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Citing plane problems, Panama avoids a controversial ceremony in Quito

by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

On January 15 in Quito, Ecuador inaugurated its eighth president in 10 years, leftist economist Rafael Correa. The ceremony was noteworthy on several counts, and in particular for who was and who was not there.

One of the people who was not there was Panama's President Martín Torrijos. But even the vice president and foreign minister, Samuel Lewis Navarro, who was scheduled to attend, didn't go. Citing electronic problems with Panama's presidential jet, a spokesman for the Presidencia said that the Panamanian delegation headed by Lewis Navarro had to cancel its trip. At the inauguration Panama was represented by its ambassador to Ecuador, former legislator and Colon governor Olgalina de Quijada.

Just one of those things that happens in these days of fallable advanced technology? Well, maybe. But then the following day Lewis Navarro took off to San Salvador in his own plane, to meet with Central American and Mexican officials. And there was something of a boycott going on with respect to Correa's inauguration.

Why a boycott, and by whom, and why would Panama pay attention?

Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadineyad was in attendance, having earlier visited Nicaragua for the swearing in of its once agains president, Daniel Ortega. At the same time, US aircraft carriers were steaming toward Iran and the Bush administration was ratcheting up its rhetoric in ways that suggested a coming attack whose stated reason would be Iran's uranium enrichment program that could give it nuclear weapons capability but the underlying effect of which would be a spectacular extension and expansion of the Iraq War, which is going badly for the United States.

Ahmadinejad, who came to power in elections that were rigged by powerful religious authorities who pulled anti-theocracy candidates and those who proposed a lessening of tensions with the West off of the ballot, has made an international pariah of himself. A recent international congress of holocaust deniers that featured American racist David Duke, a state-sponsored exhibit of anti-Semitic cartoons and vows to destroy the state of Israel are some of the things that the Iranian president has done to offend even most of the defenders of the Palestinian cause against Israeli hostility. Now the argument over Iran's nuclear program has put the Persians at odds with the United Nations Security Council, of which Panama is a member for the next couple of years.

Why, other than to thumb its nose at the United States at a time of escalating hostility, would Iran send its president to an inauguration in Ecuador? Because both Iran and Ecuador have oil exporting economies and are members of OPEC.

Ahmadinejad offered his country's aid and protection to Correa, as did another president of an OPEC member state in attendance, Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. But really, what sort of protection could Chávez, whose country is separated from Ecuador by a Colombia with which he has problematic relations, and Ahmadinejad, who is on the other side of the world, have to offer the new president of a poor and unstable little country like Ecuador?

Iran and Venezuela could offer technical help for the development of Ecuador's oil and gas industry. They could also provide financial assistance to reduce some of the economic pressures that might be brought to bear by the United States or domestic rivals to oust Correa before his four-year term is up.

Despite its oil, which tends to be in the difficult to reach eastern part of the country, Ecuador is a desperately poor country with a fishing, banana and subsistence farming economy and a foreign debt that amounts to more than one-quarter of its annual Gross Domestic Product. Correa comes to power with a congress controlled by his rivals and a supreme court that's not very sympathetic either. The 43-year-old University of Illinois-educated economist may have won handily in a runoff election against his country's richest man, but according to the arithmetic of his country's current constitutional order he's weak and vulnerable and if he decides that due to his tenuous hold on power he'll moderate his policies and rhetoric he's likely to alienate his country's most important electoral power brokers, the fickle millions of impoverished indigenous voters.

In a situation where he's stymied by hostile legislative and judicial branches and vulnerable to foreign economic and diplomatic pressures, money from abroad could be the lifeline that saves Correa's presidency.

And it's not just Venezuela and Iran who are lending their aid and sympathy to Correa. The "Pink Tide" presidents of Latin America were well represented at the inauguration. Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Uruguay's Tabaré Vázquez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega were all there. One of the things discussed by several of Correa's South American neighbors was the possibility of Ecuador joining the MERCOSUR trade alliance that's in many ways becoming the Latin American alternative to economic integration with the United States according to the NAFTA model.

But how much Correa's South American friends might do is limited by geography. Without a useful land connection to the rest of South America, Ecuador remains heavily dependent on the Panama Canal, whose toll increases its past governments have explicitly considered an unfriendly act. Ecuador's only land borders are with Peru and Colombia, and its relations with those countries are historically troublesome. Much of that part of Colombia adjacent to Ecuador is a war zone in which leftist FARC guerrillas have long battled government and rightist paramilitary forces for control. In the 20th century Ecuador and Peru fought two border wars and if the disputed areas are small and remote, the mineral resources under them are substantial. Any lasting advance in an Ecuadoran development policy that would tie it to the other economies of South America implies land transportation connections that do not now exist and can not be created without the cooperation of Peru in particular and possibly Colombia as well.

Peruvian President Alan García and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe also attended Correa's inauguration. The Correa administration's relations with those countries thus started out on a formally correct basis, but Ecuador needs something warmer than that and, given García's famous annoyance with Venezuela's Chávez, other friends with something of substance to offer Peru for its cooperation may have to serve as intermediaries in the establishment of a new era of relations. Brazil is the country best situated to serve in that role.

And the United States? It send no high-ranking delegation to Correa's inauguration. Correa vows to pay off his country's debt to the International Monetary Fund and then cease relations with that US-controlled entity, allow the contract for the US Armed Forces Southern Command to use the airstrip at Manta to lapse when it runs out in 2009 and end negotiations aimed at a free trade agreement with the United States. "It's a miracle that the servile, neoliberal democracies of clay are collapsing and a proud, free, sovereign, just and socialist Latin America of the 21st century is emerging," Correa said at his inauguration.

And that's something that neither the Bush administration nor a Panamanian oligarch who wants to integrate his country's economy with that of the United States cares to hear. So no wonder that a spare plane couldn't be found. And no wonder that the presidents of those Latin American countries most closely aligned with the USA also did not attend Correa's inauguration.

However, neither the Correa nor the Torrijos administrations are putting it that way. The Panamanian president has lately been describing his role as that of a bridge between the United States and Latin American countries that have been washed by the Pink Tide. "We recognize Panama's efforts in favor of Latin American consensus and we know that we can count on President Martín Torrijos in this moment of profound Latin American integration," Correa reportedly told Ambassador Quijada.

Later in the week Panama sent a third-string delegation to the MERCOSUR summit, and the talk on the isthmus these days is not about closer ties with the South American trade bloc but about free trade with the United States. The question thus arises whether Torrijos is playing intermediary between two world views or is acting as an agent for one of them.

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