opinion

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Cronies Day

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

Today there aren't so many people who remember that the Azuerences fo Herrera and Los Santos provinces lived for a long time in marked isolation due to the lack of a good road to unite them with the rest of the country, a situation that still disgracefully afflicts very many communities in this country. One would get to Divisa and then begin the ordeal of transiting the black top strips --- when these existed --- that some called the Divisa - Las Tablas Highway.

There were all sorts of civic movements in favor of the construction of a highway to replace the existing threshing machine. Finally, construction began during the presidency of Marcos Aurelio Robles.

There was a strong and genuine enthusiasm among the people along the projected highway route. But then the days went by and what was initially an unusual movement of heavy equipment became a situation in which another official car went by, raising a cloud of red dust. The months went by and the highway wasn't built. Then a group of community leaders decided to visit President Robles to let him know their legitimate concerns. They were preceded by a publicity campaign in all of the towns affeced by the lack of highway construction progress.

President Robles received the committee of leaders and, after attentively listening to them, after a brief pause, told them that he couldn't do anything about it and his hands were tied because the construction company was owned by a friend of his --- and he couldn't act against his friend.

Things have not improves since then. In fact they have worsened to unusual extremes, and especially during the previous administration of Mireya Mososo and the present one of Martín Herasto Torrijos Espino.

The situation is even more grave, given that in the three branches of government there has been an infinite multiplication of the reigning aberrant populism's practices, accompanied by political patronage in the hands of an ominious clique of friends who respect on norms whatsoever. Judgments of the courts, laws in the National Assembly, opinions by the Administrative Prosecutor, resolutions of the autonomous institutions and so on are made on the basis of "friendship," which enormously affects not only the public's business but also the minimum credibility that's required to be able to talk about the rule of law.

It's very unfortunate that cronyism --- the practical tendency to favor friends to the detriment of the superior rights of third persons --- has invaded our society, giving us daily examples at all level of all institutions.

It doesn't matter whether these institutions are in the public or private sector. The cases of cronyism I've given you are in public institutions. But this also exists in other social institutions like civic clubs and condominium associations.

Nobody can be against true friendship --- the kind that was recently celebrated on February 14 as St. Valentine's Day. But frienship is a far stretch from cronyism and is in fact its antithesis. Friendship has to do with love and affection betwee people. Cronyism gives off the stench of corruption or of the demonstration of power, no matter what the law, statutes or regulations may say. Perhaps the National Assembly can decree a Cronies' Day so that the cronies can throw a big party to celebrate the satrapy that they practice as a science and the patience of our people who, although shorn of the privileges and gifts that emanate from intergovernmental cronyism, still stand by with crossed arms and don't bother to get involved in citizens' activities to energetically denounce and fight that which in our time demands that we shout, and burn the candle at both ends.

Bernal, Cronyies Day
Sirias, Trapped in a changing Cuba
Gutman, Inflexible beliefs
Stimson, Finding the easy
Greenpeace, G8 countries shirk climate change duties
Wheeler, The protests during Bush's Latin America trip
Alvares de Azevedo e Almeida, Bush in Brazil
Denis, The joy of living in the Caribbean

N. Jackson, The wheel of karma catches up with Scooter Libby

E. Jackson, Obama, Walter Reed and the antiwar movement