opinion

Also in this section:

Endara, An unworthy public safety law
Bernal, They're abridging our liberties
Sirias, Méndez Pereira and a novel still to be written
AFL-CIO Executive Committee, Fast Track or the right track?
Carpio, Preparing for a new hurricane season
Committee to Protect Journalists, Cuban reporter jailed for "social dangerousness"
Greenpeace, Switch to energy efficiency now
Zuckerman, Does Menchú have a chance?

Birns and Sánchez, Who rules Mexico: the government or the drug lords?

Leis, Sex education in the Panamanian schools

Jackson, If the PRD is a political patronage machine...

Gutman, Imus: obnoxious racist banter and political correctness

So if the PRD is a political patronage machine...

by Eric Jackson

Given the "to the victors go the spoils" nature of Panamanian politics and the expectation that a large percentage of the members of the various political parties harbor about jobs, government contracts or other specific benefits for themselves or their families, and further given the PRD's position as the party with the biggest membership of them all, it might be tempting to compare Panama's ruling party with, say, the Cook County Democratic Organization in Chicago or New York's Tammany Hall of old. Given the many obnoxious things that the Torrijos administration and the legislative caucus that it controls have done of late, that might be a comforting analogy for those members of the US Congress considering ratification or rejection of a US-Panama Free Trade Agreement.

After all, wasn't Harry Truman a machine politician too? And doesn't Mayor Daley the son get re-elected with huge majorities and turn out the Chicago vote for the Democrats in national elections? If the Torrijos style of governing bears a certain resemblance to sausage making, is it that much worse than what goes on in certain parts of the USA? Don't the polls say that Martín is hugely popular?

But Martín Torrijos is no Richard Daley, nor is he a Harry Truman or even a Boss Tweed. You see, to succeed at machine politics you must deliver tangible benefits to the people who keep you in office. What's tangible may vary from person to person --- it's the wardheeler's job to know these things --- and the benefits may be indirect or even symbolic, but the basic deal is "you vote me into office and I direct some of the resources of government to the things you want and need."

Torrijos made the promises he had to, and garnered 47 percent of the vote in a four-way race, enough to win by a comfortable margin. But immediately in his first year, rank-and-file PRD members set up picket lines and sat in at government offices when they didn't get the public sector jobs that they had expected. Only privileged fringe of party apparatchiki got the jobs.

Well, OK. Mireya had all but emptied the government coffers before she left and the PRD had given quiet assurances to international lenders, the US government and some very conservative local business leaders. The ruling ideology was allowed to slip out in last year's referendum campaign, when one of the president's advisors blasted opponents of the canal expansion plan in question for having the temerity to reject "economic Darwinism." Government jobs for the poor, even if they're party members, just don't fit into the neo-liberal, economic Darwinist scheme of things.

Well, fine. There are other benefits that might be passed out to supporters.

But look what just happened in Curundu, an area that voted strongly PRD in 2004. President Torrijos had promised more security in his campaign, but the neighborhood came under the domination of armed street gangs. This not only disrupted any relationship between the area's law-abiding citizens and the police --- nobody wanted the retaliation that comes from being seen talking with the cops --- but it also isolated the area's PRD voters from the party organization. When little hoodlums burned down 137 houses and killed three kids on March 21, the community did not rise up as one and produce the offenders. Two or three witnesses, among at least 100 the police say there were, were brave enough to point the finger. When members of the gang that started the fire circulated in the neighborhood afterward to warn people about cooperating with the police, nobody came forward to finger them for that --- not to the cops, not to the PRD-run Junta Comunal. A few of them, under condition of anonymity, talked to reporters but even then didn't name names.

So what to do in a climate of fear? Send in a huge force of masked police officers, that's what. The president sent a 300-officer force to break down doors and make arrests first in Curundu, then in El Chorrillo, then in San Miguelito, all of these places PRD strongholds in the last election. They rounded up 360 teenage boys and young men.

And then they had to release 359 of them for no evidence, all but a guy in a wheelchair who was making his living cooking up and selling relatively small amounts of crack.

Yes, they undoubtedly picked up some bad guys but couldn't prove anything against them. They also picked up a number of law-abiding citizens.

Now if the PRD were a functional machine, National Police director Rolando Mirones would be history by now. A real machine doesn't let punks burn down part of its turf, doesn't let them threaten its constituents, doesn't play Keystone Kops games in a neighborhood it's supposed to control. A real machine passes out jobs to its supporters but demands loyalty in return, and considers it a most disloyal thing to screw up on the job.

If the PRD was a viable machine, it would have also given the fire victims more long-term hope and better short-term answers about their housing needs. They didn't. The Torrijos administration's housing plans are for displacing fishing families from beaches and islands and building luxury dwellings for foreigners. They're about glutting the high-end residential market in Panama City, building a few lesser priced units for those who qualify, and leaving most people in circumstances like those of the people who were burned out to shift for themselves.

But the machine continues to roll, does it not?

Well, if you look at the Dichter & Neira (Harris) poll results, which don't allow for people to express a neutral view of the government, then the president has an approval rating of more than 60 percent. But if you look the CID (Gallup) polls, which allow for a neutral opinion about somebody or something, then there's this huge block that considers the Torrijos performance to be just ordinary and a slightly larger group of people who rate him unfavorably than that which judges him positively.

True, the opposition is discredited and in disarray. However, it's hard to see how a PRD machine that can't deliver for neighborhoods like Curundu that voted for it last time can be a shoo-in when election time rolls around two years from now.

Endara, An unworthy public safety law
Bernal, They're abridging our liberties
Sirias, Méndez Pereira and a novel still to be written
AFL-CIO Executive Committee, Fast Track or the right track?
Carpio, Preparing for a new hurricane season
Committee to Protect Journalists, Cuban reporter jailed for "social dangerousness"
Greenpeace, Switch to energy efficiency now
Zuckerman, Does Menchú have a chance?

Birns and Sánchez, Who rules Mexico: the government or the drug lords?

Leis, Sex education in the Panamanian schools

Jackson, If the PRD is a political patronage machine...

Gutman, Imus: obnoxious racist banter and political correctness