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editorialTongsun Park’s aborted Panama trip raises questions Torrijos must answer Back in the mid-1970s, Tongsun Park was the bag man for the bribery of several members of the US Congress. The purpose of the payoffs, from a slush fund whose contributors included a number of South Korean and Korean-American businessmen --- including the current Bush administration’s favorite newspaper publisher and pretender to God’s throne, Reverend Sun Myung Moon --- was to obtain more favorable treatment for the South Korean tyrant du jour, dictator Chung Hee Park. Only one member of Congress went to jail over it, but several others were reprimanded by their colleagues. Tongsun Park avoided criminal prosecution by turning state’s evidence. Then in the late 80s, Tongsun Park registered as the agent in the United States for one Manuel Antonio Noriega, though what he actually did for Panama’s former strongman has never been made public. In the wake of the first Gulf War, Tongsun Park became Saddam Hussein’s representative, allegedly helping the deposed Iraqi dictator to funnel proceeds of the United Nations food for oil program to his own uses and, it is alleged, offering former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali a bribe. For those things Park was indicted in the United States and went onto INTERPOL’s list of wanted fugitives. The other day, Park got on a plane in Canada, bound for Panama. (How, why and for how long had he been in Canada? Many Canadian voters want to know, given that elections are coming there and their country’s embattled Prime Minister Paul Martin also happens to be a shareholder in one of Park’s companies.) In any case, at a stopover in Mexico the police grabbed Park and put him on a flight to Houston, where he was arrested by the FBI. Why was Park headed to Panama and with whom was he planning to meet here? His publicists say it was business related to the expansion of the Panama Canal. Nobody in the Torrijos administration will admit even knowing the guy, let alone knowing his business here. However, some good investigative work by La Prensa journalists Mónica Palm and Betty Brannan Jaén has uncovered the fact that Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro and Panama Canal administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta did indeed meet in Korea with Tongsun Park to discuss the Panama Canal expansion project. Whether the canal ought to be modernized is one question. Most Panamanians think that it ought to be. But then how to do it, whether we can do it in an economically advantageous manner, and whether we can trust the current Panamanian authorities to do the job without turning it into a ruinous orgy of corruption are also questions that need to be answered to any astute voter’s satisfaction before a “yes” vote in the referendum to come would be justified. Despite the famous “zero corruption” pledge made on the 2004 campaign trail, is the Torrijos administration trying to sell us a mega-project that includes the participation of scum like Tongsun Park? If that’s the case, we should walk away from that offer. If “no comment” is all the disclosure we get from the Torrijos administration, we must presume that international criminals are indeed part of the canal expansion package and vote accordingly. The Panamanian people deserve a full and frank explanation of all details of the Panama end of Tongsun Park’s aborted mission, and the complete disclosure of all contacts that Park has had in Panama. Public relations hype will not do. If there is anything less than full transparency, any doubt must be resolved at the expense of the government’s and the canal authority’s credibility. Bear in mind… I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak. Lillian Hellman Astrology is framed by the devil. Martin Luther I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the world. Socrates
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