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Also in this section:
The drug lord's alleged political fronts
Heckadon defends environmental aspects of canal expansion
Prosecutors raid the PTJ
The difficult process of getting a new party on the ballot
On the referendum campaign trail
Panama doesn't want Posada Carriles back
Panama News Briefs

President Torrijos passing out envelopes that contain $35 in cash in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca. Along with the money came a speech in which he pleaded for "yes" votes in the October 22 referendum and lashed out at the "no" campaign. Torrijos said "I am confident that God will give all Panamanians the wisdom to make the correct decision and that here we have intelligent people who can differentiate between those who come to promote chaos, between those who come to promote disorder and we who come with every intention to correct errors and to improve the future." Photo courtesy of the Presidencia

On the campaign trail

Some of the campus radicals at the University of Panama call for nationally televised debates on the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal and a "no" vote in the referendum. During the course of this campaign Torrijos has tightened his grip on television through the purchase of the RCM news channel by a former leader of the PRD's Frente Empresarial and subsequent near-total banishment of "no" campaign supporters from the station's coverage. Only the Evangelicals' Hosanna TV channel now regularly gives time to detractors of the canal expansion proposal. Photo by Eric Jackson

"Yes" endorsements a hoax

Emails that went out in the name of a Panama Canal Authority employee and purporting to list a number of prominent individuals as supporters of the new "Así Sí" campaign for a "yes" vote have drawn complaints from several of the people listed that they neither have anything to do with that committee nor support the "yes" campaign. Así Sí has issued no denial, clarification or correction about the emails.

A "yes" billboard on Avenida Central. The construction workers' union, SUNTRACS, is actually calling for a "no" vote. Photo by Eric Jackson

San Miguelito Panameñistas' straw poll

La Estrella reports that as part of the Panameñista Party's process of deciding which stand to take on the canal expansion proposal, the elected party convention delegates from San Miguelito have taken a straw poll. It turned out with 95 supporting the "no" side and 7 taking the "yes" position.

ACP gets an endorsement from Taiwan

Either oblivious to or defiant of the widespread anti-Chinese racism in Panamanian society and the "no" campaign's arguments that the canal expansion proposal mainly would benefit foreign interests, the Panama Canal Authority's latest TV commercials make their thinly-veiled pitch for the "yes" campaign with an appeal from an executive of Taiwan's Evergreen shipping company, which is partly state-owned. The Chinese executive argues that if Panamanians don't approve the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan the country will lose its opportunity to compete with other shipping routes.

"No" campaigners arrested

On August 17 four adults and a minor were arrested in Santiago and accused by police of painting "no" slogans on walls and overpasses. Their cases have been turned over to the Electoral Tribunal for prosecution.

Different rules about public spaces

Both the "yes" and "no" campaigns have put up propaganda on public property, some of it clearly illegally but in keeping with past campaign practices and some of it of questionable legality. Putting propaganda on utility poles, bus stops or public buildings is clearly forbidden, even if widely practiced in the past. Billboards and signs placed in the public right of way have been accepted, but by the letter of the law may be illegal. The same applies to banners hung from highway overpasses. The Electoral Tribunal and several municipal governments have been sending out crews to remove "no" propaganda but not "yes" propaganda, in keeping with presiding Electoral Tribunal magistrate Dennis Allen's public embrace of the "yes" campaign by participating in its April 24 kickoff rally at ATLAPA. Meanwhile Panamenista activist Luis Eduardo Camacho has filed a complaint seeking to have signs and billboards for the "yes" campaign removed from the public right of ways.

New campaign committees

On the "yes" side we now have "Así Sí," led by businessman Enrique De Obarrio, and the Union de Dirigente Naturales (Union of Natural Leaders) registered with the Electoral Tribunal. On the "no" side former legislator Gloria Young, who founded the nation's first battered women's shelter, is one of the leaders of Mujeres Panamenas por el No, which will try to mobilize women voters in San Miguelito; professor Julio Yao is one of the leaders of Accion Comunal por el No; and rank and file Arnulfistas have registered the Movimiento Panameñista por el No.

So far television advertising has been the exclusive domain of the "yes" campaign, but now the "no" side is also working with video. Here FRENADESO has set up a screen on the Avenida Central pedestrian mall to show its video presenting arguments that the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan should be rejected. Photo courtesy of FRENADESO

What kind of lackies?

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a Washington think tank on the left side of the political spectrum that has studied and commented upon Latin American and Caribbean affairs since the mid-70s, has panned the canal expansion proposal, mainly because it believes that the Torrijos administration is too corrupt to be trusted with a project of this magnitude. Questioned about this by a reporter from El Panama America, Canal Affairs Minister Ricaurte Vásquez warned Panamanians not to be "deceived" or "intimidated" by foreign studies and suggested that behind the COHA analysis there were special interests in the US trasportation industry that compete with the Panama Canal.

Church against a postponement

The Panameñista Party is advocating a postponement of the October referendum, arguing that Panamanians need more time to learn the technical details of the government's proposal. There are others who say the same. However, after a meeting of the nation's Catholic bishops Monsignior José Dimas Cedeño, the Archbishop of Panama, said that election day has been set by law and people need to get ready to exercise their right to vote in a serious and informed way rather than seek delay. Although some of the government's propaganda insinuates that the Catholic Church is supporting the "yes" side, Cedeño said that the church would be playing the role of a neutral observer during the voting.

Martín calls for a national development dialogue

The president has reversed his earlier stand that a dialogue about national development could only take place if and after the canal expansion plan is approved in the October referendum. Before a carefully chosen group of invited politicians, PRD-aligned labor activists, businesspeople and civic leaders, Martín Torrijos called for an immediate national dialogue to come up with a national development strategy that he said would replace the 1998 Vision 2020 statement, and called upon the United Nations Development Program and a former head of the Inter-American Development Bank to supervise the process. Invited were all the political parties with ballot status (and thus not Guillermo Endara's Vanguardia Moral, recognition of whose official status is pending), those labor leaders who support a "yes" vote in the referendum, those business leaders who support a "yes" vote in the referendum, those former presidents of Panama who support a "yes" vote in the referendum, "responsible" civic leaders and those religious figures who are willing to lend their names to such a process. The leftist SUNTRACS construction workers' union, which was not invited, sneered at the effort as a "dialogue among me, myself and I" and Gisela Chung, the president of the conservative MOLIRENA party panned the presidential initiative as a political maneuver driven by the "yes" campaign's sinking standing in the polls.

Poll: "yes" still ahead

A Dichter & Neira poll taken the first week in August and published in La Prensa indicates that 54.4 percent of those responding say they'd vote "yes" in a canal expansion referendum, with most of the other people polled saying that they were undecided or refusing to answer. The numbers indicate a continued erosion of "yes" support, which stood at over 60 percent at the beginning of this year and were at 57.3 percent in early May right after the formal announcement of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan.