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Torrijos inaugurates new legislative session
Lively "no" forum at ULACIT
On the referendum campaign trail
Church fires Héctor Endara as CARITAS director
Panama News Briefs

SUNTRACS working Perejil: the ladies want to hear what this young construction worker has to say and to read the leaflets he's passing out. Most unusually for any construction mega-project anywhere in the world, Panama's construction workers' union is against the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the canal. SUNTRACS argues that while some of its members would find work for a few years building the third set of locks, the debt that Panama would run up if this particular expansion plan is accepted would be a hole that would limit money for public works, schools for their children and all other public services for many years to come. Photo by Eric Jackson

On the campaign trail

President working Kuna Yala: President Torrijos handing out envelopes containing $35 on a campaign swing through Kuna Yala. Photo courtesy of the Presidencia

MOLIRENA joins the "no" camp

By a 65 to 5 vote on August 27, the conservative MOLIRENA party's national executive committee voted to endorse a "no" vote in the October 22 referendum. Party leader Gisela Chung cited unsound finances, environmental concerns and the government's and ACP's failure to answer serious questions as reasons for the business-oriented party's stand. The vote was a repudiation of the party's three members of the Panama Canal Authority board of directors, and prompted former Vice Minister of Education Adolofo Linares to accuse Chung of following the leftist FRENADESO's leadership and to register a dissident party faction as a "yes" committee with the Electoral Tribunal.

At last count...

This item will probably be dated by the time you read it. The number of "yes" campaign committees registered with the Electoral Tribunal has gone up to at least 26, and the number of "no" committees officially registered is at least 16.

"Yes" campaign shakeups

Both the ACP and the Torrijos administrations have shaken up their "yes" campaign staffs again. The ACP has hired the US public relations firm Edelman and reportedly taken the top two people who had been running their publicity effort off of that job. The new head of the Torrijos administration's propaganda effort is former Christian Democrat legislator and sometimes journalist Milton Henríquez.

"Yes" hecklers try to shout panelist down

The Panamenista Party has a problem between most of its legislators and some of its leaders, who are for the "yes" side, and its rank-and-file membership, which is overwhelmingly on the "no" side. Thus we are seeing a series of debates, forums and straw polls ahead of the party's announcement of a stand on the issue, which is to be announced on September 29. One of these forums, hosted by legislator Agapito Cleghorn, took place at the Iglesia Gerardo Mayela and featured the ACP's engineer José Northover for the "yes" side and  journalist Maribel Cuervo de Paredes for the "no" side. But the latter had her presentation cut short when a group of about a dozen hecklers led by legislative suplente Maruja Moreno (PRD - Panama City) shouted her down. What so offended the hecklers? It seems that it was Maribel's criticism of the legislators for not having read the studies upon which it is said that the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan are based. Order was eventually restored.

Captured enemy propaganda?

Circulating around by email among people in the "no" campaign is a document alleged to be the ACP's talking points for "yes" campaigners to answer critics, obtained, it is said from someone at the ACP. Essentially the document slays an army of straw men, for the most part evading the arguments that the "no" campaign is actually making, a debating style that has been employed for several weeks now. But is it genuine in the first place? Bogus documents have been known as a political tactic in Panama. The purported ACP talking points are available by clicking here.

Wait a minute --- is this the government-funded "yes" campaign spraypainting its message on Panama City walls? Now that's an unusual change of tactics. Photo by Eric Jackson

US Embassy staying neutral

US President George W. Bush has expressed his enthusiasm for a Panama Canal expansion and American construction equipment manufacturers, shippers and Gulf and East Coast ports all see financial advantages in it. However, the US Embassy here is going to great pains to tell people that it has no official position on the October 22 referendum. It's an important decision that Panamanians will have to make, American Ambassador William A. Eaton said, advising voters here to analyze the issue carefully and set aside narrow partisan considerations.