It’s not the sort of news that should surprise any seasoned observer of Panamanian politics. Despite the submission to the Electoral Tribunal of some 94,000 voters’ petition signatures collected mainly at the nation’s Catholic churches, the question of whether a constituent assembly should be convened to write a new constitution will not be on the May 2 ballot.
The present Political Constitution of the Republic of Panama was drawn up in 1972 by an assembly of the nation’s representantes, under the guidance of the military dictatorship then headed by General Omar Torrijos. It was essentially a peace offering to the political class that had been overthrown in the October 11, 1968 coup --- those who played along with a system that explicitly made the military the final arbiter of all political questions had the chance to be elected to lucrative local or national legislative posts, or possibly as alternates to these posts, and there would be public funds for the representantes and legislators to spend on their constituencies or themselves. The administrative jobs --- presidents, ministers and mayors --- would be appointees ultimately beholden to the military. In order to impress the US Senate while it was pondering the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties, then a couple of years after General Torrijos’s death, and again in the wake of the 1989 US invasion, there were various amendments.
But now we are stuck with an administration that, other than the violence, is every bit as corrupt as the regime the General Manuel Antonio Noriega ran, and moreover, we have a president who effectively guarantees the impunity of herself and her friends and relatives by dominating the government’s judicial and legislative branches.
Polls show that more than 80 percent of the Panamanian people think that the system is broken and want a constitutional convention to write a new framework that could give us a fresh political start. But the current constitution does not provide for such a thing --- the only constitutional means to constitutional change are if the politicians submit one or more proposals to the voters in a referendum or if two successive legislative assemblies approve one or more amendments. In the former case, the Endara and Pérez Balladares administrations submitted mostly self-serving amendments to the voters, who reacted by accepting opposition arguments that the referenda were really votes of confidence on unpopular presidents and thus rejecting the proposals. A few other matters, like the ratification of the reality that Panama no longer has an army and a canal management framework that theoretically guarantees that our nation’s principal industrial asset won’t be turned into a political patronage dumping ground or sold to foreigners to finance debts run up by the government, were added to the constitution by the ratification in two assemblies route.
Polls suggest that Martín Torrijos will be the next president, even if his Partido Popular junior partners are in danger of losing their ballot status; that Solidaridad, even if it doesn’t manage to get Endara elected to the presidency again, will emerge as the country’s main opposition party; and that Mireya Moscoso’s rump of the Arnulfista Party will be reduced to a minor force with a few seats in the legislature and its MOLIRENA and Liberal Nacional junior partners will disappear. Of course, the end of Carnival is, like Labor Day in a US presidential election year, the start of a full-blown campaign season in which many things can change.
So despite the overwhelming public demand for change, the PRD and its allies don’t particularly want to see the powers and perquisites they expect to win snatched away by constitutional reform. In any sense that affects the bottom line of this year’s elections, the preferences of José Miguel Alemán and Ricardo Martinelli are of no consequence. So three of the four presidential candidates say vague things in support of constitutional reform, just enough to avoid sounding like hardcore reactionaries in the electorate’s collective ears.
President Moscoso? One suspects that she wouldn’t mind stirring things up just to make trouble for a Torrijos administration, and if she really goes off the deep end and tries to steal this year’s election for her exceptionally unpopular protege then all pretense of a constitutional order would be shattered anyway. But the present order will have her retiring to the presidential beach house at Punta Mala --- now fictitiously in her brother’s name --- and relaxing under the beach umbrella of the Central American Parliament’s legislative immunity. She may have thus decided to let well enough alone.
That leaves the Endara - Ford - Posse ticket as the outspoken if unlikely champions of fundamental change. These three rather conservative political veterans, running as standard bearers of what was a fringe party founded by one of Panama’s richest men, are the ones who are telling the voters that the establishment is bankrupt and promising to call for the election of a constituent assembly if they win on May 2. The differences between Endara and Torrijos on constitutional reform may well be the issue upon which the election turns.
But it won’t be on the ballot with the presidential candidates. Last year Mireya Moscoso proclaimed her support of a “fifth ballot” to ask the voters if they wanted to call a constituent assembly, but rather immediately her generally obedient Legislative Assembly president, Jacobo Salas, said he was against it. The 2003 legislative session ended without any action on the various proposals for a referendum. Then, early in February, the Electoral Tribunal said that it was too late to get the ballots for a constitutional referendum together in time for the May general elections. A few days later, Mireya announced that the last chance for a May 2 constitutional vote, by way of presidential decree, won’t happen.
The strongest advocates of a constituent assembly, the church-backed civic movement known as the Foro 2020 and attorney/educator/journalist/activist Miguel Antonio Bernal, are deeply disappointed but not yet ready to concede defeat.
Other than the possibility of Endara winning the election and keeping his promise, two more possibilities for a constitutional referendum this year are lurking out there.
One is that a referendum on the Panama Canal’s expansion may be called, and constitutional reform may be submitted to the voters at the same time. The Panama Canal Authority says that its study about canal modernization will be done in June, which would give the lame duck Mireyistas one last chance to call a referendum and to gather their ultimate windfalls by way of sweetheart contracts, eminent domain compensation and political patronage sinecures. Look for an August vote if that scenario unfolds.
The other chance for a referendum is in the event that the May 2 elections yield an ambiguous result that denies the next president the legislative support he will need to effectively govern, or a fraudulent vote count that leads to chaos in the streets and the widespread civil disobedience that prevents an administration from exercising power. In that case a constituent assembly would be a logical way out of a crisis of ungovernability.
The minority that opposes significant change --- that is, the great majority of the isolated and discredited political class --- will also have an opportunity to have their way and diminish the demand for constitutional reform. One of their number --- almost surely Torrijos --- could get elected president and unexpectedly take a hard line stand against all the usual political games that many of his supporters want to play.
In that latter case, however, Bernal and the other advocates of a new constitution would surely argue that just because we get one leader who does not take advantage of the possibilities for abuse that the present system creates doesn’t mean that the next one won’t resist the institutionalized temptations.
Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Mireya does battle with the Electoral Tribunal
No constitutional referendum in May
Colon blaze kills boy, disrupts city life
On the campaign trail
