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Panama News Briefs

Whether as a party or not, leftists plan to be on the 2009 ballot

by Eric Jackson

Panamanian third parties are different from the minor political formations in most of the world. Elsewhere, whether there is a first past the post, single member per district system of electing legislators that tends to reinforce two-party rule or the proportional representation method that usually leads to coalition governments, the minor players usually stand for something easily understood. Usually it's an ideology --- a party might be identifiably communist or monarchist, libertarian or vegetarian --- but often there are parties that represent ethnic constituencies or social classes with specific demands. Here in Panama there are certain historical and cultural distinctions between the two principal parties, PRD and the Panameñistas, but they demonstrate an increasing convergence when it comes to economic issues and ethical standards. When one goes beyond them to the smaller parties, these are invariably creatures of wealthy families whose agenda is to become the swing votes in a legislature without a majority or the junior partners of a winning electoral coaltion, and in this way obtain government contracts for their owners and public sector jobs for their activists. Our third parties make pronouncements about this or that, but in recent times they really haven't stood for anything beyond the personal interests of those involved.

Guillermo Endara is on the verge of putting his Vanguardia Moral party on the 2009 ballot. The former Arnulfista president who ran on the Solidaridad ticket in 2004 is a known quantity and seems honestly appalled with the venality and corruption of our nation's public life and sincerely committed to cleaning house. Of course, there is the ever-present danger that those attracted to his campaign will include a high percentage of opportunists looking for a gravy train on which to ride into office so that they can play all the old games. That's certainly what happened when he was president from 1989 to 1994.

Now a leftist group, the Unified Popular Movement (MPU) has hooked up with some labor activists and put out the call for a new third party that stands for something, the Alternative Political Force (FPA). They are not the only folks thinking in terms of a labor/left party contesting the 2009 elections, and there is a large part of the left and of the labor movement that considers it a mistake to field candidates under current political conditions. Nevertheless, under the leadership of University of Panama sociology professor Olmedo Beluche the FPA is pressing ahead.

The problem is, in order to create a political party one must sign up enough members to equal four percent of those who voted in the last general election. That's some 60,000 members and it seems very unlikely that the FPA will get that sort of support in time for the next elections. If Vanguardia Moral is about to meet that threshhold, it's because its leaders are a former president and a former mayor of San Miguelito, high profile individuals to whom the mainstream media pay attention. The FPA has no comparable celebrities.

This reporter met with FPA leaders in the small Perejil offices of the union that represents Coca-Cola workers, to talk about the group's prospects.

"The election law is anti-democratic," Beluche said, acknowledging the difficulties of getting ballot status. "If we can't get on the ballot for 2009, we will run independents for legislators and mayors," he added.

The FPA could play the role of the pebble tossed from the mountain top that precipitates an avalanche, sparking a movement that quickly becomes much larger than its proponents that has much less trouble getting ballot status. The possibility becomes all the more realistic when one knows that Priscila Vásquez, the leader of one of the Seguro Social employees' unions, is making the same arguments that Beluche and the FPA are making, advocating a new political party based in the labor movement.

"We're talking with them," Beluche said of Vásquez's movement. "There is a coincidence in the content [of the two groups' aims], but the problem is with the framework." He said that her preference is a party securely based in and controlled by the unions, while the FPA concept is of a broader alliance that embraces social sectors beyond organized labor as well.

Listening to what Beluche and Vásquez have had to say at various leftist events, the contents of their respective messages do sound quite similar both to each others' and in many instances to what a number of other rival groups are saying. It would seem that for the time being those groups that equate running candidates with selling out or subordinating the leftist and labor movements to personal ego trips won't resolve their diffrerences with Beluche and Vásquez, but the latter two individuals might come to an understanding and then attract a lot of rank-and-file followers of groups and leaders that are more skeptical about elections than they are.

At the moment both groups are involved in the "no" campaign for the October 22 canal expansion referendum, and FPA activist Raúl González said that the group plans to intervene in various ways when the National Assembly takes up the matter of election reform as it is expected to do in September. He noted that in Costa Rica, which has a larger population than Panama does, it only takes 3,000 signatures to put a party on the ballot. "The people have the right to choose to elect whom they want," he argued, but here the established political parties are denying this right as a matter of self-preservation.

There was to be a striking teachers' march to the Presidencia later on this day, in which González said that the FPA would participate. "We support all union struggles for a better life," he said, noting as well the ties between the current labor strife and the October referendum. He sees the labor disputes as something that Martín Torrijos provoked in order to changed the subject of national discourse from a canal expansion debate in which he's losing ground. "He's playing a very dangerous game," González opined. "People are tired of government manipulations, and we can organize ourselves. The people are tired for many reasons, first of all, because of poverty and hunger." Unkept campaign promises, too much unemployment, high crime rates, an increased cost of living and a justice system in which nobody believes are all potent sources of public discontent, he added.

"What we need is a leader and a group," González said, in order to sweep the present political lineup off the field.