Leis, What our recently inaugurated public officials should do

Twenty-five centuries ago, Confucius wrote in his Third Classic Book, addressing himself to the government: “The people die of hunger on the roads and highways, and you don’t open the public granaries. When you see men dead of hunger you say: ‘It’s not my fault, but that of the sterility of the land.’ Is this behavior any different from that of a man who runs another through with a sword saying: ‘It wasn’t me but my sword’?...

“Meng-Tse said: ‘Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick or killing him with a sword?’

“The king said: ‘There is no difference.’

“Meng-Tse: ‘And between killing him with a sword or a bad government --- did you find differences?’

“The king said: ‘I found no difference.’”

The country finds itself run through by the sword of bad government and now a new government assumes power, amidst the enormous needs and expectations of the population.

For me, the measure of the trajectory of elected officials is neither age, sex, profession, money nor appearance, but the capacity and will to shoulder the burden of these key issues:

• Our representatives in the executive and legislative branches and in local government should be profoundly honest, coherent, plain and transparent in their actions.

• They should fight head-on against all forms of corruption and put the common good above whatever private interest.

• They should have the capacity to agree on a model of development that links economic growth with social equity and environmental sustainability. Within this framework, the benefits of the canal’s assets should flow to all of the country’s population.

• Panama should gradually overcome its current position as one of the countries with the worst income distribution in the world by equitable mechanisms like education, tax reforms, public policies, decentralization and local development.

• They should be capable of promoting good government --- one that’s democratic, honest and efficient. They should promoted efficiency in social spending and improve public services without privatizing them, such as in the cases of the IDAAN water and sewer utility and the Social Security Fund.

• They should propose public safety policies centered around prevention, rehabilitation and resocialization, refining the punitive elements within an integrated concept.

• They should design a coherent international policy centered around international law, the search for options in the face of neo-liberalism, self-determination and peace.

• Panama should stop being a paradise for corrupt and authoritarian politicians and reestablish the deteriorated relations with Cuba and Venezuela.

• They should possess a deep civic and patriotic conviction, expressed in the denial of any arrangement that serves to install military bases on our territory, or to permit any attempt at internal militarization. That is to say, neither bases nor barracks. At the same time they should be profoundly respectful of the fundamental human rights of the Panamanian people.

• They should have a deep democratic conviction, respecting the popular will, accomplishing a real separation of state powers and political and administrative decentralization of the country, and supporting the creation of a new national constitution by way of democratic mechanisms that include all sectors of the nation.

• They should possess a profound social sensitivity, especially about the realities of exclusion and poverty, promoting a vigorous crusade that transcends paternalism or social work in favor of an authentic community uplift that permits people to be protagonists in their own development.

• They should understand that the poor have faces and associations, and thus support and stimulate the cooperatives, community groups, unions and associations.

• They should contribute to the creation of an opening to participation by civil society, to articulate the presence of representative democracy through participative democracy. To opt for participation is “to assume the plurality of legitimate interests and counter-proposals, which means to renounce the monopoly over political and administrative power on the part of elected authorities.” (To quote Jordi Borja.)

• They should pay special attention to rural Panama and the indigenous areas, by way of a holistic and sustainable agrarian transformation.

• They should promote the actions necessary to protect and improve the environment, both in the countryside as well as in the city.

• They should achieve greater gender equality, advance toward the end of all forms of racial or ethnic discrimination and generate new opportunities for the youth.

The country can’t stand another stab of bad government. Mexican Zapatismo proposes that he who leads commands obedience, thus recognizing the idea of representativeness, but with new and inclusive democratic controls. It posits leadership as the result of a collective democratic process.

To command obedience means to rethink power, and by way of an ethical restatement, subordinate the state to the people, from whom power emanates. This way, every citizen is responsible for monitoring the march of public affairs, to be clear about it, to participate and also to exert pressure and criticize when the situation requires it.

Also in this section:
Leis, What our newly inaugurated officials should do
Jackson, Things that Panama's Americans must decide
What they're saying about the attacks on Kerry's military record
Giuliani, Thank God George W. Bush is our president
Aldredge & Kelley, Protests at the Republican National Convention
Thomas & Thomas, SouthCom's contortions to define its role
Human Rights Watch, The Guantanamo military tribunals
Vacca, The Greater Caribbean This Week
Bolivarians, About the pardons of Cuban terrorists
Bernal, Where is the University of Panama going?

opinion

The sword, or to command obedience