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Leis, Dialogue about the dialogue

Dialogue about the dialogue

by Raúl Leis R.  --- raulleisr@hotmail.com

The majority’s opposition --- expressed in diverse manners --- against an imposed law, brought the subject of the Social Security Fund (CSS) reforms to what should have been its point of departure, the table of consultation and dialogue. Now there's much apprehension about the functioning and effectiveness of this privileged space and the eyes and ears of the country are fixed and paying attention to its unfolding. Well, now --- what's going on with the dialogue?

There's a prolongation of the lack of confidence. The form in which the government handled the reforms not only depleted its popularity, but also its credibility. From this perspective, the battle over methodologies and representation is nothing more than a reaction against styles of imposition, changes pushed through in the middle of the night and pseudo- and semi-consultations that are ever present in the accumulated experiences and in the imaginations of various sectors seated around the table.

While it may be true that a dialogue heavily depends on people's will, flexibility and tolerance, those people represent sectors, positions and proposals. On the one hand the government, legally constituted on the basis of an electoral decision by the citizenry, has its proposal in Law 17, which is only suspended for 90 days. On the other hand, FRENADESSO, with the legitimacy conferred by its incarnation of public opinion with respect to its position on these reforms, presents a proposal by the popular movement. Also present are various other sectors with well defined proposals, such as those of the private sector, and others who raise specific concerns.

In other words, it's not just a matter of whether a person makes concessions or doesn't make concessions. Those present represent social, economic and political forces, and the question is whether among these forces, and in the hearts of each of these forces, there is a place from which a true debate or dialogue may be drawn. What is the common denominator among all the sectors on the subject of the CSS? What are the projects that each has for the country? What is the space for feasible negotiation?

The negotiating table has two factors that are key: the facilitation and the guarantors. The facilitation phase has touched the roof and it's necessary to go to the mediation phase. That is, to identify a person or persons --- national or foreign --- chosen by common agreement by the people around the table on the bases of criteria like autonomy, impartiality, a systematic approach, administrative capability, the ability to bring parties to consensus and to clarify points of reference, who can generate interchanges and dialogue not only among individuals, but also among social forces, and very importantly, within these: someone patient with people and social forces but impatient (in the sense of being demanding and responsible) with the dialogue process.

By this measure, the three months of dialogue are more than sufficient to reach viable and adequate agreements on the reforms needed to improve the CSS. The churches are indispensable guarantors of the process, and must resist the temptation to abandon this role even if it may be a trek up Calvary, for the result of their departure would be disastrous. Each of the parties would have to be supported by not only experts in the content of the reforms, but also by technical teams apt at mediation and conflict resolution.

Legitimacies are lost and won. They aren't blank checks for anyone. This is a lesson that the government should have learned, when it thought that the honeymoon was eternal and that support at the ballot box was unconditional and extended to the proposed CSS reforms, both as to their contents and the methods used to pass them. The same applies to FRENADESSO, which can lose at the negotiating table the support it has won in the streets, if it doesn't give clear examples of transparency, internal democracy, shared leadership and coherent proposals to solve the problem.

It would be convenient for the government a failed dialogue for which --- whether truthfully or not --- the responsibility would be imputed to FRENADESSO, with Law 17 then being resuscitated unopposed because the latter would have lost its initiative and only with great difficulty be able to regain its capacity for social mobilization. Then the credibility crisis would be total, encompassing the partisans of all sides.

On the other hand, a broken or sterile dialogue perceived as the government's fault would lead us to a second edition of the recent crisis, one much more profound and with very grave implications.

In other words, for the sake of the common good and the country's future, it's objectively in the interest of all sectors for the dialogue to triumph, by way of reaching conclusions as optimal as possible for the common good with respect to Panamanian social security.

In an interchange that various of us who are not part of the dialogue had on the television program Debate Abierto a few days ago, I asserted the need to liven the dialogue by the mechanism of mediation and recommended it to those who sit at the negotiating table. I respectfully ask the people around the table and the entities they represent, as well as the guarantors and the present facilitator, to engage in a constructive dialogue about the dialogue.