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photo by Eric Jackson

A place of breathtaking beauty and heart rending tragedy

Isn’t Gatun Lake beautiful? But this same large lake that was created as part of the Panama Canal a few days before this photo was taken also the scene of an event that sent the country into mourning.

Tragedy plays a major part in the news this time, as three members of the National Maritime Service, Panama’s coast guard, drowned in Gatun Lake during the course of recent US-led navel maneuvers. The incident is the subject of an editorial, and in the Spanish section of a message of condolence from US Navy Rear Admiral Vincent Smith on behalf of the many countries that participated in this year’s war games.

We have also seen more than our share of farce in recent days, but much of that may turn out to be tragic as well.

First, the fraudulent diploma scandal has boiled over and is running in several directions. The farce is that the self-proclaimed “Rector Magnifico” Gustavo García de Paredes is using every trick in a very trite book to deflect attention from the fraudulent diploma that he signed, and for which he must now decide the fates of the student who intended to receive it and the secretary general of the university who also signed the diploma, both of whom are members of his political team.

Second, in its zeal to create a corny pseudo-democratic dialogue process to rescue some or all of its profoundly unpopular Law 17 Seguro Social reforms, the Torrijos administration, using Universidad Tecnologico rector Salvador Rodríguez as its front man, has pretended to have the approval of the nation’s professionals. They intervened to take over AMOACSS, the union that represents the doctors and dentists in the social security system, so as to exclude these professionals, the overwhelming majority of whom went on strike against Law 17 or else continued to work in the nation’s emergency rooms while participating in the protests when they were off duty, from the table. They then proceeded to organize a coup at the Federation of Professional Associations (FEDAP), and even though the servile pro-government faction failed to win a majority Dr. Rodríguez treated it as the “legitimate” voice of FEDAP. When FEDAP met to legally clarify matters and reclaim the rightful place of its rightful representatives at the table, Rodríguez and the pro-PRD broadcast media portrayed it as an intrusion of uninvited guests into a private party at the Council of Rectors’ private home and blamed those participants in the dialogue who don’t get their marching orders from Martín Torrijos for disrupting the process.

So now that President Torrijos and Dr. Rodríguez have clarified matters, we can all more clearly see that what’s happening is nothing remotely approximating a democratic public process but rather an insultingly patronizing PRD parlor game. What remains to be seen is how far the Torrijos administration will back down on its draconian Seguro Social reforms.

Then there’s the Winston Spadafora affair. Recall that way back in 2001, when Winnie was minister of government and justice, El Panama America reporters Jean Marcel Chéry and Gustavo Aparicio reported that a road was under construction near La Arenosa along the western side of Gatun Lake, and that public work passed the properties of only nine people, the two biggest properties belonging to Spadafora and then-Comptroller General Alvin Weeden. Spadafora brought criminal defamation --- calumnia e injuria --- charges against the two reporters. At their trial Chéry and Aparicio were acquitted of calumnia (publishing something false and unflattering) but convicted of injuria (publishing a true story that made pompous public officials look bad) and were given one-year prison sentences. Before leaving office, Mireya Moscoso pardoned Chéry, Aparicio, yours truly and about 70 other journalists, along with some Cuban-American terrorists and a bunch of garden variety thugs with the right connections or sob stories.

But then Spadafora filed a civil lawsuit over the case. Chéry, now working for La Prensa, published a story about the conflict of interest inherent in the unusual decision that Spadafora issued to cancel the multi-million-dollar debt that his close friend Jean Figali owed to ARI for back rent on land at the former Fort Amador for which he had obtained concessions. The next day Spadafora prevailed on a lower court judge --- who under the Panamanian legal system could lose his job by annoying a Supreme Court magistrate, as lower level judicial appointments, transfers and firings are done by the high court --- to seize Chéry’s assets and garnish his La Prensa salary.

This outrage has been heard around the world, and I suspect that it has many consequences to yet unfold. Certainly if the president and legislature want an excuse to change the composition of the high court by way of impeachment or expansion processes, Spadafora has given them one.

This issue of The Panama News is not, however, all about political tragedy and drama. Mostly by chance, we have larger arts, dining, outdoors and review sections than is usually the case. We check out places near either end of the canal, Taboga and Galeta. We take a look at restorations of a monument and a graveyard that are of particular interest to two of Panama’s ethnic communities and historical reminders to all Panamanians.

The major economic story this time is the reappointment of Alberto Alemán Zubieta as the canal’s administrator. To the extent that some of the Panama Canal Authority’s policies have been or are controversial, so is his reappointment for another seven years. The other side of the coin is that to the extent that the world has seen the canal running competently in Panamanian hands, the appointment is reassuring. Surely, when compared to the alternative of putting a member of President Torrijos’s inner circle in the post Alemán Zubieta was the better option. I must also note, as one of the people involved in the restoration of the Gatun silver roll cemetery that is featured in this issue, that in one of his first acts as canal administrator Alemán Zubieta overruled a second-tier bureaucrat who for incomprehensible reasons wanted to stop the effort to restore this important historical site.

Before I end this front page tome --- and before the computer crashes again --- let me add that the Anona Kirkland Writing Contest is happening under the sponsorship of The Panama News this year, the deadline is in the middle of September, and you should start writing now.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson
the editor