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Ghosts from the past revived in military academy spat

by Eric Jackson, mostly from other media

It started when National Police Chief Gustavo Pérez asked the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) for a 20-hectare piece of the former Fort Davis for the creation of a military academy, a high school that would teach military subjects as well as the ordinary secondary curriculum. The chief sent out a letter seeking support from the Asociacion Panameña de Egresados de Universidades Militares, a group that includes both those educated at military universities and secondary-level military academies.

One of the people who received the letter was former President Guillermo Endara, whose secondary education was obtained in part at a military academy in California. During Endara's administration, which began in the wake of the 1989 US invasion, Panama officially abolished the Panama Defense Forces, replacing them with a constitutional provision that in case of a military emergency such as an invasion or insurrection the country would mobilize a militia under the command of the National Police.

Endara responded to Pérez's request most unfavorably, at a press conference and in a series of exchanges over the Internet. The former president accused the Torrijos administration of wanting to return to the times of militarism. In a sarcastic mass-distributed email, he suggested that Panama needs a drug trafficking academy just as much as it needs a military academy.

Pérez is sticking to his guns, and to his support has come Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro, who noted that many upscale Panamanian families send their sons to military academies abroad. Pérez added that the hundreds of military academies in the United States pose no threat to democracy in that country.

Former National Police Chief Oswaldo Fernández, for his part, argues that a military academy of the sort proposed by Pérez would be unconstitutional. It seems that the request to ARI was for land to be used by a private foundation to create the contemplated academy, but Fernández points out that the law restricts possession of military weapons to the government and that any true military academy would have to have such arms for its instructional purposes.

Retired Panama Defense Forces General Rubén Darío Paredes called Pérez's proposal a "slip," but said that the proposal is interesting and ought to be discussed further. Paredes told El Panama America that Pérez's big mistake was to go first to ARI, rather than to the Ministry of Education, and that the idea needs to be considered from a number of points of view, including the ethical one, taking into account the suspicion that many Panamanians have of all things military.

So far the argument hasn't broached a few related topics that seem to be taboo for public discussion in this country's political circles:

• Although our constitution calls for a militia system for national defense, there has never been any real effort to implement it by training civilians to take up arms if the need arises, to set up a skeleton command structure within the National Police or to establish arsenals to arm the militia in case of an emergency mobilization. Many experiences in many places suggest that to pass out arms to an untrained and poorly organized militia does not create a force that can hold its own against a much smaller but trained and disciplined fighting force.

• Although the National Police are not in name an army, in fact US military advisors have been training Panamanian cops in military tactics at Fort Sherman for several years now, and at a glance the police officers stationed along the border with Colombia look a lot more like soldiers than cops.

• Most observers with military educations and knowledge of the situation along our border with Colombia believe that were the National Police to attempt to resist a determined assault by any of our neighbors' armed organizations --- FARC, the AUC, the ELN or Colombian government forces --- Panama would be soundly thrashed. In the face of the occasional skirmishes resulting from incursions by FARC, the AUC and bandoleros --- the latter Colombian gangs with ordinary criminal aims but heavily armed, organized upon quasi-military lines and often composed of veterans of their country's various combatant forces --- the National Police have adopted tactics of observation and containment, backing away from serious battles. Fortunately for Panama, despite a history of armed incursions so far none of our potential Colombian foes have shown an interest in taking and holding Panamanian territory or waging a battle to destroy the National Police.