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editorial

Weird concepts in high places

The Social Security Fund, which President Torrijos declared “fixed,” has poisoned dozens of Panamanians, at least 43 of whom died.

Although seven people have been accused of crimes in this case, investigations are ongoing about specifically who did or failed to do what that directly led to the deaths, meanwhile various probes by various news media and public agencies have revealed that the poisoned medicines affair arose in the context of grossly lacking management controls. No search for a low-level scapegoat can obscure the glaring deficiencies. Nothing can excuse the top management’s failure to observe unacceptable conditions and demand their correction.

We now also know that the Social Security Fund and the Ministry of Health knew of problems weeks before they went public, and it’s reasonable to believe that their lack of transparency killed people. In the face of revelations about the cover-up Health Minister Camilo Alleyne and Seguro Social director René Luciani should at the very least lose their jobs, and one wonders if they are being protected because the concealment of the problem went even higher in the current administration.

In lieu of anything particularly meaningful, President Torrijos has decided to rearrange an organizational chart, shift a medicine testing institute that Seguro Social improperly bypassed from the University of Panama to the central government and appoint a committee to do a study. He has also appointed a former national ombudsman to represent the families of the victims.

A government that has so grievously wronged these families, now purporting to represent them? Now that’s a really bizarre concept, one that screams volumes about the paternalistic, anti-democratic way that Martín Torrijos thinks.

Cuba and Cubans in the news

Panama has long had normal relations with the Cuban government, and we have a small Cuban community here, some of its members on good terms with the Castro regime, others strongly opposed to it. The other day the Cuban members of a Fidel-friendly José Martí study group in this country took a rare step into the public arena to call for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba.

Officially, Panama doesn’t like those trade restrictions either, but unofficially Panamanian businesses in the Colon Free Zone turn a tidy profit as the places where a Cuban government that can’t shop in the USA is obliged to go for certain purchases.

At about the same time, the Bush administration was making ghoulish predictions about Fidel Castro’s death from his current ailment, which they say is probably some sort of cancer. The old man does look frail in photographs released by the government-controlled Cuban media, but such gleeful speculation about a foreign head of state’s precarious health is precisely the sort of boorishness that has turned both the American electorate and the international community against George W. Bush.

Meanwhile the United States is stepping up propaganda efforts directed at Cuba, and offering plans for the country’s transition to the post-Castro era.

The Panama News has long called for the liberation of jailed journalists and the lifting of restrictions on freedom of expression in Cuba, as a fundamental gesture of international solidarity with wronged colleagues. We’d also like to see Cuba have a peaceful and democratic transition to its next leadership. The Cubans have institutions already in place that with a few simple reforms could provide the basis for elections that no reasonable person could alleged to be be unfair or unfree.

But of course, for George W. Bush and his supporters any political process that does not lead to the far-right Miami Cuban-American leadership moving in and setting up a reactionary regime in Havana would be denigrated as a sham. These people would keep all of the restrictions in place unless and until Cuba does what Washington wants. But what the president of the United States wants should count for very little in Cuba’s coming transition. It’s what the Cuban people want that should matter.

Now is the time to end the US trade embargo against Cuba. Economic blackmail is conducive to neither freedom nor democracy, and many decades of sanctions have proven to be a spectacular failure. Let’s lower the external pressures of all sorts so that both the Cuban government and the Cuban people can make their decisions without duress.

Bear in mind…

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

José Martí

We do not inherit this land from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

Haida proverb

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

Agatha Christie