opinion

The University General Council

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

In a session held this past November 15 the subject was raised once more at the University General Council, which is, according to the laws of the republic, “the maximum collegial organ governing the University of Panama.” Its members are the grandest of university authorities, that is, the rector, the five vice-rectors, the secretary general, the deans, the directors of the regional university centers, the university extension coordinators, the director of the regional centers, the director of university planning, one professor and one student (and their respective alternates for each faculty, for each regional university center and each university extension, and ten representatives of the administrative personnel.

Said organism has more members than the National Assembly, which has 78 deputies, and, by law, “no member of the University General Council can be sanctioned for the opinions given during the council sessions.”

Each meeting of the University General Council carries a high economic and academic cost for the university, which sees very little benefit from such gatherings. Proof of this is that in their last meeting those in attendance spent more than three hours in speeches dedicated to expressing every type of censure against the board of directors of the National College of Lawyers (Colegio Nacional de Abogados) and its Honor Tribunal, in the course of a matter that they considered of “life and death,” the approval of a letter directed to the president of the National College of Lawyers to protest the communique that the bar association issued about the resolution approved in the previous General Council meeting of September 27, by which “Professor Miguel Antonio Bernal Villalaz is declared non grata.”

Once more it has been placed in evidence, if there had been any doubt, that in our principal academic institution, which is the property of the Panamanian people, the most fundamental principles continue to be shredded.

How can they justify themselves before the taxpayers when, instead of addressing and debating the grave problems that plague higher education in Panama, and when the university itself keeps closing and opening again like some seedy cantina, the “maximum collegial organ” chooses to entertain itself with vulgarity and mediocrity by producing a letter --- 10 pages long --- that equally discredits its proponents, editors and signers?

This new act by the University General Council corroborates that “at the University of Panama, building upon ideas is not permitted, nor is there the right to dissent, thus developing a climate of persecution and centralization of power at all levels. This has come to the point of personalizing the university institution in the figure of the current rector of this institution of higher learning.”

What has so molested the lords of the University General Council is the communique of the board of directors and the honor tribunal of the National College of Lawyers, which bears the signature of the organization's president, Mercedes Araúz de Grimaldo, and of the vice-president of the honor tribunal, José Alberto Alvarez, which I think is necessary to transcribe once more so that at the next meeting of the University General Council they'll have the opportunity to once again happily waste the taxpayers' money, and so that public opinion can be sure of where the greatest concentration of mediocrity in the entire republic lies.

The Colegio Nacional de Abogados of Panama and its Honor Tribunal,

CONSIDERING:

1. That we have registered our great concern about the decision proffered by the University General Council of the University of Panama at the Octavio Méndez Pereira campus on the 27th day of the month of September, 2005, in which the  conduct of Professor Miguel Antonio Bernal was repudiated and he was declared a citizen “non grata” at the University of Panama.

2. That the University General Council, in carrying out the issuance of this regrettable resolution, failed to recognize the most elemental principles of due process, the presumption of innocence and the right of defense.

3. That the actions of the University General Council violate the legal order which rules the University of Panama and constitute a dangerous precedent for the development and governability of this entity of higher learning.

4. That the actions of the University General Council attack the right to dissent and the freedom of thought, principles that have been and must be characteristics of our highest place of studies.

5. That Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal is the presiding member of the Colegio Nacional de Abogados's Honor Tribunal.

6. That the performance of Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal as a lawyer and a tenured professor of the Law Faculty has been characterized by respect for the law and ethical and moral values, and courage and independence that are a special example to the University of Panama students to whom he has dedicated his teaching efforts for several generations.

Wherefore, the Colegio Nacional de Abogados and its Honor Tribunal

RESOLVE:

First, to deplore the decision taken by the University General Council in detriment of the thinking of Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal;

Second, to condemn the improper issuance of an alleged “moral sanction” against Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal;

Third, to to insist that the maximum authority of the University of Panama, the Rector Dr. Gustavo García de Paredes Aued, respect the right to dissent and the  freedom of thought;

Fourth, to solicit the revocation of the action of the University General Council against Dr. Miguel Antonio Bernal, which does nothing to help the credibility, solidity or prestige that the University of Panama must enjoy in the eyes of the Panamanian citizenry.