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opinion
Also in this section: How giants are likely to be slain Despite the ad blitz... by Eric Jackson We have seen yet another four-page color insert in El Panama America. We have seen a "debate" in La Prensa which excludes the doubters and features "arguments" about what should be done with the $120 per month for every Panamanian that will come from Mr. Ng's "money machine." What we have seen on television is even more lopsided. But it's more than a month since the last poll La Prensa published about support for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta canal expansion plan, and with only a couple of weeks to go before the legislative session ends the plan hasn't yet gone before the Cabinet Council. Yeah, yeah --- the Panama Canal Authority has sent us a story about how the totalitarian gerontocracy in Beijing has endorsed a "yes" vote. Oh, you say it's an unfair characterization? Well, isn't COSCO a largely state-owned Chinese corporation, and doesn't an endorsement of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan by COSCO's CEO amount to a foreign government's interference in a Panamanian referendum? And at about the same time, we read that Vice President Lewis Navarro was campaigning for a "yes" vote in that great maritime power with a huge Panamanian community --- Austria? But still, no "jump on the bandwagon" poll, and nothing submitted to the National Assembly. Now I have no polling organization, nor even a focus group, but the "yes" side certainly has both of these things and its actions indicate that the Torrijos administration and the ACP aren't hearing what they would like to hear so they're acting as if they were running scared. The tone is one of desperation, as in going around to foreign capitals in search of endorsements and campaign contributions and avoiding real debates before Panamanian voters as much as possible. How can this be? How can the disparate and ragtag band of skeptics be giving Torrijos and Alemán Zubieta such fits, despite all of the millions of dollars of public funds that they have spent and plan to spend in order to secure a "yes" vote? The first key to understanding what is going on is the recognition that support for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan is hemorrhaging from the "yes" campaign's self-inflicted wounds. They have grossly underestimated people's intelligence and overestimated the power of the media and ad agencies they dominate. It's a matter of hardcore hubris. What else can it be when an ACP accountant with impressive US academic credentials goes around touting the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan as a "money machine?" Anyone with such an education knows that such rhetoric is almost always the banner of fraud, but in this case Mr. Ng apparently thinks that he can get away with it in front of an educated audience like ILDEA. Now La Prensa et al dutifully buried his gaffe and limited the damage, but the fact that the blunder was made at all belies something terribly amiss at the ACP. What else can it be when the ACP and Torrijos administration repeatedly bait their critics for not having read their more than 55,000 pages of documentation, go well out of their way to make these documents inaccessible to the public, and then it turns out that those very documents show that their propaganda campaign misrepresents the contents of the studies upon which they purportedly rest? One of the architects of this dishonest campaign, Stanley Muschett, was, after all, rector of this country's most respectable Jesuit academic institution, the Universidad Santa Maria la Antigua. Surely Muschett knows all about academic laziness and dishonesty, but in his role as ACP board member and propagandist he falls into that vice as if nobody would notice that his televised assurances that Gatun Lake water quality won't be affected by the installation of locks with water saving basins despite the contrary opinions of the studies upon which the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan purportedly relies. Does he think that Panamanians are a bunch of lazy dolts who would never be capable of discovering the lie? The "yes" campaign has deceived itself and is bleeding because of this. But Martín Torrijos and Alberto Alemán Zubieta nevertheless have tremendous assets in their control and they will win the referendum by default unless defeated by their opponents. So how does an underfunded and divided "no" campaign, operating with the disadvantage of an Electoral Tribunal that figuratively wears its support for the "yes" side on its judicial robes --- literally by the presiding magistrate's prominent participation in the "yes" campaign's April 24 kickoff rally --- slay this mighty beast? First, by designing a campaign that recognizes the forces in play or that can be brought into play on either side, soberly recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of each. Second, by reference to some standard political plays developed in many a ballot issue campaign in many a jurisdiction around the world. Third, by creativity of the sort that seems to be beyond the folks who have been at the heart of the "yes" campaign so far. The basic "no" campaign playbook goes something like this: · As the "yes" side pumps itself up in the initial stage, the "no" side must deflate its opponents. Despite virtually no money to spend against the millions in public funds that have been thrown into the campaign by Torrijos and Alemán Zubieta, this has so far been done quite effectively by a small band of intellectuals who have done their homework. · The "no" side has to ditch the appearance of nihilism. The "yes" side already caricatures them as people who reject everything, and that trap needs to be avoided. The argument must not be "no to expansion," much less "no to modernization." It has to be "no to this particular proposal, the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan," due to a coherent, honest and well articulated set of objections. · This is a small country in which the major players and their families are fairly well known, and this is a proposal whose principal economic beneficiaries are pretty obvious. The Alemán Zubieta family's construction and banking interests are there for all to see, as is the fact that Martín Torrijos married into the ad cartel. And when Bobby Eisenmann endorses a "yes" vote, people know that his family made a lot of its money developing Coronado and might properly inquire, for example, what they did when their plans fell short of providing for their development's water needs. The "no" campaign has to get personal in deflating expressions of public concern by people with conflicts of interest. · To build a coalition for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan, former presidents Nicolás Ardito Barletta, Ernesto Pérez Balladares and Mireya Moscoso have been "rehabilitated" and trotted out. The "no" campaign has to incorporate these people into Martín Torrijos's