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Panama Canal expansion support drops in poll
Panama News Briefs

Opposition to canal expansion grows, but poll suggests it would be approved
by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

On March 10 La Prensa published the results of a Dichter & Neira poll taken between March 3 and 6 that indicated that 56.2 percent of the Panamanian electorate would vote "yes" in a referendum on expanding the Panama Canal, as against 29.1 percent who would vote "no." At first blush this would look like good news for the Panama Canal Authority administration, but actually it would be cause for concern among those who are promoting the construction of a larger third set of locks.

When the same polling firm asked the same questions in January, 64.2 percent were in favor and 19.3 percent opposed. Thus we see a drop in support for the idea --- it's inaccurate to say "for the proposal" because the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) steadfastly refuses to divulge a plan that they have had ready for some time, preferring instead to leak certain details in carefully chosen places while blowing off all reporters' questions by saying that there is nothing yet available to be released --- before any referendum has been scheduled.

Usually in politics, a proposal that is placed on the ballot loses support over the course of the campaign if there is any significant effort mounted to oppose it. That's a worldwide tendency. In Panamanian politics, the tendency is that every referendum tends to get turned into a popularity contest for the administration in power. Depending on whose polls one cares to believe and how one cares to interpret them, President Torrijos is either just an ordinary politician in a culture where that concept is pejorative, or approved more than disapproved by a small but significant margin among Panamanians willing to express an opinion. Moreover, one of the centerpieces of Martín Torrijos's plans for this year is the conclusion of a free trade agreement with the United States, and that's unpopular among farmers and those workers who are organized into labor unions, with La Prensa's Dichter & Neira poll suggesting a nearly evenly divide in public opinion about whether such a treaty is a good idea or a bad one (and with details that are bound to be controversial having yet to be released).

Although it has not been registered with the Electoral Tribunal as such, there has been a "yes" campaign waged for years, with inserts in the daily newspapers, long television ads, billboards, presentations to business groups and PR events in rural communities near the canal. The Electoral Tribunal warns that a "yes" campaign will not receive public funds, at least for ads that unambiguously urge people to vote that way in a referendum, and the canal administration has complained about that.

At the start, the principal opponents of a canal expansion were small farmers to the west of the canal. In the final hours of the lame duck legislature's 1999 session, without public discussion, the PRD caucus passed Law 44, which created the Panama Canal's Western Watershed with a view toward creating a new lake to provide water for a canal expansion. Since then, the ACP has obtained concessions to build two hydroelectric dams on the Rio Indio in northern Cocle and western Colon provinces. Thus the farmers are afraid that they would be driven off of their lands. Lately, however, a plan for a canal expansion that uses retaining ponds to recycle some of the water used by the locks is being promoted, with the promise that this means that no new lake in the Western Watershed would be needed to run a third set of locks. However, Law 44 is not being repealed, nor is the ACP renouncing its hydroelectric concessions, so the farmers of the Campesinos' Coordinator Against the Dams (CCCE) maintain their opposition. In recent weeks Martín Torrijos has been on the campaign trail blasting the CCCE and calling them liars because the plan that the ACP refuses to release does not call for dams.

Gradually, however, the main opposition to a canal expansion has shifted toward business, professional and academic circles. Those objections are centered around doubts that the canal expansion could be amortized by ship tolls. There are also constitutional and environmental objections, and misgivings that a project of this size carried out by this particular administration would be an orgy of corruption. The figures for the project have yet to be released by the ACP, but the numbers they cite keep going down --- earlier this year they were talking about $8-$10 billion, and now it's $5 billion --- but other estimates are much higher. Leading the business and professional canal expansion skeptics are such figures as banker and former President Jorge Illueca, former deputy canal administrator Fernando Manfredo, constitutional law expert Humberto Ricord and surgeon Keith Holder.

The debate sometimes gets into secondary effects, with proponents like banker and former President Nicolás Ardito Barletta arguing that the "multiplier effect" of pumping billions into the national economy would boost the entire country, and skeptics like radical SUNTRACS construction workers union leader Genaro López arguing that the demand for building materials needed for such a project would drive the cost of all other construction way up.

Unless the ACP and the PRD administration --- the latter strongly based in the nation's advertising agency cartel that was founded by the president's father-in-law --- change their publicity tactics, a referendum campaign on the "yes" side would be heavy on the buzz words like "modernization" and oriented toward creating both a sense of urgency to expand the canal now and the impression that there is no other viable alternative than the one that the government and ACP eventually present. A "no" campaign would inherently be more diverse, with the business end of the opposition controlling such money as there would be for an ad campaign and the farmers and labor unions forming the ranks of a person-to-person canvassing effort.

Meanwhile, a group that includes Illueca and Manfredo has issued a report claiming that because of shipping and shipbuilding trends there is no urgency for a larger set of locks to allow post-Panamax ships to transit and that Panama would do better to invest its money in port development. Within a day the ACP dismissed that report, with the authority's marketing director Rodolfo Sabonge claiming that additional port facilities would not meet the increasing demands put on the canal.

Although El Panama America has reported that there will be a canal expansion referendum this November or December, President Torrijos says that no such decision has been made. The ACP has hired a public relations firm to release its report on canal expansion rather than just publishing it on its website and making copies available to those who want them. This plan has drawn sarcastic remarks from former President Guillermo Endara and warnings from within the ranks of the PRD that the information control games that the ACP and government are playing on this issue are alienating some voters and form part of the reason for rising skepticism about the canal expansion idea.