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UPDATE: After five hours of consideration, on July 10 the Cabinet Council sent a modified version of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan back to the legislature. According to the modifications, not every public employee will be allowed to campaign for the "yes" vote while on the job or use public funds to do so --- only Panama Canal Authority (ACP) workers, government ministers and vice-ministers and the heads of government agencies will be allowed to campaign during working hours and use public funds to promote the "yes" campaign. The modifications also specified that the ACP would build a bridge or tunnel across the Atlantic entrances to the canal, but did not add the cost of this to the project's purported $5.25 billion pricetag.

Assembly sends Torrijos – Alemán Zubieta Plan back to the president

by Eric Jackson, in part from other media

On the evening of July 6 the National Assembly’s Canal Affairs Committee sent the Torrijos – Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal back to the president for modifications instead of approving it for a vote by the entire legislature to put it on the ballot for a referendum. The move was probably not about a division between the PRD-controlled assembly and the PRD president, but rather a reflection that the “yes” campaign is in serious trouble and needs time and adjustments to get back on track in the face of splintered by dogged opposition by a number of different groups. The committee head, deputy Tomás Altamirano Mantovani (PRD-Chepo), said that the proposal “had too many deficiencies” and that some of the suggestions that the more than three dozen people who spoke in the public hearings ought to be taken into account, but the procedural rules did not allow for the legislature to change the executive branch’s proposal.

Torrijos said the following day that the Cabinet Council would take up the proposal on July 10, but that he “would not dare to change figures or technical aspects, because for more than six years technicians from the Panama Canal Authority have studied the subject.”

One of the reasons why the proposal is in political trouble, however, is that the authority and the Torrijos administration have been caught misrepresenting the studies upon which they say the Torrijos – Alemán Zubieta Plan is based. The Panama News was the first to report these with respect to claims about the ACP-commissioned studies of archaeological sites and salt water intrusion into Gatun Lake, and University of Panama economist Roberto N. Méndez alleged that experts whose studies are found on the ACP website actually “express highly worried opinions about the third locks project” with respect to cost estimates; that the Richardson Lawrie Associates study on projected revenue on which the ACP purportedly relies predicts an average 1.8 percent annual growth in canal tonnage rather than the ACP’s 3 percent estimate; and that the ACP’s economic risk assessment model is not only at odds with traditional methods of figuring these things but moreover that the ACP’s methods have been largely kept secret.

Former President Guillermo Endara opened another front in the argument over costs when he pointed out that the ACP’s original proposal flatly stated the project’s cost to be $5.25 billion, but in the proposal sent to the legislature that figure was softened to an “estimate.” Endara says the change in terminology is both unconstitutional and an open door to many abuses

The cost issue also became more complicated for the administration when Torrijos added a provision to the ACP’s original proposal for a study about a bridge or tunnel across the Atlantic entrance to the canal in order to keep Colon’s Costa Abajo connected with the rest of the country. But either it’s an empty “we’ll study it” promise or the addition of at least $300 million more to the project’s cost and opposition legislators demanded clarifications of that matter.

Then there is the matter of using public funds for the "yes" campaign. Although this is illegal, Electoral Tribunal president Denis Allen was a high-profile participant in the April 24 "yes" campaign kickoff at ATLAPA and election authorities have taken the position that government-paid propaganda --- even including ACP publications that specifically advocate a "yes" vote --- are public education rather than election campaign expenditures. The proposal Torrijos sent to the legislature included a provision to allow public employees to campaign for and spend public funds for the "yes" campaign and this drew sharp criticism from opposition legislators and promises of lawsuits by attorneys with the "no" campaign.

Another problem for the “yes” campaign has been that the skeptics’ argument that the Panamanian people won’t much benefit from a canal expansion project that is not part of an overall national development plan has caught on even among people who support the canal expansion project, most notably the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE). In response to APEDE’s call for a national development plan Torrijos said that he’d get around to that only if and when the canal expansion is approved. That has apparently not gone over well with public opinion.

Judging from the president’s campaign trail pronouncements, it also seems that he’s having trouble with opponents’ arguments that a “yes” vote in the referendum would be a blank check for those now in power to control billions of dollars worth of contracts with which they should not be trusted. According to a recent Gallup poll, the president’s approval rating is up, with 34 percent giving him good or very good job ratings against only 21 percent who rate his performance as poor or very poor. But that leaves him assured of little more than the one-third of the electoral support that the PRD has maintained for many years, which is not enough to win a referendum. The problem that Panamanian presidents tend to face is that referendums usually get turned into votes of confidence on the current administration by voters who have few other opportunities to protest against a wide range of grievances with the government.

(Although more recent public opinion surveys about the referendum question have almost surely have been taken, none that have been taken since early May have been published. The suppression of unfavorable poll results has for many years been a part of the Torrijos political method --- in 1999 his campaign went so far as to buy and throw away most of a La Prensa print run when that edition included a poll indicating that Mireya Moscoso had overtaken him in that year’s presidential election. Since then a PRD-led alliance has taken over La Prensa and the other mainstream media are all supporting the “yes” campaign.)

Thus the “yes” campaign has punted, and the special legislative session to consider the referendum has been put on hold while Torrijos figures out what to do. One move that he might make is to take the Panameñista Party’s advice and put the referendum off until late January, instead of holding it in October or November as had been announced by a number of top administration officials.

Typically in a referendum campaign anywhere in the world in which there is organized opposition, support for the proposal at the start of the campaign gradually dwindles, unless there comes a defining moment in the campaign when the supporters can break the skeptics' momentum. Quite often such moment comes in a televised debate. When President Torrijos announced his proposal, polls by the Latin American affiliates of the Gallup and Harris organizations indicated that it had the support of 57 percent of the Panamanian electorate.

Whether or not the "yes" side is still ahead, it now appears that the government-funded propaganda blitz has not worked very well to date and that the government and ACP are going to shift their tactics. Both the Torrijos administration and the ACP are also now sending forth different point people to defend their proposal than they did at the start.

But whenever the National Assembly gets around to putting whatever final version of a referendum proposal on the ballot, there will have to be at least 90 days between that action and the vote. That's plenty of time for all sorts of surprises and changes in momentum.