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editorial

Reason for concern, not panic, about sources of electricity

On February 9, all of Panama’s broadsheet dailies had as their leading story --- really a non-story --- a panicky prediction by electric generating companies about how if this country does not immediately drop its concerns about problems that can be caused by the construction of hydroelectric dams there will be power blackouts next year. None of the articles examined the claims with due diligence. The history, science, economics and politics of the hydroelectric question went mostly ignored.

History? As in how the very same companies that are now trying to sow panic with speculation about future power shortages are the ones who insisted that the nation abandon the use of the Panama Canal’s generators to produce electricity for the national grid. As in how these same companies blocked the construction of windmill farms that would have added to the national electricity supply. As in how these same companies prevailed upon the Ente Regulador to effectively cancel that section of the law that privatized the old IRHE electric utility which guaranteed the right of homeowners with windmills and others with their own generators to sell their excess power to the power distribution system. Given that history, it was bad journalism to take the power companies’ warning at face value, without further examination, as was done.

Science? Actually, the power companies and the politicians have long since assumed a position of militant ignorance. The legislature in the Pérez Balladares administration --- the same folks who without objection passed legislation referring to a map that was not attached for their perusal and thus gave the same large tract of land in Balboa to both the railroad company and the port company, many tens of millions of dollars to the taxpayers’ prejudice --- purported to exempt hydroelectric projects from the same environmental scrutiny that applies to other large developments. Now there are hydroelectric dams proposed for virtually every significant river in this country, and we are called upon to ignore the fact that river systems play important roles in our marine ecology, to put questions about how such developments might affect our fisheries, our tourist beaches and our coral reefs out of our minds. And we would be, as a nation, collectively out of our mind to do so.

Economics? Understand that until about a month ago the electric companies that are now sowing panic about future power shortages were pleading poverty in support of their demands for rate increases. Their books have not entirely been opened to the public, but such information as has been released clearly shows that the poverty plea was a pack of lies, that the utilities’ profits were actually up. What we don’t know is the extent of the lies, because in the withheld details we would find the figures for executive perks that add up to an additional dimension of company profits. The economic facts that are being hidden from the Panamanian people with respect to the hydroelectric dams include enhanced real estate values of what may have been cow pastures and scrubland, now to be turned into lake-front lots for upscale residential developments; and of the value of the proceeds from the back-door privatization of the public water supply that the damming of most of this country’s rivers entails. Indeed, some of the hydroelectric projects underway are not about power generation at all, but have been mislabeled in order to avoid the public hearings and enviromental standards otherwise required for the private water projects and residential developments that they really are.

Politics? On this point there are a few honorable exceptions to the trend of abysmal journalism, most noteworthy of all El Panama America’s revelation that Minister of the Presidency Ubaldino Real is part owner of a hydroelectric company, yet he sits on a committee given the task of writing a new energy policy for the nation. Real pleads that because his company won’t sell electricity directly to the government, there is no conflict of interest. The Panama News joins El Panama America in calling for Real’s resignation or ouster. A man with such a misunderstanding of the nature of conflict of interest, or more likely a man who cynically invokes a concept knowing it to be unreasonable but calculating that it would advance his personal economic interests to make this argument, is unfit to serve in a cabinet post.

It is most unlikely that the call for Real to go will be heeded, as the emerging contours of the Torrijos administration’s overall governance plan outline a wholesale private appropriation of such assets as remain in the public domain, including our rivers and streams. It may in any case be more important to call for a champion to lead the fight against this assault on our property and our future, and to create for this champion a new political party through which to carry his or her battle --- and ours --- to the ground now occupied by a discredited political class that’s united in support of our dispossession.

Yes, Panama does need some newer and cheaper sources of electricity, and some new hydroelectric dams ought to be part of the mix. But no, we should not be panicked into writing a blank check for companies and politicians who have been dishonest with us.

Bear in mind…

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Henry Brooks Adams

I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate.

Willa Cather

An open mind can always stand a closed one, if it has to --- by making room for it in the general picture. But a closed mind can’t stand it near an open one without risking immediate and complete destruction in its own terms. In a closed mind, there’s no more room.

Gordon R. Dickson