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opinion
Also in this section: If convinced that we should upgrade our greatest industrial asset, we still should ask… The really important canal expansion question by Eric Jackson The Electoral Tribunal may say that public funds can’t be used to promote a “yes” vote in a Panama Canal expansion referendum, but it has already been done in a big-time way and I noticed this again the other night while catching “La Cucaracha Mandinga” on the PanCanal Administration Building steps. Before the show we were treated to a video, with repeated ads stressing the point that no business in the world goes nearly 100 years without modernizing its plant. The Panama Canal management and President Torrijos and his proxies use words like “modernization” and “progress” to promote a “yes” vote on a proposal whose details they won’t let us see. They do have a point, but I don’t see it as the main point. Meanwhile, I went to a press conference by a number of academic types, led by constitutional scholar Humberto Ricord, sociologist Marco Gandásegui hijo, CPA Luis Chen González and economist Roberto N. Méndez. Ricord made some good legal arguments about why it’s unconstitutional for a state-owned corporation like the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) to call a national referendum, Chen and Méndez asked very pertinent questions about how the nation will pay for this and who will be the beneficiaries, and all the members of the Frente Panama Soberana concurred in the assertion that any undertaking to expand the Panama Canal needs to be part of a comprehensive national development plan, which the Torrijos administration does not have. Those are all points well taken, but they still don’t address the main question as far as I can see. Can we trust this administration to carry out the project it submits to us in a manner that serves the interests of the Panamanian people? That’s the important question to me. Voting down an expansion proposal in a national referendum would not kill all hope for the canal’s modernization. It would just be a vote of no confidence in Martín Torrijos, Alberto Alemán Zubieta, their proposal or a combination of these thuings. It would delay the canal’s expansion until we could consider a better plan and new leadership to carry it out, but it wouldn’t mean that we could never modernize our principal industrial asset. Personally, I believe that Panama really does need to build a larger third set of locks. However, I have a hard time believing in any project that involves the lobbyist for Saddam Hussein, Manuel Antonio Noriega and Reverend Sun Myung Moon, one Tongsun Park, who was flying here on canal expansion business when he was arrested in Mexico. Consider on of Mr. Park's clients, part of a group of mid-1970s donors whose money was used to improperly influence members of the US Congress to be more friendly to the South Korean dictatorship of that time. (Only one member of the House of Representatives went to prison for it, but several others were rebuked by their colleagues or had their political careers ruined. Tongsun Park got off by turning state's evidence.) Do the Panamanian people really want Reverend Moon, who claims to be the “Third Adam” --- an incarnation of God whose mission on Earth is to “purify” humanity’s bloodlines, allegedly tainted because of Eve’s sexual liaison with Satan, by arranging marriages among people who don’t even have a language in common --- as our creditor or business partner? Especially, do we want this when his ultra-right-wing paper, the Washington Times, is the source of much of the erroneous belief among the American people that China runs our canal? I have a hard time trusting the Torrijos administration when the president uses the Cabinet Room of the Palacio de las Garzas to meet with former Cocle governor Richard Fifer, who’s facing charges of embezzling public funds, in order to promote Fifer’s questionable gold mining project. I have a hard time trusting the Torrijos administration when Minister of the Presidency Ubaldino Real insists that it’s perfectly acceptable for him to serve on a commission that’s rewriting the national energy policy when he’s part owner of a hydroelectric project. I have a hard time trusting the Torrijos administration when the National Assembly controlled by the president’s political party repeatedly supports corruption with impunity, and when Panama remains the only holdout against the rules of the Central American Parliament being revised to eliminate its members’ immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution. I have a hard time trusting the Torrijos administration because I have seen its style of work over the past year and one-half: sloppily written proposals, wealthy special interests always seeming to have top priority, outrages jammed through the legislature in the middle of the night and so on. So to me, the question is not whether we should modernize the canal, but whether the current administration should be entrusted with a job of such magnitude. Yes, I know that this essentially gets us back down to the popularity contest about the incumbent administration that every Panamanian referendum tends to become. But the question of trust is not a stupid one, and most people who ask it do not do so for cynical reasons. To get my vote for the proposal that he submits to the Panamanian people, President Torrijos must convince me that he has a good plan and can be trusted to carry it out efficiently and without corruption. Buzzwords and publicity stunts won’t suffice.
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