|
|
|
|
|
|||
newsAlso in this section: US Ambassador Linda Watt will leave Panama in July by Eric Jackson United States Ambassador to Panama Linda E. Watt will be retiring from the Foreign Service and leave the isthmus this July. Both within the American community here and across the spectrum of Panamanian society, she will leave as one of the more popular US ambassadors here. A career diplomat, Watt came here from a post as foreign policy advisor for the US Southern Command, and that fact suggested an administration concerned about Panama largely as a small piece in Plan Colombia. But American diplomats have told The Panama News that while the US Embassy here does pay attention to what's happening next door in Colombia, Watt's main marching orders were not about that. They were to address the issue of Panamanian public corruption, both as a matter of good government and in order to protect the interests of American companies. And Watt did denounce corruption at a time when it was particularly flagrant, for the first noteworthy time in an appearance before the Chamber of Commerce. She didn't point fingers but was unusually blunt for a diplomat, leading some of the few willing to publicly dispute Watt doing so under an argument that her public remarks about the internal affairs of a host country were a breach of diplomatic decorum. Mostly, though, it was a recognition of local realities that most Panamanians welcomed from the American ambassador. Watt's pronouncements surely sealed the fate of Mireya's ambitions to choose her own successor by adding weight to the already strong public perception that the Moscoso administration was corrupt. Once their time in power ended, some of Mireya's erstwhile subordinates lost their US visas but Mireya and her relatives remained welcome and honored guests in Miami. There are suspicions that the former president's last-minute pardon lists, which included four men of Cuban origin jailed here for endangering public safety by way of a bombing plot, are the source of the US government's attitudinal pirouette about Mireya. In any case the changed US position became evident at the embassy level. Watt, critics allege, had quietly lobbied the Moscoso administration on behalf of a "solution" to the case that "doesn't help Fidel Castro." Cuba's censored and government controlled media say that her role went well beyond that when the embassy here gave Luis Posada Carriles false documents with which he was able to go underground in Central America and later surreptitiously enter the United States by sea from Mexico. Here again, it's likely to be a long time before US government documents about these events are made public. But a spokeman for the US Embassy here denied that Watt had ever lobbied Moscoso about the Cubans, denied that any documents were issued to Posada Carriles by the embassy and said that the pardons took American diplomats here by surprise. The controversies noted above, however, have been little blips against a solid favorable image created in Watt's travels throughout Panama, during which she met people from a much wider social spectrum than American diplomats usually see. Watt also created an embassy office for US-Panamanian people-to-people efforts. and brought the American community together at annual American Fairs on the grounds of the US Ambassador's Residence. It seems that Watt was probably the first American ambassador to ever deliver part of a speech in one of Panama's indigenous languages --- at least, nobody remembers such a thing happening before --- as she did with a few lines in Ngobe at a ceremony ending National Guard construction maneuvers in Chiriqui two years ago. Ambassador Watt plans to move to Utah with her husband Leo Duncan, also a retired US diplomat, and devote some time to writing and lecturing about US diplomatic relations with Latin America.
Also in this section:
News |
Business |
Editorial |
Opinion |
Letters |
Arts
|
Review |
Community |
Fun
|
Travel |
|||||||||
|
