Most ads are interactive -- click on them to visit the folks who make The Panama News possible

editorial

Liborio García and the National Assembly

They could have done better, or they could have done worse, when the legislators chose Liborio García to be the next Defensor del Pueblo, or National Ombudsman. He could hardly have said a worse thing right after his election.

Liborio García is both a friend of the president and someone with a good resume. The prominent attorney has served the public in various ways, and seemed to be a reasonable enough choice as Panama’s official main watchdog over human rights issues and denouncer of abuses. The Ombudsman doesn’t have much power, but the things that the holders of this office complain about usually come front and center in the national debate.

Sadly, we have a legislature by and large populated by people who believe that they shouldn’t actually have to work at the jobs to which they were elected, so hearings about nominations are a joke. Questions don’t get asked, investigations don’t get conducted and files don’t get checked. From the procedural point of view it was much worse with the president’s last couple of Supreme Court nominations, but it was as unacceptably bad as usual with Liborio García’s appointment.

At the last minute a rival doomed to defeat accused García of beating his wife. She was in the hearings with her husband, and not making any complaints. Talk of a problem had arisen earlier, when a complaint about a marital row in 2004 brought Mr. García before the corregiduria. There was no criminal conviction, and legislators didn't look further into the matter. Liborio García's denials were less than categorical and that's cause for concern, but at the end of the day it looked like just another unsupported allegation in the course of a heated political contest.

Then García shot off his mouth about how domestic violence is a private affair. That’s truly alarming, if he really believes it.

Domestic violence has all manner of permutations, but that part of it (the larger part of it) that’s about men using brutal methods to control the lives of women is arguably the most common form of human rights abuse in the world today. It is often deadly, and when children are exposed to it becomes a sin of successive generations. There are public laws about it, and the reality that public responses to the problem are often ineffective is precisely the sort of thing into which a decent Ombudsman would look.

Several women’s organizations are taking Liborio García’s gaffe as if that alone disqualifies him, and are demanding his resignation. A lot of other people are criticizing him without necessarily calling for him to step down.

Without having been shown a lot more than we have seen about allegations of domestic violence on García’s part, The Panama News will discount those stories and treat the affair as that of a man in public life saying something offensive and unbecoming of his new status. For that he should make amends. Most of all, he should do so by taking violence against women as a serious human rights issue in the exercise of his new office.

And the National Assembly? They were as disgracefully lazy as usual, and this incident must be added as Exhibit Infinity to the legal brief about why Panama needs a new constitution. The sad fact is that, even though he’s starting out with his foot in his mouth, García still won’t have to do such a stellar job as Defensor del Pueblo to far outshine the people who appointed him.

We hope that he’ll ignore any such comparison, and set his personal standards a lot higher than that while carrying out his new duties.

(What about the controversy about García, who was photographed with his hands clasped in prayer during the vote, and who is a deacon at the El Carmen church? There should be no controversy about these matters. A person holds the right to believe as he or she will about religion, to express this in public and to take an active role in religious life. The dividing line is that if elected as Ombudsman, the person must set aside his or her views about religion to the extent it is necessary to do so when duty calls to act as a zealous protector of the rights of people whose beliefs about such matters conflict. The law restricting the appointment of priests and ministers to many public posts does not apply to church deacons, and shouldn't.)

Bear in mind...

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Milton Friedman

Reason is a faculty far larger than mere objective force. When either the political or the scientific discourse announces itself as the voice of reason, it is playing God, and should be spanked and stood in the corner.

Ursula K. LeGuin

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

Lillian Hellman