Jackson, Panama's minor parties

We have heard it before, and we are hearing it again. “Our polls are made of flesh and bone,” goes the old Arnulfista refrain. (Notice that they never mention brains.) To “prove” that the pollsters are wrong we had a massive Alemán rally and also the well-nigh anonymous publication of a bogus “poll” purportedly demonstrating a close race for the presidency between the PRD’s Martín Torrijos and the Mireyistas’ José Miguel Alemán.

Polling, however, is, if not magic and not capable of putting precise numbers on all of the subtleties of the human mind, nevertheless a sophisticated science. There are two reliable practitioners of this science working in Panama, the Latin American affiliate of the Gallup organization, CID, and its regional counterpart from the Harris organization, Dichter & Neira. The latest trends that these groups show --- which of course can change between now and May 2 --- indicate that three of this country’s registered political parties, the Partido Popular, MOLIRENA and the Partido Liberal Nacional, are on the brink of losing their ballot status for insufficient votes. Cambio Democratico is not entirely out of danger, and if Guillermo Endara can complete his task of collapsing the Arnulfista Party it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that Mireya’s faction could also lose its ballot status.

Endara talks about a “Mami Alliance,” a tacit understanding between the PRD and the Arnulfistas --- Martín and Mireya --- to confirm the Panamanian political system as an AC/DC kleptocracy, a two party system in which each faction gets five years to loot and then sits on the sidelines complaining of the other group’s corruption for five years. There is substantial truth to this conception, borne out most particularly by the cast of characters and the arguments they make on RPC’s morning “Debate Abierto” talk show. (Of course nobody openly advocates corruption, but the Mami pundits always find “good” reasons why nothing can or should change, and why a two-party system is best for Panama.)

Now I don’t believe that there are only two worthy political points of view, or that the options that voters should be given should be limited to two. A lot of times when that happens in a political system, you have two grand alliances of factions with often conflicting principles fighting for a relatively small group of independent or undecided voters in the middle, boiling their policies down to a common denominator and on great issues of the day offering the public only one policy choice.

Take, for example, the matter of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas from either the Panamanian or the American perspective. In both countries there is widespread agreement within the respective political classes that free trade agreements based upon the NAFTA model are a good thing, and in each country there is also substantial public opposition coming from several different directions at once. But in May Panamanians won’t have a presidential candidate who can be trusted to say “no” to the American proposal, and in November Americans probably won’t have a viable presidential candidate with a substantially different trade deal to offer Panama.

So are third parties the salvation for Panamanians who want something different?

Hardly. Here the third parties are not ideological alternatives. They are shakedown rackets, often extensions of family businesses, that aim to win enough seats in the Legislative Assembly to become the balance of power between the larger parties’ caucuses, and thus trade votes for government jobs and public contracts for their members and their families.

Are you a hardcore communist? A right-wing Christian fundamentalist? A believer of the liberation theology? A libertarian? A democratic socialist? A federalist? A green? A monarchist? An anarchist? A farmer or small business owner who doesn’t want to be ruined by subsidized foreign competition? The mother of someone who’s in prison for something drug-related and opposes Panama’s made-in-the-USA drug policies? A couch potato who’s tired of all the imported sex and violence on the TV screen and fears that even more such imports will destroy what’s left of Panamanian culture? Someone who yearns for an end to the white minority’s total domination of Panama’s political and economic life?

If you are any of those things, there is no Panamanian political party that represents you.

Cambio Democratico? They stand for post office branches in Ricardo Martinelli’s Super 99 stores, a party dues paycheck deduction system for employees of state institutions that become their fiefdoms, and above all, government jobs for the Martinelli family and its supporters.

MOLIRENA? They stand for the degeneration of our public schools into a shakedown racket wherein teachers must join the party in order to get choice school assignments, cigarette companies coming into the schools to tell kids that smoking’s a grown-up thing to do, and above all, government jobs for the Rosas family and its supporters.

All the Partido Popular has had in the past five years has been a share of control over the legislature for awhile and the Public Ministry all along, but they have played the same old games within those restricted confines. The Partido Liberal Nacional, which supported Torrijos last time and then switched to Mireya after the election, has had even fewer chips with which to bargain but their behavior hasn’t been different.

Solidaridad? Now they may be breaking out of the mold. They were one of two little beer brewery parties, but in 1999 one of these, MORENA, lost its ballot status, and then its owner sold his brewery to the Colombians and was disgraced by the Banco DISA collapse. Meanwhile Solidaridad founder “Don Samy” Lewis Galindo also sold his brewery to foreign investors, but his party retained its ballot status. Solidaridad’s three-member legislative caucus shattered and went away in different directions, but Lewis Galindo took advantage of the Mireyistas’ greedy totalitarian hubris and grafted the greater part of the Arnulfistas’ and MOLIRENA’s rank-and-file into his party. He has since gone beyond that and picked up other disaffected members of the political class and associated Solidaridad with the public demand for constitutional change. It may turn out that after this year when we talk about a two-party system it will not be about the PRD and the Arnulfistas, but the PRD and Solidaridad.

However, can anyone describe the Solidaridad philosophy for me? All I see is a moderately conservative and businesslike party with a few good candidates on its slate of familiar politicians but nothing strikingly different to offer in a positive sense.

This ambiguity may not be a fatal flaw in the eyes of the electorate. Many Panamanians vote for the negative rather than the positive, and thus Solidaridad, which dissociates itself from both Mireya and the PRD, can be an attractive alternative.

I don’t know whether I will vote for Torrijos again, or for Endara. I know I won’t vote for Alemán or Martinelli. In any case, my presidential ballot will be cast with misgivings based largely upon lack of information about where the candidates stand on matters of importance to me.

My legislative ballot will be cast with negative considerations in mind. The Legislative Assembly voted unanimously to define me out of the profession of journalism because my university degrees are in history, political science and law rather than journalism, and I intend to return the compliment by refraining from casting a vote for any of the incumbents. Even apart from that personal peeve, the entire legislature has disgraced itself by multiple acts of commission and omission and deserves to be thrown out on its collective ear.

And under no circumstances will I vote to empower rackets in the guise of minor parties by giving them seats in the legislature.

Yes, the nation’s political structure needs a constitutional makeover, and whether by a two-party system with open parties, a non-partisan system or a well designed multi-party system, we need to make room for more than just one or two points of view.

But we don’t need any of the wretched minor parties we have now.

Also in this section:
Castro, Omar Torrijos and repression
Greater Caribbean This Week
Fisher, Scarlet Letters
Gutman, The Democratic field
Jackson, Panama's minor political parties
Kerry, Ending special interest rule
Arango, Remarks at the start of a campaign

opinion

Don’t waste your sympathy or
your vote on these underdogs

opinion

Don’t waste your sympathy or your vote on these underdogs

Don’t waste your sympathy or
your vote on these underdogs