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The Panama Canal Authority's Arias (standing) and Sabonge (in front of laptop) came in as last-minute substitutes for canal finance director José Barrios Ng to debate former canal director Fernando Manfredo (left). Photo by Eric Jackson

ACP sends two replacements to debate one man at St. Mary's

by Eric Jackson

The September 4 debate was billed as Panama Canal Authority (ACP) finance director José Barrios Ng for the "yes" side against former canal administrator Fernando Manfredo for the "no" at St. Mary's Church in Balboa. The event's sponsors were an association of Reverted Areas residents and Scotiabank.

It began late as Manfredo was caught in a traffic jam of people headed for the Marc Anthony concert at the Figali Convention Center, and when it started the ACP was represented not by Barrios Ng, but by a team comprised of its marketing director Rodolfo Sabonge and a Mr. Arias from the engineering department.

Manfredo, who had begged off on another appearance earlier in the day, appeared tired, had a slightly hoarse voice and was soft-spoken to the point that he was at times inaudible. He had a few pages of written notes for his presentation.

Sabonge and Arias came equipped with a PowerPoint show and were things to be judged as a matter of style without points deducted for the surprise double team and ignoring the moderator's time warnings that Manfredo obeyed, they won hands-down. However, more people in the mostly middle aged and older crowd, which included a number of canal retirees and some current ACP employees, cheered for Manfredo than for the ACP team. The questions and comments from the floor were overwhelmingly skeptical of the "yes" side as well. Still, most people came to listen rather than cheer and those who demonstrated their support for one side or the other were in the minority.

Fernando Manfredo --- Photo by Eric Jackson

Manfredo had little to say that was new for the "no" campaign. "It's worse for a person to be disinformed than for a person to be partially informed," he said in his opening remarks, and then launched into an attack on ACP secrecy and information control. "They totally marginalized the Panamanian people. When I asked them why, they said 'everybody's crazy in Panama.'"

Manfredo panned the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan as incomplete and poorly conceived, and warned that "we are going to indebt each of us, and each of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren" if it is passed.

Rodolfo Sabonge --- Photo by Eric Jackson

Sabonge launched into an attack on a report by Manfredo, former President Jorge Illueca and two others, entitled "Our Canal: An unnecessary and risky expansion now or a national development alternative for all." His first point of attack was that the report acknowledged that a "dry canal" is not a viable substitute for the waterway "like we have been saying."

In the course of that initial assault, Sabonge surely lost many of the people in the room. To underscore his expertise on the matter, he pointed out that "my first job in Panama was director of the Panama Railroad." But this crowd was not composed of 18-year-olds or recent arrivals to Panama. Virtually everybody in the room knew exactly what had happened to the Panama Railroad --- the final destruction of an obsolete but functioning railway by its conversion into a PRD political patronage dumping ground and by the devastation of its infrastructure by major management errors like setting fires to clear away weeds along the tracks (which burned the ties) and by the general diversion of funds from needed maintenance and improvements to administrative salaries. His point about the nature of his qualifications accrued to Manfredo's benefit.

The people in the crowd tended, by their very choice to come to this debate, to be those who keep themselves better informed than the average citizen. Thus many of them would have looked beyond the flashy PowerPoint graphics to the content of what the ACP was putting up on the screen during Sabonge's presentation. Here there were some new things from the "yes" camp. While they had been promising 250,000 jobs if the canal expansion is passed, now they had upped the figure to 293,000 --- 174,456 of them "direct." (The ACP master plan for the canal expansion, however, says that fewer than 7,000 people will be employed by the project, a little over 5,000 of them at the peak of construction.)

Then, with a series of graphs Sabonge proceeded to claim that Manfredo's management of the canal was a business failure, while Alemán Zubieta's direction has been an unqualified success. "This is a different canal," he argued. He brushed aside contradictions between the studies that the ACP said supported its position and the "yes" campaign's publicity claims by stating that "the consultants for this canal know very little."

"The economy controls," Sabonge continued, launching into another attack on Manfredo and Illueca for criticizing the current economic model by which Panama is run.

In the question and answer period after the main presentations, Arias rather than Sabonge answered most of the technical questions for the ACP. He disputed the Panama Canal Pilots Union claim that the pilots had not been consulted about the proposal, criticized the IDAAN water utility for inefficiency and not having long-term future water demand studies, argued that it's not possible to do an environmental impact study for the project until after final designs are done and dismissed the US Army Corps of Engineers' expertise because the United States has no post-Panamax locks.

Mr. Arias also had a new position to state for the "yes" campaign, a new attack on the Delft Hydraulics study commissioned by the ACP which found that, whatever means of mitigation are employed, the water saving basins feature of the new locks will allow a substantial increase in the infusion of salt water into Gatun Lake. The Delft study, he said, was based on the presumption of 15 transit through the new locks per day, but the canal administration has since decided that it would limit the use of the proposed new locks to 12 transits per day so the study is wrong. In keeping with the "yes" campaign's previous statements, Arias refused to answer the question of how many gallons of lake water per ship, on average, would have to be flushed through the proposed new locks to limit salt water intrusion into Gatun Lake.

A chart from the Delft Hydraulics study, wherein the dark green bars represent the amount of salt water intrusion into Gatun Lake, with A representing the current locks, B the various uses of the proposed new locks without taking mitigation measures to limit salt water intrusion and C, D and E the results if different mitigation strategies are used. The more effective mitigation methods, however, largely defeat the basins' water saving purpose by flushing the locks with fresh water from the lake. Note that the presumption is 15 post-Panamax vessels per day. Graphic from the Delft final study, taken from the ACP website but the letters A-E added by The Panama News to add clarity.

Sabonge chimed in, alleging "malicious interpretation" of the ACP's studies by the "no" campaign, and renewed his attack on Manfredo for opposing Panama's current economic system.

"It doesn't work," Manfredo replied. "This is a country where the economy grows, and poverty also grows."

Sabonge interrupted Manfredo's response about Panama's economic model, and later returned to the attack: "We are a globalized country by our nature. We have to take advantage of the opportunities that globalization offers," he argued. He warned that if Panamanians do not approve the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan, a proposed new Nicaraguan canal will take the Panama Canal's business away.

To that Manfredo responded: "PLEASE --- Nicaragua is a bogeyman. The proposal is a ploy for the benefit of politicians. This is not a serious proposal."

In one of the last questions from the floor, an audience member asked why the ACP chose Parsons Brinckerhoff rather than the US Army Corps of Engineers to do their cost estimates. Both Sabonge and Arias furiously responded, each somehow managing not to mention Parsons Brinckerhoff, which is embroiled in scandal from the Boston Big Dig project that it helped oversee. Manfredo said nothing, and just smiled.