Jackson, No blank check for the Electoral Tribunal

There may be a deal between the PRD and its allies on the one hand and the Mireyistas on the other to pass a few constitutional amendments through this lame duck legislature and ratify them in the next one. Some of these amendments might even be worthwhile.

But one of them surely is not.

Do you hear people on the streets shouting demands for, or even quietly talking up, the financial independence of the Electoral Tribunal? I don’t.

This is the second time that this idea has come before the public --- if you recall, it was defeated along with the possibility of presidential re-election in August 1998 referendum --- and the demand has always come from the political parties or the Electoral Tribunal itself.

The argument is that giving the Electoral Tribunal a blank check, with absolute immunity from outside auditing, will somehow strengthen democracy.

Nonsense. It will merely promote corruption and nepotism, moving the tribunal down several degrees on the moral compass in the direction of the Supreme Court.

Yeah. Eduardo Valdés Escoffery wants financial independence for his institution. That way he can direct Electoral Tribunal money toward his sister Beatriz’s obscure publications, as he has already done. And Dennis Allen might not only appoint his wife to the Corps of Electoral Delegates board of directors (an unpaid position*), as was done, but get downright Mireyista and hire his entire extended family at exaggerated salaries.

Such abuses are known. Yes, they have been relatively minor so far, but they have taken place under a system with some outside controls. Given what we do know, I’d like to hear any rational argument about how removing all outside financial controls would promote anything positive.

The closest attempt at a justification that has come up goes something like this:

Premise A: Thanks to the Electoral Tribunal’s work we have once again had the clean elections upon which democracy is based; and

Premise B: Financial independence would prevent the politicians from interfering with the Electoral Tribunal’s work; and thus

Financial independence for the Electoral Tribunal would ensure clean elections and protect democracy from the politicians.

There are lots of non-sequiturs in that way of thinking, but the even more glaring logical errors are the false premises. At the risk of being branded politically incorrect, allow me to dispute the claim that our elections were clean this time around.

Yes, the candidate who received the most votes for president was declared the winner.

But a bunch of legislative races were tainted by vote-buying, and the Electoral Prosecutor has only moved to throw out the result in one such case, in which public funds were allegedly passed out to bribe Darien voters on Election Day. In cases of rather flagrant vote buying using private resources, the Electoral Prosecutor has decided not to impugn the results, but to press charges that, if the legislature strips the accused of their immunity, might lead to the removal of certain legislators --- and their replacement by suplentes who also gained their offices by way of the same vote-buying schemes.

Isn’t that softer approach to vote buying with private funds in effect a policy of discrimination in favor of the rich, notwithstanding the Panamanian Constitution’s ban on discrimination by social class?

In my circuit, one PRD candidate (Maribel Coco) says that she was defrauded by the alteration of four actas with the effect that PRD legislator Franz Wever was improperly declared the winner. But the Electoral Tribunal dismissed her complaint on procedural grounds, without touching the substance of the matter. There is no such thing as a recount here --- they burn the paper ballots to “ensure their secrecy” and anyone who would challenge a result must present complete proof with his or her complaint.

No matter how fishy the circumstance, our election officials cite chapter and verse to the effect that they will not investigate a citizen’s complaint about an apparent election fraud. Although the citizen may have good reason for suspicion, and lacks the power to compel the production of evidence that might uphold or negate the appearance for impropriety, complete proof must be submitted with the complaint. On procedural grounds, then, the magistrates have opened a huge gap in Panamanian democracy’s defenses.

Just because our top election officials are not as corrupt as our legislators and high court magistrates does not put them above reproach. Moreover, we have no way to know the qualities of the people who will eventually be appointed to replace them.

Thus “financial independence” for the Electoral Tribunal would be every bit as obnoxious as is immunity for legislators. That members of the tribunal would ask for such impunity is conduct unbecoming of honorable judges, and that the legislators would seriously consider giving it to them is just one more example of why the assembly is thoroughly discredited in the public’s mind.

* In an earlier version of this column I wrote that Allen put his wife on the tribunal's payroll, which was erroneous. The volunteer nature of the position she held was pointed out to me by a reader and I stand corrected.

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Cryan, Mainstream reporting about Colombia
Carpio, The Latin America and Caribbean - European Union summit
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Jackson, No blank check for the Electoral Tribunal

opinion

Let’s not get too gushy about
the Electoral Tribunal

opinion

Let’s not get too gushy about the Electoral Tribunal

Let’s not get too gushy about
the Electoral Tribunal