Bernal, The Fifth Ballot IS viable

My good friend Ezequiel “Chichilingo” Rodríguez customarily reminds me --- with much wisdom --- that “the things about which one wisely remains silent are forgotten because of the silence.” And that’s what appears to be happening with the democratic, peaceful and participatory proposal to achieve a constituent assembly by way of a fifth ballot. Some, for reasons of conceit or avarice and others, for sectarianism or fear of democracy, have wanted to cloud the simple but historic act of turning in more than 94,000 citizens’ signatures in favor of a referendum to decide whether or not the Panamanian people want a new constitution by way of a constituent assembly.

The means to which they have taken recourse, in an attempt to discredit and hide the civic clamor for a change, vary according to the personalities that our partisan politicians affect. However, I am more concerned about those who guard their silence than those who speak out, given that the silent ones are using their quiet anti-democratic mechanisms, seeking to make us forget certain elemental facts.

In effect, they start by attempting to make us forget that the present constitution in an imposed text, of anti-democratic birth, a patchwork that only serves as a strait jacket to impede the social, economic and political development of Panamanian society. They don’t want us to remember that, if only because of its spurious origin, the present militarist constitution needs to be changed and this time it has to be done with the participation of all the men and women in this country and not by the decision of four party bosses and their entourages of notables with proclivities toward genuflection rather than participation.

They insist to us that “The constituent assembly isn’t a priority” and that “The constitution can only be changed by the established means,” or that “This is a subject that belongs to the next government;” not to mention the apocalyptic statements that “Nobody knows what might happen with the Fifth Ballot or the constituent assembly,” or so-called “innocent” questions like “What assures us the the new constitution will be better than what we have now?” In short, they have given us and will always give us excuses to do nothing. But in order to avoid the people becoming an actor rather than a spectator, all indications are that in Panama --- unlike the rest of the world --- the most odd and dissimilar personalities and interests have united behind this proposition, tied by just one umbilical cord: to keep Panama from changing, to keep Panamanians from changing ourselves, from learning and bettering our condition. We are reminded of the deputy in the French Assembly of 1791 who insisted that “We must do everything for the people, but we can’t permit the people to do anything for themselves.”

In this latter position stand the three magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal, who proclaim to the four winds their sermon about how the Panamanian people have no right to exercise our sovereign power “because they’re not prepared,” and “can get confused” if the Fifth Ballot is included in the May elections. Clearly for them, as dogmatists, it has been easier to sermonize than to debate. In other words, in keeping with their traditional submission to the political parties’ leaders, the “big shots” of the Electoral Tribunal deprecate civic power and become apologists for partisan interests, whose privileges they defend to the end. (See, e.g., Decree 20 of June, 2003, among many others.)

To block the inclusion of the Fifth Ballot in the May 2 elections, as the party leaderships and others in an unholy alliance with the Electoral Tribunal have done, is something more than merely putting the citizenry’s hopes, yearnings and exercise of the right to petition in front of a firing squad. It’s a grave political error for which it won’t be long before each and every participant, either by action or omission, will have to pay. This is so because we well know that the Fifth Ballot --- a popular consultation --- is necessary to avoid a string of electoral frauds from proceeding unchecked.

Likewise, we Panamanians know that you can’t talk of a “vision of the future,” of a “new country,” of “zero corruption,” of “less unemployment” or of the endless chain of fallacies that these campaign slogans show themselves to be if at the same time the citizenry is denied its inalienable right to be consulted about whether or not they want a new constitution by way of a constituent assembly. Yes, the Fifth Ballot can happen. What’s lacking is memory, which confirms to us that in Panama, much more so than in many other places, “memory is one of the fugitives of politics.”

Also in this section:
Madriz, Caribbean ministers' summit in Panama
Fisher, Scarlet Letters
Green, Colombia's war addiction
Bernal, Obstacles to the changes we need
CPJ, Challenging the criminal defamation laws
Andoni, Plea from a strangling Bethlehem
Jackson, Bush runs against gay marriage

opinion

The Fifth Ballot: yes it can can happen