue that the Flat Arch fell not because of harmful vibrations that were allowed on her watch, but due to demolition work that was done nearby when General Omar Torrijos ran the country. (What? She knew about such old damage to an important landmark under her care and did nothing to document or repair it?)
For yet a third example, we have all the pleas about a “freak accident” and “unforeseen circumstances” related to the November 5 fireworks tragedy at the National Stadium and the half-hour delay in the ambulance arriving at the scene.
Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro and many civic groups that are not particularly friendly to the PRD protested the illegal permit granted to a Colombian developer to create a landfill at the mouth of the Matasnillo River, precisely because there were no public hearings on the work’s environmental impact, nor was there any serious study about how the landfill would affect the river’s drainage.
Before the flood, it became apparent that landfill does something that the protesters hadn’t considered --- it affects the bay’s wave action at high tide, such that swells of polluted water and floating garbage are sent splashing over the seawall onto the sidewalk and Avenida Balboa.
Moreover, some area residents and people who operate businesses near the Matasnillo have complained that under the Moscoso administration, in contrast with previous administrations, the polluted river hasn’t been dredged to clear away potential dams of accumulated garbage.
On November 11 we had heavy rains coinciding with high tide, which at many times in the past have been the combination behind Panama City floods. The truth of the matter is that we’re a low-lying city, parts of which are built on landfill, in a place that gets 18-foot tides and tropical cloudbursts. Moreover, every vacant lot that gets paved adds just a little bit to our long-standing urban drainage problem.
Might the Multicentro landfill or the lack of drain maintenance have caused or contributed to the November 11 flooding? We don’t really know and we probably won’t ever know --- under the Mireyista regime’s “transparency” regulations, any study of such a subject would be a state secret and given a record of more than four years in office such an investigation would be reasonably presumed a cover-up anyway. However, whether or not she caused or contributed to the floods, Mireya’s gross neglect of serious matters affecting the urban environment is an established fact.
This administration’s urban neglect is also clearly seen near the other end of Avenida Balboa, in the Casco Viejo.
Notwithstanding Ms. Spadafora’s repugnant and self-serving finger-pointing, we also really don’t know the specific reason or reasons why the historic Arco Chato (Flat Arch) fell when it did.
Some people say that it was just too old and the combined action of microbes and water finally brought it down. Knowing Panama City’s air pollution problems and the carefully studied and documented experiences of how auto exhausts have played havoc with ancient sites in Rome and Athens, we should not be too quick to rule that out as a cause. Then there are neighbors who say that the vibrations of demolition work performed nearby with a jackhammer by Ms. Spadafora’s organization, and of loud noises by bands, fireworks and overflying aerial formations during the centennial festivities, probably had something to do with it.
What we don’t have are detailed records of the Arco Chato’s condition. Nor do we have such records with respect to Panama Viejo, Fort San Lorenzo, the colonial parts of Portobelo or other historical sites. That keeps us from knowing the precise causes of the arch’s fall and the course of the site’s deterioration, but in itself it says clear and damning things about the government’s stewardship of this nation’s historical treasures.
Ms. Spadafora’s neglect deserves notice in this sad affair, and certainly the National Institute of Culture’s use by successive administrations as a dumping ground for political hacks --- and in this administration for the criminal relatives of political hacks --- is once again shown to have been at the expense of the careful monitoring of fragile sites that INAC should have been conducting. Salient prior examples of INAC’s negligence include the damage to the ceiling of the National Theater during Mireya’s administration and the destruction of Panama City’s oldest bridge on Toro’s shift.
The Arco Chato affair is also a scandal within Panamanian journalism. The PRD, Christian Democrat and Arnulfista apparatchiki sitting around the Debate Abierto table, a couple of whom hold major positions at daily newspapers, were especially nice to Ms. Spadafora. Everyone who knows anything understands that it was because Toro and his relatives and friends own MEDCOM and virtually all of the nasty things that can be truthfully said about the Mireyistas’ cultural mismanagement can also be legitimately said about the previous administration’s record.
Meanwhile, the most obnoxious demurrer of them all is the Mireyista denial of responsibility for what happened at the National Stadium.
The Moscoso regime went well out of its way to take the organization of the Olympic baseball qualifying tournament away from its natural sponsor, Panama’s FEDEBEIS baseball federation. They did that so that an Arnulfista, Second Vice-President Dominador Kaiser Bazán, rather that the FEDEBEIS president, PRD legislator and taxi syndicate goon Franz Wever, could claim credit for any success.
The fireworks company was hired by the organizing committee headed by Kaiser Bazán, and the rumors --- uncheckable under Mireya’s rules --- are that the contract was awarded on the basis of a silent shareholder’s political connections. The organizing committee headed by Kaiser Bazán allowed the company to detonate fireworks at the National Stadium without having insurance. The organizing committee headed by Kaiser Bazán allowed the company to use a labor-saving but inherently dangerous method of launching the pyrotechnics from fiberglass tubes bundled together above ground, instead of from tubes buried in the ground and separated from one another precisely to prevent an accident of the sort that happened. Apart from the tragedy, the organizing committee headed by Kaiser Bazán permitted the crassly insulting detonation of fireworks during the playing of national anthems.
Outside the stadium, the National Police headed by Carlos Barés and Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona were in charge of directing traffic. The National Police headed by Carlos Barés and Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona allowed people to park their cars in a way that kept the ambulance from arriving on the scene for half an hour.
So does Mireya want to plead that she and her administration are not responsible?
This newspaper will accept that plea, to this extent --- they’re absolutely IRRESPONSIBLE.
The extent to which the Mireyistas’ irresponsibility contributed to the floods and the destruction of an important national landmark are open questions, but so long as there are no credible independent inquiries and the government continues its policy of concealing information, the benefit of the doubt must be resolved by the presumption that Mireya and here team are culpable. As to the tragedy at the baseball field, the thing speaks for itself. Before the accident the Mireyistas insisted on taking credit for everything that went on there, when the accident happened the organizers’ negligence was flagrant, and the denial of responsibility now is clear proof of the current administration’s moral bankruptcy.