and Alberto Alemán Zubieta's cast of running mates and do a bit of political judo to play up the negatives of these endorsements. The 1984 election fraud by which he became president and all those Amador bidding scams when Nicky Barletta was running ARI could thus be made a part of the "yes" campaign's baggage. The Van Dam bridge contract fiasco, the continuing PYCSA contract disaster, the summary destruction of parks and archaeological sites for the Corredor Norte, the visa scams that cost Toro his US visa and the PECC scandal should be part of the price that Torrijos and Alemán Zubieta pay for bringing Pérez Balladares on board. And then Mireya's corrupt foundations, her theft of $1,000 per day over five years to buy herself clothing and jewelry, the empty museum, the defective Albrook traffic overpass and the Centennial Bridge cost overruns that she clumsily tried to hide must also be portrayed as a part of the way that Torrijos and Alemán Zubieta intend to run this canal expansion project. · Korean lobbyist and bribemeister Tongsun Park, the former mouthpiece of one Manuel Antonio Noriega and one Saddam Hussein and one Reverend Sun Myung Moon, now in jail in the United States awaiting trial for allegedly trying to bribe United Nations officials, must be cast as another of Torrijos's and Alemán Zubieta's running mates. After all, he was arrested en route to Panama for meetings related to the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta project, and after a bunch of denials it was finally admitted that Alberto Alemán Zubieta and Samuel Lewis Navarro met with Mr. Park in Korea about canal expansion business. · The campaign in the Interior and in the indigenous comarcas will have different dynamics and the "no" forces will have some useful buttons to push in those places. The Torrijos administration has alienated many rural communities with hydroelectric projects and beach and island development programs that amount to the private appropriation of public resources that local people value. US-style real estate prices in the beach and mountain communities popular with expats haven't brought any hint of an American-style standard of living to the locals. And then the Torrijos administration's lobbying triumph in Washington, the creation of a congressional "Panama caucus," ought to be a significant weakness in the indigenous comarcas: the head of that caucus, Illinois Republican Jerry Weller, is the father-in-law of the genocidal criminal who used to run Guatemala, Efraín Ríos Montt, the "born again Christian" who ordered the massacres of entire indigenous communities when he was dictator. · Because the "no" side includes very different people with widely varying beliefs, motivations and loyalties, there won't be a single unified campaign. The Electoral Tribunal may try to force that sort of faction-fighting straitjacket on the skeptics, but it won't succeed. But the "no" campaign does need to meet and agree to at least go about their separate strategies without canceling one another out. The "no" side need not be a leviathan --- a school of piranhas will do. The acceptance of disunity means no slick "on message" campaign, but it does allow the messages that need to get out, both about the specific plan and about the persons and institutions behind it, to be spread by all the means that people without much money can employ. · Panama's mainstream media have been bought off, most of them completely, but with some, like the EPASA papers, willing to give space to both sides for an honest debate. The "yes" campaign has been working the foreign media, making claims that Panamanian reporters wouldn't take seriously with the knowledge that Google News et al will get these naive stories back to Panama. But Panama's pathetic ad cartel and media barons carry little clout outside our borders, so the "no" campaign can also get its message published by similar indirect routes and should make every effort to do so by playing to the international press. · As referendum day approaches and the possibility of a "yes" landslide evaporates, then some of those opposition electoral forces with resources to throw into the balance are likely to mobilize money, canvassers and election day machines in an attempt to embarrass and cripple President Torrijos. The people who bore the brunt of the campaign until that time will with reason be annoyed by the latecomers, but ought to welcome this factor without swearing allegiance to it. · Because the skeptics have from the very start included such PRD founding fathers as former President Jorge Illueca, it may be hard for Torrijos to fully mobilize the PRD campaign workers for the "yes" campaign. But if the "no" campaign becomes too identified with the Panameñistas or the Vanguardia Moral --- an idea that the Torrijos camp is likely to promote --- it may get in the way of a necessary fight for rank-and-file PRD voters. The "no" campaign can't afford to write off this one-third or more of the electorate and thus needs to attack with sharp rather than blunt political instruments. · Maybe as important as the entry of electoral parties into the fray on the "no" side would be the breakup of the ACP's attempt to present the entire canal work force as backers of the canal expansion. The national covenant to depoliticize the ACP has been shattered as word has spread that active support of the "yes" side is unofficially mandatory for anyone who wants a future in that institution. This political coercion is resented by many who fear to speak out about it. A sharp drop in support for the "yes" side in opinion polls would likely loosen some tongues at the ACP. If that comes to pass, the "no" side should exploit it to the maximum degree possible. · The organization of massive "no" rallies just before the vote will be crucial to the extent that the question is close by then. The large turnouts will be needed both to fire up makeshift election day organizations and to warn against any attempt at election fraud. · In the end, this ballot question will turn on three main points. The Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan is based on an unrealistically low cost estimate and an unreasonably optimistic estimate of future canal usage. The plan also fails on the water issue, first because of salt intrusion into Gatun Lake, on which most Panamanians depend for drinking water; and second because to mitigate the salinization effect the ACP would have to waste water by frequent flushings of the new locks, which would in turn likely require it to reconsider its decision to rule out new dams to get enough water to both run the expanded canal and provide the metro area's drinking water. The "no" campaign's ability to convince voters of these two points is crucial. Then, if most voters at least have some serious doubts about the practicality of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan, it gets down to a vote of confidence on Martín Torrijos and Alberto Alemán Zubieta themselves.
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