editorial

The Moscoso administration has yet to leave office, but already the United States is canceling the visas of some of its members. Panamanians should take this as a welcome development because somebody needs to send the message that crime doesn't pay, even for those with white collars and illustrious surnames.

But it would be a terrible mistake for Panamanians to figure that this country need not put its own house in order because the Americans are doing it for us. First, because it would be unrealistic to expect foreigners to deal with our corruption problem. Second, because when we let other solve our problems the job doesn't get done well.

Time after time, the United States government has played along with the most appallingly corrupt politicians, and only when the beneficiaries of American support no longer have the ability or inclination to deliver what the US government wants does the corruption issue get raised. It was that way with Manuel Antonio Noriega, and later with Ernesto Perez Balladares.

The trend has been even more pronounced in other countries. In Nicaragua, for example, the US government went well out of its way to assist the rise of Arnoldo Alemán to the presidency. When he was running for president, Alemán got loads of free and favorable publicity from TV Marti, which is owned by the US government but more or less run by the Cuban-American National Foundation. In the end, however, Alemán stole from everybody, froze his erstwhile Miami Cuban exile backers out of bidding for the phone company privatization bidding and well earned his residence in a Nicaraguan prison.

One American spin on the Alemán affair was that while he was in power he controlled information, so it wasn't until after he left that the vast extent of his corruption became known from the documentary evidence he left behind. To a certain extent that's surely true, but the man's kleptocratic tendencies were evident to anyone who cared to look well before he left office.

The nature of Mireya Moscoso's administration has also been crystal clear since early in her term of office. For The Panama News, which this time five years ago was taking the editorial stance that the defeated PRD should quit their lame duck power grabs and let Mireya govern as she was elected to do, the big turning point was when Mireya's immigration director, Erick Singares, threw his illegal immigrant Nicaraguan maid out of Panama over a pay dispute and he still had his job the next day. That was when Mireya Moscoso spit in the nation's face, serving notice that members of her gang of hoodlums would not be accountable for even their most squalid actions.

We're fresh out of tears to shed for Singares, who is one of the first Mireyistas to be banned from the United States. He should feel lucky that his US visa lasted as long as it did.

We could recite the ensuing litany of scandals, and we have on various occasions. Suffice to say, however, that Mireya's true nature led the US ambassador to make a series of very bold statements about the devastating effects of political corruption on Panamanian society.

Ambassador Watt didn't name names back then, but now the US State Department is pointing the finger at individuals, by way of their inclusion on a list of people not allowed to enter the United States. We shall see soon enough, but it would be surprising if Mireya herself does not appear on this list as soon as she leaves office.

The protests have and will be couched in nationalistic terms.

Of course it's not the best practice for Panama to allow a foreign country to separate the good guys from the bad guys among Panamanian political leaders. To do that leaves far too much room for abuse.

But Mireya and her clique are a pestilential element, whose time in power has been a disaster for this country. No assertion of nationalistic principles can conceal the reality of the situation.

Nor should we blame the United States for protecting its own interests by keeping our human garbage off of American shores. Little countries like Panama have a right to self determination that too often gets slighted by great powers, but the world's richest and most powerful nation also has a right to make its own decisions about who gets into the country and who does not. The rather mild and predictably belated US action against Panamanian corruption is not a matter of American altruism, but rather a precaution taken in the interests of the United States.

Here, people should be asking why only the United States, and not Panama, took action against Toro's visa selling racket. We should be asking why the Americans have seen through Mireya's crooked games while our own public officials pretend to see nothing.

While in a discussion of history or politics claims of US imperialism or American hypocrisy might be properly asserted, in this case they would be misplaced. The US government may do a lot of things that merit criticism, but this is surely not one of them. Whether it's to make free trade possible or to avoid giving the impression of cluelessness, the American administration has solid reasons to denounce Panamanian corruption.

None of this substitutes for Panama's duty to bring the Mireyista gang to justice. We need to do that, and also penalize those whose job it was to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish corruption, but who took dives when it was their duty to fight for us.

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

Chuck Palahniuk

Religion is love; in no case is it logic.

Beatrice Potter Webb

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it just may be a duck.

Walter Reuther

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