opinion

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Jackson, Religion and politics

Generalized crime

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

If there's anything worse that a state of generalized crime it's a state of proliferating arbitrariness. And in Panama, we're headed toward a state that will bring us to lose that necessity for a modern society, the effective rule of law.

Each and every day, we dozens of hundreds of thousands of citizens are able to see that the authorities carry out their social mandate ever less and abuse the administration of power ever more, creating space for acts of corruption with impunity that tend to increase the lack of confidence in the political system and the formally established institutions that are supposed to represent the general interests.

In these recent weeks the dozens of poisoning deaths at the Seguro Social and Santo Tomas hospitals and the tragedy of those who were burned on the bus say much about the irresponsibility, negligence and "it doesn't matter to me" attitude of the governing authorities. The treatment of the Vanessa Márquez case and the flirting with drug lords in the Rayo Rayo Montaño case; the impunity of those responsible for flood losses; the "legal conveyances" in the BANISTMO scam; the consideration given to Alleyne and Luciani, and for the circuit judge who stole the toilet paper from her courthouse; the payment of 16 years of vacations to the Electoral Tribunal magistrates, the car and gasoline for the family and their almost assured re-election; the repeated escapes from the prison system, which is undergoing its worst crisis; the "hits," the gangs, the robberies and assaults; the closed-door sessions to approve the government's general budget; the shower of bribes and favors; the influence peddling and increasing conflicts of interest --- these are just a few examples of how the criminality of individuals mixes with and is reinforced by the despotism of public officials to the point that it creates a vicious circle of cynicism, barbarism and irresponsibility that shackles the citizenry and reproduces itself thanks to impunity.

Just three years ago the sale of the Punta Mala beach house marked the Pacto MaMi and the lack of social credibility in the political system, the non-transparent and dishonest management of public assets, the judiciary's lack of independence to assure the effective rule of law and the absence of an efficient administration of the public institutions that should be providing services to the citizens.

Thus a friend told me: "Punta Mala is the best definition of several things --- sophistication in stickups for public assets, the irreverent and dismissive attitude about public opinion and the total and absolute lack of ethics and morality in politics."

And then he said that "In a country where the falsification of values and hypocrisy are coins of the realm, and where the political powers refuse to give reasons for their excercises of authority hate to submit to the law, the citizenry has an obligation to fight the extremes of privilege and marginalization that endanger the cohesion and survival of society. We citizens must ast as permanent sentinels against the unrestricted accumulation of riches, the use of power without checks or balances and the arbitrary appropriation of the fruits of other people's efforts."

Today, in the face of generalized crime, there can be no doubt that criminal justice demands a radical reconstruction that can only be launched from a democratic platform, by way of a true deliberative process that involves the relevant actors. But we also know that criminal law reform is not enough.

It's necessary that we advocate for and find a legitimate and effective solution to the breakdown of fundamental rights in Panama.

As the writer René Girard said in his La Violencia y lo Sagrado, "The judicial system holds the threat of vengeance at bay. It doesn't suppress it --- it effectively limits it with one reprisal, the exercise of which is confidently left to a sovereign authority that's specialized at this. The decisions of the judicial authority are always upheld as the last word on vengeance.... To the extent that a sovereign and independent organism that's capable of replacing the injured party and reserving vengeance to itself doesn't exist, the danger of interminable escalation subsists.... Only a transcendance over everything else, creating the belief in a difference between sacrifice and vengeance or the judicial system and vengeance, can forcefully ward off violence."

It's thus urgent for the citizenry to rise to the occasion, because if the price that we pay for this state of crime is the material prosperity of a small sector of society or the continuity of demagogic discourse, any macroeconomic success or stability won't be able to be maintained on these foundations of impunity, arbitrariness and intolerance.

Those who govern or aspire to govern, as well as the governed, should understand once and for all that justice --- which is surely coming --- is much more important than image, and that human dignity has to prevail over the privileges of a few and demagogic and populist rhetoric.

Bernal, Generalized crime
Leis, Mourning is the pain of all pains
Sirias, Reading John Irving
Birns, Ecuador's election result
Madriz Fornos, The Caribbean Rum Dialogue
Bond, US passport policy a disaster for Caribbean tourism
Wilson, Congress should reopen the libraries
Sánchez, Keeping the Uruguayan military in check

Gutman, A new low for US bureaucratic jargon

Jackson, Religion and politics