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On the campaign trail
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Panama News Briefs

On the campaign trail

notes by Eric Jackson, some compiled from other media

Eight "no" groups, one "yes" group register with Electoral Tribunal

Until election day it will probably be mostly a formality, because the government and Electoral Tribunal are rigging things to hold a public "debate" limited to supporters of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan by for example limiting the "debate" on public television to the political parties, all of whose legislators are on the "yes" side. But on election day only registered campaign organizations will be allowed to have poll watchers and there may before the October 22 vote be some benefits that accrue to campaigns being registered. And so it is that eight groups supporting the "no" side and one supporting the "yes" side have registered with the Electoral Tribunal.

On the "yes" side businessman Felipe Rodríguez, who runs a chain of tire sales and car maintenance outlets, has registered the La Fundación Por Panamá. The group is dedicated to publicizing the benefits it says Panama will derive from the project, presumably beyond the expensive tires that those 40-ton dump trucks require.

On the "no" side the first group to register was the labor/left FRENADESO coalition. It has been followed by UNNO, an alliance based primarily in professional and academic circles; the Association of Social Security Fund Employees, a labor union representing most of that government institution's non-medical workers; the Alternative Political Force, a leftist group led by University of Panama sociologist Olmedo Beluche which seeks to put a labor/left party on the ballot for 2009 and has split with FRENADESO over that issue, plus the Unified Popular Movement (MPU) which forms the core of the Alternative Political Force; the Committee for a Panamanian Workers' Party (CPTP), another leftist formation; the Grupo of Independents for NO (GINO); and the Project 2000 Youth Movement, a group of young voters in Arraijan. Several more factions and organizations are expected to register on the "no" side.

Private financing for the various referendum campaigns will be an interesting but probably unknown factor. There is an expectation that money from large multinational corporations that seek to secure sales and contracts with a canal expansion project will contribute to the "yes" side, and there are a few wealthy professionals to be found in various camps on the "no" side. There are no effective restrictions on campaign contributions, nor is there any public disclosure. The public funding has been effectively rigged to go almost entirely to the "yes" side, under the pretense that its propaganda doesn't advocate a "yes" vote but is just a public service explaining the proposal.

The Panameñistas and the referendum

The Panameñista Party now officially has a new leader, Juan Carlos Varela, who has undertaken a review of the group's stand on the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal. Although the party's legislative caucus supported the plan there are many signs, including statements by prominent Arnulfistas who supported the winning side in the intra-party power struggle and former President Guillermo Endara's stated impression after a recent meeting with Varela, point toward the Panameñistas joining the "no" side. The party said it would announce an official position on September 29 after its consultation process, which would mean that if the party throws its weigh into the referendum battle it will be a three-week campaign. However, there is a movement among Arnulfistas to push this date up a month to allow more time to intervene in the campaign.

MOLIRENA to announce its position

The conservative business-oriented Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA), now rid of the Rosas family dictatorship but still in financial and organizational straits, will announce its position on the canal referendum on August 27, according to what the new party president, Gisela Chung, told La Prensa. One major MOLIRENA elder who has yet to pronounce, retired banker and former Comptroller General Rubén Carles, has expressed some questions about the financial details and if he or MOLIRENA come to a public conclusion about the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan it would have an impact upon business support for the proposal. The party would have few resources to campaign, however. Due to improper use of some $121,000 in government subsidies by former party boss Jesús "Maco" Rosas, the Electoral Tribunal is withholding the subsidies to the new party leadership, with the amount so far withheld in excess of $213,000. The tribunal seems set to take until after the October 22 referendum to make a decision, so as to ensure that this opposition party will not be financially able to do much to oppose the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan.

European Parliament president coming here to discuss canal

José Borrel, the president of the European Parliament, will be in Panama on August 10 to get the Torrijos administration's sales pitch for its canal expansion plan. The government here has been working to line up all possible foreign endorsements and at some point there would be several billion dollars worth of bonds to sell in the event that the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan is approved in the October 22 referendum.

ACP conceals documents

The Panama Canal Authority has made the debate about the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan a bit more opaque with two decisions in response to a citizen's habeas data requests. First, studies that are in the ACP's computers but in very long PDF formats that are effectively impossible to download by most people are not available on CD-ROM. The ACP is demanding payment by the page for photocopying, thus more than $700 for some studies that it would cost the authority no more than $5 to copy onto CD. The ACP has also refused to disclose information on its campaign spending, arguing that there is no specifically named document about such a thing and refusing to divulge what it calls the records of its propaganda and polling expenditures. There may be some litigation about this, but it would surely not be resolved before the election.

Just when the "yes" posters are on the streets...

FRENADESO, in keeping with the tactics used during the Seguro Social dispute, has put "no" posters on bus stops and bridges, and hung "no" banners from overpasses, along the Pan-American Highway and in parts of Panama City and Colon. The "yes" campaign has also been sticking posters up on utility poles and in other public places around the capital. These tactics are commonplace in election campaigns, but technically illegal. So now Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís is going to court to prohibit the "no" side --- but not the "yes" side --- from putting up posters and banners. The "yes" campaign wouldn't much be hurt if Solís were even-handed, of course, because their campaign is a government-funded subsidy for ads on television stations and in other for the most part PRD-aligned mainstream media, with a slice going to members of the ad cartel that the president's father-in-law founded.

No ACP discussion about financing before the referendum

You heard it from the infamous "It's a money machine" guy. On August 2 in La Prensa, ACP financial director José Barrios Ng was quoted as saying that "the ACP prefers not to talk about the project's financial structure while a referendum has not been held." It's what the gringos call a "pig in the poke," so it seems.

Church group to monitor referendum

Given the heavy-handed media control, open vote-buying and other abuses by the Torrijos administration, and given the roles that many of the top administration officials played in General Noriega's election frauds, there is among the "no" groups an often-expressed expectation that the October 22 vote count will be falsified if it doesn't yield the result that Martín Torrijos wants. Then the question gets to observers, and which institutions can be trusted in that role. Generally the "no" campaigns mistrust both the OAS and the Carter Center, both of which are "likely suspects" to send poll watchers here. The first group to say that it will definitely field observers is the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission, which has not been known to cover for vote fraud in the past but does have a reputation for being low-keyed in its criticism of most abuses by successive governments.

AMP will think about Solís's request

Shortly after President Torrijos kicked off the "yes" campaign at an ATLAPA gala, the PRD's Partido Popular junior coalition partner held a "yes" campaign event in Los Santos. The Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) is a fiefdom of the Partido Popular, and the Los Santos AMP director and a secretary at the authority, Domingo Espino and Isolda Ulluoa respectively, were caught doing the publicity for the event on an AMP computer. (Espino is also the Partido Popular secretary general for Los Santos.) Thus Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís brought criminal charges under the section banning the use of public resources for partisan political activities, and the case is pending before the Electoral Tribunal. Solís has asked the AMP to do what government institutions usually do when their employees are accused of criminal activity on the job, that is, to suspend Espino and Ulluoa. However, the Partido Popular --- that is, the AMP --- has announced that there will be no disciplinary action at least until the legal proceedings, which could take years, are over.