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editorial

How casually a solemn promise was broken

In its propaganda to head off strikes and disturbances, the government spent a lot of the taxpayers’ money to tell people that the PRD-Partido Popular alliance’s Seguro Social reform package included “no privatization.”

Then, in the National Assembly’s Labor Committee proceedings, a number of changes were jammed through in the following fashion:

“...Article 82 --- Mr. Secretary, is there an amendment?

“Yes, there is an amendment by Deputy Pedro Miguel González....

“All in favor of the section as amended?

“Four yes, Mr. Chairman.

“All opposed?

“Three no votes, Mr. Chairman.

“Article 82 is approved.”

And so on. The amendments were not previously published, nor were they debated, nor were they voted up or down separately from the original proposal which the government had included as a separate insert in all the daily newspapers.

It turns out that as amended, the “reform” package does in fact privatize the Seguro Social retirement fund, by allowing its investment in private banks, corporate bonds, Panama’s disreputable Bolsa de Valores and so on. Using the most reprehensible and opaque procedures, Martín Torrijos’s promise was thus converted into another politician’s lie. The government does in fact intend to turn the management of the Social Security Fund over to the oligarchy, who will get to skim off the cream in so many different ways.

But let us not oversimplify and say “to the oligarchy.” In reality, not only to the oligarchy and not all the oligarchs.

What’s the most successful private Panamanian bank? That would be Alberto Vallarino’s Banistmo. But Vallarino, the unsuccessful “third force” candidate in 1999, says he wants to run for president again in 2009 and is seeking to unify the scattered and fairly well discredited opposition parties behind his candidacy. It would be a safe bet that little or none of the Social Security Fund will be invested in Banistmo. The members of the PRD’s Frente Empresarial will surely have much better access to the retirement fund, either directly as the owners or managers of institutions in which the money will be invested or indirectly as the recipients of loans from the banks that will all of a sudden have more money --- your money and my money --- to lend.

The broken promise is the worst of it, but the expenses of making that promise in the first place should also be of concern. Why? Because many of the mass media and much of the country’s advertising cartel are linked to President Torrijos by either partisan alignment or family ties. The details of how much was spent on which media, through which ad agencies, if and when they ever come out, will reveal how much of the government’s propaganda campaign was more in the nature of the PRD and friends feathering their own nests rather than a simple attempt to pull the wool over the public’s collective eyes over a controversial political issue.

The bottom line? President Torrijos can get what he wants with the Social Security Fund, but now far fewer Panamanians are inclined to believe what he says than was the case a month ago, and this loss of credibility will make it much harder for him to sell a Panama Canal expansion referendum or a free trade agreement with the United States. Panamanian politics has taken an exceptionally negative turn, and from now on the government’s arguments will have to be in the nature of “our critics are a bunch of amoral thugs” rather than “what we are proposing is for the good of the country.”

The polls will eventually document the phenomenon --- no, not the rigged ones that the propaganda machine churns out, but the credible ones by reputable organizations --- and Torrijos is going to have to get used to governing with the majority of Panamanians against him.

This, in turn, presents and opportunity and sets a trap for those who have been out in the streets protesting against the Torrijos administration and its policies.

The left already blew it by not participating in the 2004 elections, in which it surely could have won the second or third largest block of votes in the legislature. Thus they had to fight this battle from the outside looking in, as the perennial protest movement eternally reacting to what others do, rather than as a powerful political player in its own right.

Now, with the constitution amended to allow the convening of a constituent assembly by way of a citizen initiative --- even if that process is extremely difficult and the subsequent system of electing delegates is rigged in favor of the existing political class --- the people who marched against the Social Security reforms would have enough grass roots support to gather the needed signatures to call a special election at a time when the PRD has exhausted all but its most hardcore support and the official opposition is in disarray and mostly discredited by the abuses of the Moscoso administration.

There is also another special election possibility, a selective recall campaign directed against the four PRD members of the legislature's Labor Committee and a few other particularly vulnerable PRD deputies and their suplentes. Take a half-dozen National Assembly seats out of the PRD-Partido Popular column and the Torrijos steamroller would at the very least have to go to the repair shop. Even if all that could be accomplished is the unseating of a few deputies to be replaced by their PRD suplentes, that would also wipe some smirks off the faces of arrogant deputies' faces.

But it’s easier to shout slogans about “the people” and argue about which faction is “the vanguard” than it is to get down to the brass tacks of organizing this country’s disaffected majority into a powerful coalition for change.

Bear in mind...

Rabble, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable --- omnipotent on condition that it do nothing. (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, “soaring swine.”)

Ambrose Bierce
 

The only sin is mediocrity.

Martha Graham

But the safety of the people of America against dangers from foreign force depends not only on their forbearing to give just causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to invite hostility or insult; for it need not be observed that there are pretended as well as just causes of war.

John Jay