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Photo by Gaenor Speed

Figuring out the big picture

This issue finds us between two crucial elections, the referendum recently concluded in Panama and the off-year voting in the United States. (Actually, as these words were written Nicaraguans were voting as well, but that's another story, with a different potential importance.)

The canal expansion referendum didn't turn out the way I wanted. The morning after I was invited to an unbearable press conference that featured a lot of claims about moral victories due to the high abstention and some of the first jabs in the infighting among the "no" forces that is to be expected in the wake of any serious political defeat. But whatever anyone who doesn't like it might say, the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan is legal, just like the Hay - Bunau-Varilla Treaty once was. The consequences will play out over at least a generation. I wouldn't characterize the process that led to its adoption in the same way that the American Embassy did, but the vote was not close, after all.

My emotions have me feeling like I did way back in 1972 after Richard Nixon's re-election, another vote in which I was a part of a severely thrashed minority. But really, if one looks for a US analogy --- which must always be very imperfect --- the long-term effect of October 22 may be a lot more like what happened to the Republicans in 1964. Barry Goldwater is best remembered now for an intemperate remark he made about extremism in defense of liberty. The sad thing is that Lyndon Johnson did almost all of the extreme things in Vietnam that Goldwater proposed to do, and hardly anyone remembers Goldwater when the chips were down and he defended liberty --- that day in August of 1974 when he told Richard Nixon to resign and that if push came to shove he would probably vote to convict a president of his own party for abuse of power.

Lyndon Johnson won re-election with a mandate to do things on the civil rights front that would inevitably be divisive, and having given implicit assurances about Vietnam that he intended to dishonor. The latter had prompt and politically fatal consequences. Out of the fiasco of the Goldwater campaign grew the seeds of a generation of conservative ascendancy in US politics.

Martín Torrijos and Alberto Alemán Zubieta won a referendum by making promises that they can't deliver and never intended to keep, and in the referendum itself the former lost a big chunk of the coalition that elected him, Panama's younger voters. Despite a campaign using many millions of public dollars and directed right at them, young voters just didn't believe the promises and by and large didn't vote.

The PRD comes out of the referendum as the only contending party left standing. However, the president's party faces a brutal internal power struggle over who gets the 2009 nomination and its hopes for a generation of one-party domination are substantially diminished.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush has led the United States to defeat in Iraq and disgrace as an international pariah that openly practices torture. Most American voters are not happy about it.

We shall see the verdict soon enough, but given an extremist decision of the US Supreme Court in support of a manuever by one of the sleazier Republicans, Tom DeLay,  this year's election may set the stage for further routs to come. You see, at DeLay's behest the state of Texas ignored the traditional practice of one redrawing of congressional district lines after each decennial census, throwing in an extra gerrymander to make the state's delegation in Washington more Republican. The Democrats are poised to take over a number of state governments in this year's voting, and given the practice established by Republicans, they will be in a position to redraw congressional districts in a way that will compound this year's GOP losses in election years to come.

What's happening in the USA is the natural result of a war that has gone badly. The undermining of traditional freedoms has not helped the GOP cause. The big unknown is whether Democrats will be able to take advantage of the opportunity to offer an attractive alternative on a number of policy fronts.

Democrats versus Republicans also has a local aspect, although American voters here cast absentee ballots in districts spread across the United States. Still, the local GOP website asserts that there are 25,000 Americans in Panama and Republicans Abroad represents 17,000 of them. That's way off the mark, especially this year. Plus, most of the leaders of Republicans Abroad in Panama have long records in the community and some of them are loathe to see them scrutinized --- but that's what one gets for claiming to speak for a large number of others.

It's good for goose and gander alike, prudent Democrats will realize.

Oh, and the little boy puzzling out the picture book above?

I doubt he was thinking in terms of Democrats and Republicans. He was partaking of the Halloween festivities at the Balboa Academy. This school takes as its template the US Department of Defense schools, from which many of its teachers and administrators hail. That necessarily cuts off its late October celebrations from many of the hallowed traditions --- no Druid sacrifices, no cherry bombs in pumpkins, no vandalism or fires --- but it seemed to be fun nevertheless.

(You English-language theater fans might want to check out the Balboa Academy's upcoming play. No doubt headhunters from both the English and Spanish theater scenes will be on hand to look for some of the fresh talent that keeps them going.)

This production weekend has been punctuated by the start of Panama's patriotic holidays, which took me and my disintegrating camera out onto Via España to record the Independence Day and Flag Day events. The impression I got this year was of somewhat smaller crowds, but maybe that was actually a function of the lengthening of the parade routes by several blocks each. I ran into plenty of American tourists, but unlike in years past I hardly saw any displays of US symbols.

My work routine is also being modified by the start of the Wappin' radio show, which is in its first learning phases, on Radio Libre AM 870 from 6 to 7 pm on Mondays and Fridays and podcast on this website. As my partner in this venture gets back from the States and the technical challenges are mastered we ought to be up to full speed by later this month.

The Panama News is breaking readership records again. In our letters section, however, the extent to which some people do not wish The Panama News well is partially revealed. But you know what? This "patriotic Panamanian" is a college student in the USA who last year participated in an event in Iran which was used by that country's President Ahmadinejad to promote his totalitarian ideas about culture. So how does a foreign student in George W. Bush's USA partake of an Ayatollah love fest and not get kicked out of the country? The ad boycott that Arturo de la Guardia says he's organizing is not a matter of Panamanian patriotism as he says, but rather something coming out of the slimiest dregs of the American community.

And speaking of the slimy dregs of Panama's American community, the religious far right lost one of their own recently when Panama expelled one Eddie Ray Kahn, sending him back to face US justice in the tax fraud case in which actor Wesley Snipes is his better known co-defendant. One of Kahn's friends send me an email opining that his rejection by the community here was due to "overly sensitive Jews," but by and large none of his erstwhile friends here will now admit that they were such. Nobody in the White House will admit to knowing Mr. Abramoff, either.

In the daily newspapers and on television here, the news is dominated by the ongoing poisoned medicines scandal and the aftermath of a bus fire that took 18 lives. Continuing revelations in the former case seem to be forcing President Torrijos and the Social Security Fund to back down from their previous blame shifting tactics, but we shall see if the heart of the matter gets reached or if we just get a new set of low-level scapegoats.

And me? I took an afternoon off from the political wars and never-ending sleaze for a walk in the woods with my camera. You never entirely escape the sounds of automobiles and aircraft in the Parque Natural Metropolitano, but there are parts of it where the machine noise become but a faint roar, overpowered by the many different bird calls. This wonderful urban park has been the object of repeated encrochments, but is still well worth saving.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson

the editor