Editorial: The Torrijos team

Martín Torrijos’s choices for top government appointments send two major messages.

The first one is very positive. It appears that Torrijos is serious about putting a dysfunctional government back into some semblance of working order. His is on the whole a team of men and women with impressive credentials, most of whom have served honorably in government posts. When one compares this team with Mireya Moscoso’s, it is immediately notable for its lack of nepotism and the absence of obviously unqualified members.

The second one is that the politician class and its close associates in the private economic elite will continue to dominate Panamanian government. There are a few good things to be said about this, but given that the politicians are widely discredited in society and that the economic ruling class is a tiny splinter of the Panamanian population, that part of the president-elect’s message carries with it mostly negative connotations.

The mixed message inherent in the Torrijos cabinet is embodied in his choice for housing minister, Balbina Herrera.

Clearly the woman is brilliant. She has demonstrated this by competent performances in a variety of roles, including as a student activist, mayor of San Miguelito, militant opponent of the US intervention that reached its zenith in the 1989 invasion, rebuilder of a party that had suffered a catastrophic series of defeats, legislative caucus leader both in government and in opposition and as president of the PRD. She has not been caught stealing or taking bribes during her many years in public life.

However, Balbina Herrera has been a defender and beneficiary of the politicians’ unseemly privileges, such as a special deal on real estate at Albrook and the many annoying perquisites that legislators enjoy. She leaves a PRD assembly caucus that will forever be subject to unpleasant and unresolved questions about the CEMIS affair. When, some years back, it was revealed that she had a secret payroll on which appeared the names a number of Panamanian journalists, it was more of a scandal for those reporters who took her money than for Balbina herself but still a strong indication that she doesn’t understand the proper role of an independent press in a free society. Her subsequent legislative support for revived journalist licensing and for keeping this country’s criminal defamation laws in place tend to confirm this impression.

So although Balbina Herrera may be the most competent leader that the PRD has, she’s not a viable candidate for sainthood. Still, if she solves any substantial portion of this country’s serious housing problem, she’s likely to be one of the PRD’s most viable presidential possibilities in 2009.

The appointment of Ebrahim Asvat, the Partido Popular activist and attorney who served for a time as National Police Chief in the Endara administration, as a “super-minister” without portfolio to oversee the functioning of the other ministries raises many questions about both personality and structure. Asvat’s promotion from publisher of a gory sensationalist tabloid and uninspiring television pundit to this new post is not on the face of it the selection of a highly qualified individual. The creation of his new post, headed as it will be by a figure from a party that received well under five percent of the popular vote on May 2, might be either a blessing or a curse. Time will tell whether this appointment amounts to either the posting of an independent watchdog to weed out corruption and incompetence or the imposition of a new source of debilitating intragovernmental intrigues.

Rubén Blades in his new role as tourism minister, Samuel Lewis Navarro as the next foreign minister and Ubaldino Real as minister of the presidency are all imports from different parts of the private sector, in which they have done well in their own ways. But in years past Blades proved that success as an entertainer and a lawyer did not make him a competent candidate or party boss. The “I have been successful in business and I intend to run this government like a business” pitch has been made many times in many places and the performances of those who have made it do not particularly uphold its validity. We shall see how well these men make the transition to public administration.

Torrijos’s decision to eliminate the Ministry of Canal Affairs appears to be wise. It eliminates a superfluous layer of government bureaucracy. However, his elevation of the Panama Canal Authority’s number two man, Ricaurte Vásquez, to minister of economy and finance does raises questions.

The authority’s role in the debate about whether and how to expand the canal has been long on the corny corporate publicity and short on the sharing of information necessary for a democratic society’s decision about the future of its principal public infrastructure asset. Moreover, the current canal administration adds to the doubts about the financial feasibility of canal modernization with its apparent tunnel vision, which discounts the electrical generating, recreational, tourism, real estate, research and other valuable ancillary uses of assets under its control.

That since the transition to Panamanian control the canal has been run profitably, and safely and efficiently from the shipping point of view, is only part of the story. A more holistic analysis reveals problems and one wonders whether Vásquez has a broader perspective than the ministers and administrator under whom he has served.

The great advantage that the Torrijos team has will be apparent in the inevitable comparison with its predecessor. However, “better than Mireya” isn’t good enough, not by a long shot. Panama needs much higher standards than that.

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