|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
front page
National industry It's not one of our major economic sectors. At best, it's a growing but limited little niche in our important tourism business. Still, today's whale watching is infinitely more important to Panama's economy than whaling is, ever was or ever will be. In this issue Robert Baker takes us whale watching off Coiba, and meanwhile I am told by an avid sports fisherman friend that while our Pacific waters are increasingly fished out, we still get lots of whales here. As July had five Fridays, there has been a three-week gap between the last issue and this one, and plenty has been happening on several fronts in that interval. Caribbean leaders have been here for the Association of Caribbean States summit and student intern Tomás García was there to cover the story. We also publish the text of the summit's Declaration of Panama and, in our opinion section, the protest from the Coordinator of Panamanian Black Organizations about one aspect of how the summit was organized. I went down to the Hindu Temple and the Sociedad Hindostana for the India Festival, and student intern Joel Inwood visited the National Crafts Fair at ATLAPA. The purported national dialogue about Seguro Social has not been going well, although President Torrijos might be deceived by the upper hand he holds in that "heads I win, tails you lose" game to believe otherwise. Panama and other Latin American banana producers have won their WTO arbitration about the European Union's import duties. American mercenary recruiters are here with a wink and a nod from the Panamanian government, in search of people to take dangerous jobs in Iraq. On the international level, there seems to be serious legal and political trouble brewing for the leaders of the two most populous countries in the Americas, the United States and Brazil. Panama could be indirectly affected, as those two countries are also the places from whence competing ideas of hemispheric economic integration are being promoted. The American legal system includes federal grand jury secrecy, but that's rarely complete and it does seem likely that indictments will soon be issued against people in and around the White House for disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA agent as an act of political revenge against her husband, which is a crime under US law and a most cowardly betrayal in the eyes of many Americans. Whether or not the charges touch George W. Bush himself, his political standing will surely be damaged. Meanwhile, in Brazil people all around President Lula da Silva are falling in an ever increasing bribery scandal. It's a matter of cash being paid to legislators in exchange for their votes for Lula's policies, a scandal very much like the one that brought down Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori and his security chief Vladimiro Montesinos. For those of you who are bilingual our Spanish opinion section includes a defense of Lula by Frei Betto, the radical Catholic priest. Polls suggest that the Brazilian president may well survive the scandal and be re-elected, but the stain on his administration is likely to have long-lasting national and international effects. Another political development in the United States that is likely to have repercussions here was the recent approval in the House of Representatives by a two-vote margin --- thanks to 15 Democratic defections --- of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The Torrijos administration promptly announced that US-Panamanian talks for a deal on a similar model would resume shortly. A free trade deal with the United States would give Martín Torrijos yet another of his "I'm helpless" dodges, in case multinational pharmaceutical companies raise our medicine prices, subsidized imports destroy our farm sector, monopolistic practices jack up computer software prices or so on. Just as he ran for office promising "zero corruption" and now pleads that he can't deliver because it's up the courts or the legislature, Torrijos would be tempted to similarly shift blame when people notice that his promise of more jobs isn't being kept. Fundamentally, that's the sort of thing that the misnamed "free trade" is intended to do. Unlike the European Union's scheme of things, under the US-imposed NAFTA/CAFTA model of regional economic integration there is no elected legislative body. There are no democratic controls at all. These are not oversights. The whole point is that if ever our National Assembly were to decide to do something to advance the economic welfare of Panamanians other than themselves, some company would be able to sue before a tribunal composed of corporate lawyers and void the legislation, without regard to anything anybody in Panama might think. All sorts of things might happen, but it would be reasonable to expect that, with only a slightly different cast of characters --- surely a lot more farmers and probably fewer public employees in the streets --- the argument over ratification of a free trade deal with the United States would look a lot like the one about the Seguro Social reforms. The likely outcome of such a dispute would be that the president would sign the treaty, the legislature would ratify it, there would be strikes and rioting, then from the time the commotion subsided through August of 2009 Torrijos would be at the head of an unpopular and ineffective lame duck government, much the way that Mireya was after people figured out precisely what her true intentions were. Anyway, these are my expectations, and more or less the concerns of farm economist Alexis Soto, who takes a look at CAFTA in the Spanish opinion section. I sure hope that I'm wrong about this, and that the fears of people like Mr. Soto are exaggerated. Farming is, after all, a major national economic activity that creates jobs and income that could never be replaced by growth in our whale watching sector. So what to do in times of great uncertainty like these? One can always to a play or a concert. (I don't know when you will be able to catch Romulo Castro again, but you if you read these words before August 13, you will be able to see the Theatre Guild of Ancon's latest madcap comedy production, "Black Comedy." Enjoy. PS: On the weekend that this issue was laid out, two major international stories broke that, although they have nothing directly to do with Panama or even the Americas, are worthy of note. The bad news was the untimely death of former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, a man of peace and integrity who set a sterling example of how an ethical politician acts. The good news was the rescue of seven Russian sailors, after their mini-submarine got snagged up in a ghost fishing net. The British Empire may be gone, but in this instance Britannia demonstrated that it rules the waves when it comes to underwater disaster relief. (And actually, there is an oblique Panama angle to this story, in that we are and long have been a fishing nation and we share the nuisance of ghost nets with all other maritime nations.)
News | Business | Editorial | Opinion | Letters | Arts | Review | Community | Fun | Travel
|
|||||||||
|
