School’s out after the 2004 academic year, so we won’t have too many student radicals versus riot cops brawls on the Transistmica in front of campus for a few months. Now it’s the university hierarchy’s turn to raise hell.
When all the votes were counted in a snap “plebiscite” over proposed legislation to “modernize” the university --- the fine print of which was about things like extending the rector’s term, giving him the power to fire dissident tenured professors and so on --- some 12 percent of all students, professors and administrators were said to have voted and, largely on the strength of the administrators’s turnout, some two-thirds were said to have supported the plan. However, The Panama News was not the only Panamanian news medium to take the editorial stand that yes, the Legislative Assembly should take up the matter of university reform, but no, it should not take the results of this vote as guidance.
In a December 9 front page editorial, El Panama America noted that the university is asking for another budget increase, and also recounted its prior editorial stand against holding a vote on the administration’s “reform” package two days before the end of classes and on less than two weeks’ notice. “Their intention was to divide the power, not to discuss with those who pay,” the editorial said. “So long as the university doesn’t open up and feel like debating its structure, functioning, plans and objectives with civil society, its financial tribulations will continue and the citizenry will look for other alternative to provide the education that it needs, leaving it by itself.”
The following day the University of Panama’s Academic Council passed a resolution of censure against El Panama America, accusing the paper of “injurious” and “distorted” coverage that was “lacking in good faith.” Rector Gustavo García de Paredes called the administration’s detractors “capricious” and “subjective,” and argued that “the worst thing that can happen to a country is that its communications media give up their credibility.” García de Paredes accused El Panama America of advocating an “exclusionary” and “elitist” University of Panama.
That touched a certain raw nerve around EPASA, the company that publishes El Panama America and La Critica. El Panama America was founded by Harmodio Arias (Arnulfo’s older and wiser brother) who, some years later when he became president, also founded the University of Panama. EPASA is owned by the descendants of Harmodio Arias.
Noting that Harmodio Arias founded both the newspaper and the university, El Panama America’s editorial on December 11 called the charge that it’s waging a smear campaign against the university “absurd” and argued that:
“The University of Panama is not the property of the people at the university. The University of Panama is the property of the Panamanian nation. The Panamanians created, the Panamanians subsidize it and the Panamanians have the right to opine about its performance.”
Meanwhile John Bennett, the former president of the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE), weighed in with the opinion that University of Panama graduates tend not to be very well educated and that it would probably be better to close the university and use the money spend subsidizing it to pay for the nation’s brighter students to study elsewhere.
On the 12th El Panama America continued the attack, alleging in its front page editorial that “one of the most notable differences between the university authorities and us is that we can propose solutions and they can’t.”
Meanwhile on the central campus, where it appears that the faculty voted against the administration’s proposal, some of the professors joined the fray. The main faculty union called on the legislature to ignore the plebiscite but take up the matter of university reform. The New University Movement, headed by law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal, cited the Academic Council’s censure resolution as an example of a “climate of intolerance, authoritarianism, anti-democratization and anti-academicism” prevailing at the university.
Gustavo García de Paredes and most of his inner circle are, like the majority of the Legislative Assembly, aligned with the PRD. However, so are some of the rector’s critics, and there are no doubt members of the majority legislative caucus who view the university more in terms of a mess that they must clean up than as a political plum that their party controls.
It thus seems likely that when it convenes for its next session the legislature will take up the matter of university reform, but it is less likely that the deputies will do precisely what the rector wants them to do. One key indicator of how things will go will be whether a special legislative session is called to discuss the university. That would imply a debate undertaken while students are on vacation and a greater likelihood that the university administration’s proposals would be adopted without much debate. If the matter comes up at the start of the next regular session in March of 2005, students and faculty would play a much larger role in the debate and it would be much harder for the desires of the university administration and the eight percent or so of the university community that voted for its package of proposals to be represented as the will of the university community.
The most important political question may be whether and in which direction Panama’s business leaders take a stand. On the one hand, the rich usually send their own kids to private schools or abroad for their higher educations. However, in some sectors the lack of properly educated people to hire is a serious impediment to running a competitive business. To the extent that a debate about the university is expressed in terms of its effect on the national economy, its center of gravity will shift away from the interest groups on campus, potentially marginalizing both the administration and the dissidents.
Also in this section:
Fugitive ex-banker stripped of his US visa
University "censures" its founder's descendants
2004 was especially deadly for the world's journalists
Panama's corporate media stir up a Chávez scare
Panama News Briefs
