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Ocean Embassy files criminal defamation charge against Fundacion Humanitas leader
Campaign tactics for dolphin park resemble previous Torrijos efforts

Not necessarily bored...

Torrijos law enforcement reforms encounter problems, still likely to pass
Panama News Briefs

Political tactics we've seen before

Dolphin capture supporters' claims of support questioned

by Eric Jackson

The provincial councils in Panama are composed of every representante from every corregimiento in every municipal district in Panama. Some of the representantes, as in from Panama City's and San Miguelito's corregimientos, have tens of thousands of constituents. Some of the people who represent rural corregimientos in districts like San Carlos count their constituents in the hundreds. They all have a vote in the provincial council, which other than make some of the minor decisions about roads and other public works --- the Ministry of Public Works and the municipalities reserving the lion's share of powers over such things --- they don't do much. Occasionally they pass resolutions about things.

Polls show that more than 80 percent of Panamanians are opposed to the capture of wild dolphins in our territorial waters, whether for a proposed dolphin park in San Carlos or otherwise. It's not the top issue on the public eye --- demonstrations against Ocean Embassy's planned dolphin captures and dolphin park are attracting just hundreds of people, while supporters have mustered but dozens.

In a March meeting of the Panama Provincial Council, the representantes rejected a motion by their San Carlos colleagues to support the Ocean Embassy project.

And yet, on the day after what was for most Panamanians a four-day Mayday holiday weekend, the morning newspapers featured a little story about how the Provincial Council had passed a resolution reversing its position and supporting the plan. The next day the broadsheet dailies featured the following full-page ad:

The stories appearing in La Estrella and El Panama America on May 2 appeared on pages A-5 and A-6 respectively, and relied on the document reproduced in the ad above as the source. In El Panama America there was an unattributed photo from a dolphin park somewhere outside of Panama, depicting a bottle nosed dolphin carrying an American football over the caption "Will they suffer in captivity?"

So from whence the source? It appears that, rather than a reporter attending a Provincial Council meeting or talking with a representante who did, these stories were based entirely on a document and in El Panama America's case a photograph provided by Ocean Embassy.

Another curious thing: in the "who, what, when and where" routine, the "when" was left out. However, the document displayed in the full-page ads answered that: Monday, April 30 --- not a legal holiday, but a Monday before a Tuesday that was a legal holiday, a day when many Panamanians, including many reporters, were taking the day off as part of a long weekend.

La Prensa didn't run with the Provincial Council story until May 3, in a longer page 6-A piece that dealt with various details of the controversy over the dolphin park. That article mentioned San Carlos Mayor Víctor López as the proponent of the resolution supporting the dolphin park and declared that "this past Monday the council unanimously approved support of the establishment and development of the park in San Carlos."

However, on Thursday, May 3, the representantes from Panama City, every one of them a member of the Panama Provincial Council, passed a resolution denying unanimous support for the dolphin park. It got into La Prensa the following day, in a four and one-half inch below the fold note. Panama City Council president Ivan Picota said that the representantes who represent most of the people in the nation's most populous  province had not, in fact, voted for the resolution.

Maybe that explains why in the photos in Ocean Embassy's ads there appear the images of fewer than a dozen of the more than 100 representantes of the province's 11 municipal districts. That Provincial Council meeting, which took place near the site of the proposed dolphin park in San Carlos, was a rump session during a long holiday weekend, a variation on an old political tactic in Panama.

Also on Thursday, May 3, this time at the San Carlos City Hall, there was a meeting of the Corredor Marino board of directors, which is to consider Ocean Embassy's request for a permit to capture dolphins. A group of about a dozen supporters of the dolphin park held up professionally made banners in front of the building, and Celma Moncada, a leader of the Fundacion Humanitas that opposes the Ocean Embassy proposal, was not allowed in the building although Ocean Embassy supporters were. One of the board members, civil society representative Graciela Etchelecu of the Fundacion MarViva and one of two board members to consistently oppose dolphin captures, arrived late at the meeting and was not allowed to participate in its deliberations. Reportedly, the commission didn't make any official decisions at the meeting.

"Debates" that exclude one side of the question? That's a standard feature of the way that the Torrijos administration has dealt with the Social Security reforms, the Panama Canal expansion question and many lesser matters.

