Most ads are interactive -- click on them to visit the folks who make The Panama News possible

opinion

Also in this section:
Bernal, Diploma scandals
Reporters Without Borders, The Chéry and Aparicio case
Gutman, Silence that screams
Carpio, The ACS summit
Dunlop, GE seeds and European democracy
Ramirez, A Free Trade Area of the Americas
Noriega, WTO dynamics
Schaffer & Chestnut, Chávez and his regional following
Jackson, Stop the Iraq War
Leis, Honesty is cool

Diplomas --- in exchange for what?

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The diplomas scandal is the obligatory topic of the day. Everything that has been closed or hidden by the authorities who have, by act or omission, actively participated in the effort to keep the truth of the matter from being known is causing grave damage to the entire Panamanian society, both to those who have and those who don’t have diplomas.

This is so, given the ramifications of what some had wanted to present as an isolated case but which we now see, thanks to the journalistic work of El Panama America, has dimensions, extensions and ramifications that also reach into secondary education.

In fact, it was the secretary general of the University of Panama herself who, in her declarations to said newspaper on May 18 of this year, said that “more than 300 diplomas were elaborated without the students having completed their requirements.” It is shown as such in the report given by the commission of three deans, which corroborates that the complaint about the falsification of diplomas navigates in a sea of truth. It was also the secretary general herself who provided a list of 948 diplomas, which with additions ended up to be more than 1,000, which inexplicably remain in the office of the secretary general of the University of Panama. It was the rector himself who organized the press conference to point out hat more than 700 diplomas had not been claimed by their owners, which makes Panama a unique country, where people study for five or more years at the university and later don’t claim the diploma which accredits their higher education studies in a system that values you for what you have and not for what you are. Curious, is it not?

On page eight of the same report it is written with total clarity that: “According to different declarations, authorities of the secretary general ordered the elaboration of two diplomas for the student Humberto Alcázar, knowing that he had not finished his studies and also knowing that the Faculty of Business Administration and Accounting had sent the secretary general neither the report sustaining the work required for graduation or the corresponding alternative, nor the duly certified form that the school has established to comply with the procedures set forth in Agreement 3….” From this paragraph alone endless questions arise, all of which are left unanswered in the face of negligence by some and corruption by others. And it’s this prevailing impunity that gives us pause for thought. Could it be that this unpleasant subject has more than one official on edge, that they are making themselves blind, deaf and dumb not because of the nefarious consequences that the scandal causes to our society, but because they could be seen as benefiting from it? Or is it that, as it is ever more common to see those who flaunt briefcases or watches with falsified trademarks, there are those who see it as fashionable to flaunt a diploma, knowing that it’s false? Is it that, as the forgotten Blades song puts it, this is a city of plastic people?

Clearly, this “benefit” is exclusively for the loyal followers of the The Notables. They, the university’s hijackers, accustomed to traveling on the sea of impunity that protects them, refuse to realize that they have fallen into the morass of the diploma scandal, which is now sucking them down into their Bermuda Triangle.

The victim of the distribution of “political spaces,” the University of Panama had been obliged to abandon the academic world to thus permit a series of fraudulent practices, criminal behaviors, including the falsification, adulteration and destruction of public documents. How long will this continue? It’s a difficult question to answer, given that everything seems to indicate that the present power structure is preparing to keep the university hijacked for another five years, no doubt in order to end in unusual procedures to graduate the rest of the members of the network who have been left in such anxiety.

The “pestilential rot in our educational system,” to reuse the expression coined in El Panama America’s recent  “El Pulso de Panama” editorial, is evidenced by the stubborn facts. The documentary and testimonial proofs are now in the minds of all members of our society who are not fooled by the hypocrites’ fallacies.

A friend from the Interior asked me: “If the journalists of El Panama America didn’t denounce the matter of the supervisor who sold high school diplomas and the taxi driver who carries out administrative tasks, what problem would there be in obtaining one of the titles that the García de Paredes administration fabricates?”

Diplomas --- in exchange for what? This is not only a rhetorical question, but also now a summons to those who talk so much of ethics and anti-corruption. Sure, the university is more than just stained by corruption --- but “nothing has happened.”