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What’s a disgraced ex-president who led a notoriously corrupt administration to do?

First, retain control over her party by dividing the majority that wanted to throw here our of its leadership.

That’s exactly what Mireya Moscoso did, in what many a local wag has compared to a competition among beverages.

Mireya Moscoso has a coffee farm in Boquete, so she and her followers are “cafe.”

The leader of one of the factions that fought for control of the Arnulfista Party at its January 16, former legislator Marco Ameglio, is the scion of the Bonlac dairy products fortune. Thus Ameglio and his followers are “leche.”

The leader of the other anti-Mireyista faction, Los Santos legislator Juan Carlos Varela, comes from the family that’s best known for its liquor distilling business, Hermanos Varela. So Popi Varela and his followers are “ron.”

You can mix a reasonable drink with the products made by the Ameglio and Varela families, but it wouldn’t be traditional. And Ameglio’s and Varela’s factions of the Arnulfista Party easily had the votes to send Mireya and her thugs packing --- but successful political insurgencies waged over the corruption issue are not traditional in this country either.

What Mireya did WAS traditional. She bought off Ameglio by offering him the party’s vice-presidency and a number of other top leadership posts for members of his faction, thus retaining her presidency until at least the middle of next year.

As in “cafe con leche,” a very traditional morning beverage in this country. Ameglio’s deal with the lady who shafted him when he tried to run for the party’s presidential nomination is also very traditional if one considers it in light of the history of how the oligarchic families do politics in this country.

Of course, the firewater faction was left out in the cold and is most unhappy about it. Varela and his followers met the following weekend in Aguadulce to form themselves as Unidad Panameñista, denounce the results of the January 16 party convention and plot their next power plays.

Meanwhile, at the January 16 convention the Arnulfista Party resolved to change its name to the Panameñista Party. That latter name, those who know a bit about Panamanian history will recall, was the ticket on which the late Arnulfo Arias used to run. During the dictatorship Noriega’s Electoral Tribunal gave the name to a dissident faction, so the Arnulfistas became the Panameñista Autentico Party --- until Noriega’s Electoral magistrates gave THAT name to the eminently forgettable Hildebrando Nicosia. After the 1989 US invasion the late Dr. Arias’s faction re-formed itself as the Arnulfista Party, but within 15 years Arias’s widow Mireya Moscoso had purged the party, ruined its reputation and led it to a catastrophic political defeat. The name change amounts to a suggestion to voters that they forget about the Moscoso administration and concentrate on the mystique of an earlier day --- which is going to be difficult with Mireya in charge of the renamed party.

There are suggestions that Varela’s faction may contest the results of the January 16 convention before the Electoral Tribunal, which looks like a legal non-starter but might be a reasonable political move if Varela intends to start a splinter party.

La Critica also published a rumor, attributed to people close to Moscoso, that having proven her point by retaining her leadership, she will step down from the party presidency in mid-April, so that it will have some chance of success in the 2009 elections.

For Mireya and the Mireyistas, much depends on what prosecutors and judges do or refrain from doing. Mireya’s former National Bank of Panama director is in hiding, probably in Europe, and issuing communiques from the underground stating his willingness to return to Panama and confront corruption charges if only the arrest warrant against him is rescinded. Her former Canal Once public TV director is in Costa Rica, appealing the Tico government’s decision not to grant him political asylum because he considers prosecutors’ questions about the disappearance of millions of dollars worth of assets from that state entity politically motivated. Meanwhile, the new Attorney General has yet to issue her report about what might be done about the high profile scandals of previous administrations.












Also in this section:
Casco Viejo renovation project
Landfill removal
Mireya retains control, changes party name
Panama News Briefs

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