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Gut reactions to the Panama Canal’s expansion

by Eric Jackson

Leave it to APEDE, the Panamanian Business Executives Association, to convene an intelligent discussion about the prospects for expanding the Panama Canal. I say that as an observation about the important and beneficial role that the organization plays in our national discourse, and also to note that it has largely been left to APEDE to take up the topic because the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) is trying to live up to this slick concept of corporate public relations that’s inappropriate for a public institution in a democracy and has thus left much of the informative role that it ought to be playing to others.

From the start, my instincts have told me that Panama really does need to build a third set of locks that lets ships too large to fit through our present ones use our waterway. But also, deep down inside, there have been fears from the very start. Initially, they were about a megaproject that trashes the environment to create a vast new lake that gets silted up and rendered nearly useless within a few decades, the displacement of thousands of families who lead difficult but independent lives as small farmers and the possibilities for hardcore corruption. Thanks to the warnings by the canal’s former number two man Fernando Manfredo, I also picked up a concern about the possibility of a huge public debt that can’t easily be amortized, leading to severe austerity measures in an already chronically suffering economy.

Those were just for starters, but the initial balance has held. I think that this country’s future depends on modernizing the canal. Plus, as a man whose natural political tendencies in times of economic crisis are those of a New Deal Democrat, in principle I like the idea of pumping a few billion dollars into our economy over a period of about a decade.

But this lean toward approval very much depends on whether the project is properly done. A bad proposal is worth rejecting, so that a few years later we can consider a better one in another referendum. I say this with the knowledge that a defeat in a referendum would be ruinous to the presidency of the chief executive who presents it to the Panamanian people, as someone without the political animosities that might lead me to wish all the suffering that a failed presidency means for the entire country just to spite a partisan foe, and as a member of the majority of Panamanians who belong to no political party.

So far, we have no proposal, nor do we have any of the preliminary studies, before us. The former isn’t really a problem, but the latter is. There are many signs that the Panama Canal Authority has long known precisely what it intends to do and that most of the measurements, observations and calculations upon which their undisclosed plans rest have been done for some time.

If the authority tries to pull a stunt like that which was run last December at the University of Panama --- where a “reform” proposal was very partially released 10 days before a snap referendum scheduled to insure a low voter turnout and hyped in a most unprincipled and insulting manner --- I will cast a “no” vote and urge others to do likewise. I don’t live off the political gravy train and I’m not some intellectually lazy legislator who would vote for a law that makes reference to a map which has not been provided, as a previous assembly disastrously did when they gave the same piece of land to the railroad company and the port company. The political parties get to run their own shows and if the PRD wanted to withhold from the press and the general public the identities of the candidates in their legislative primaries --- as they did last time --- that’s mostly their business, but anything similar with respect to the Panama Canal would be a grave violation of the public’s trust. There should be no benefit of the doubt when information that can be provided is not provided. Play those games and you lose the gong show.

I would also withhold my support from a plan if it is shown that the properties for which compensation is to be paid mainly turn out to belong to members of the political class, the rabiblanco families or people with inside ties to the ACP. I would vote against any plan that includes the purchase of the Cerro Petaquilla mining concession, which has existed for 18 years without commercial production. If the biggest farm to be condemned under eminent domain belongs to the Cortizo family, I’ll vote no. If any past or present member of the ACP board of directors would be in line for a windfall, that would be cause for rejection as far as I’m concerned.

Similarly, if the whining of our former local ENRON exec is heeded to the extent that the proceeds of electricity generation at any new dam are reserved for private companies I won’t support the proposal.

A generous settlement for families who have worked the land in what has now been declared the Western Watershed for a long time, on the other hand, would help me to vote “yes.” It’s no secret that big farming interests in the Interior are hoping for a new lake, part of whose water they would siphon off to irrigate their lands at public expense. That may or may not be in the public interest, but in any case the first in line for any irrigation water ought to be any farmers displaced by the canal expansion project. It would be no injustice if those compelled to collect their pigs and chickens and leave their little corn and yucca patches were relocated to new farms with rights to irrigation water, or with valuable lakefront locations.

Do the government and the ACP want my vote? Then they need to give me all of the information in a timely manner, show me a viable plan, and dispense with all the crooked political games. My gut instinct is to vote for canal expansion, but if the powers that be insist on making me sick to my stomach with all their corny tricks I will vote against it and hope for a better plan the next time around.