Media control, through the purchase of large ads, the selective notification of which media are informed of or allowed to cover events and the vilification of journalists who do not toe a party line are also features of the current administration's modus operandi. And note in the letters section of this issue of The Panama News that Ocean Embassy publicist Lisa Lauf Rooper accuses this reporter of unspecified slander.

The content of the Ocean Embassy propaganda is also strikingly similar to that used in the state-financed campaign for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama Canal.

The canal will employ about 6,000 people for the expansion plan, but by the end of the campaign the Panama Canal Authority was using public funds to promise 297,400 jobs. Ocean Embassy started out predicting to this reporter that about 400 jobs would be created, but now the figure is "more than 1,600."

Panama only recently crossed the million tourist visits per year figure, and that's debatable because it depends on who gets defined as a tourist and because the official statistics count those who come here more than one time on a per visit rather than per person basis. But here Ocean Embassy is promising "millions of tourists for its one proposed attraction alone."

The Torrijos administration has consistently played a nationalist card against its critics and against reporters who question its claims, accusing them of being unpatriotic and wanting to keep Panama in an underdeveloped Third World status. Ocean Embassy as well --- even though such Panamanians as there may be who own a piece of the action have not revealed themselves and the company is represented entirely by North Americans --- also plays the nationalist card, declaring that "Panama has the same right... as the countries of the First World."

(In the United States and most other countries, developed or otherwise, there is no right to capture wild dolphins. The US government has denied all applications for permits to catch dolphins from American waters for more than a decade.)

The Ocean Embassy ad also works a variation on President Torrijos's essentially meaningless 2004 campaign slogan, "Sí se puede" (Yes you can). As Ocean Embassy puts it, "Si allá pueden, en Panamá lo podemos hacer mejor" (If they can do it there, in Panama we can do it better).

So what's going on behind the scenes here? Circumstances suggest several things:

·        Ocean Embassy is using political strategies and almost surely strategists and ad agencies in common with the Torrijos administration. Why this might be --- possibly a currying of favor by employing members of the political in crowd, or maybe somebody high up in the Torrijos administration owning a stake in Ocean Embassy and directing their political operations for them, are two bits of speculation that dolphin capture opponents have raised to this reporter but can't substantiate --- is an interesting question.

·        This brawl is not just about animal rights activists or environmentalists taking on a developer over a symbolic issue. Panama City's representantes are PRD, as is its Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, who opposes Ocean Embassy. So is San Carlos Mayor Víctor López, as are President Torrijos and most of his appointees on the Marine Corridor Board of Directors and other appointed bodies that will decide whether or not Ocean Embassy gets the permits it needs. What we are seeing is not a PRD steamroller, but a division within the ruling party that has implications in 2009 presidential politics.

·        Notice that IPAT tourism bureau director Ruben Blades, who holds cabinet rank, refuses comment and denies all knowledge of this controversy, even though IPAT is represented on the Marine Corridor Board of Directors and has so far cast its votes in favor of Ocean Embassy. It would seem that he senses a risk to his reputation not only as a political figure in Panama but also as an entertainer in the United States.

·        The tourism industry has for the most part yet to pronounce a stand on this controversy. The main exception is that those already engaged in dolphin tourism, the people who take paying customers out in boats to see the animals in the wild, tend to oppose Ocean Embassy. Dolphin capture foes are trying to convince Panamanians that permission to catch dolphins here will drive a certain sort of tourist away from Panama's important ecotourism niche. Fears of a tourist boycott may end up offsetting Ocean Embassy's promises of a big tourist influx to their proposed facility.

·        There may be something other than publishers' ideologies directing press coverage of this issue. It's obvious that any dolphin park in Panama would have to spend a lot of money for advertising, though less clear how much of it would be spent here. What we're seeing now is the one mainstream media corporation that's not aligned with the PRD or its coalition partner the Partido Popular --- EPASA, which publishes El Panama America and La Critica --- as the staunchest and most unquestioning supporter of Ocean Embassy. La Prensa and La Estrella are a bit closer to being even-handed in their coverage of the controversy.

·        By bringing a criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria) charge against the Fundacion Humanitas's Celma Moncada, Ocean Embassy has not only picked a fight with a prominent extended family of lawyers. Journalists here are united about very little, but a rare point of unity is strong opposition to the criminal defamation laws. By accusing Moncada Ocean Embassy has ensured that many of this country's reporters --- who do not necessarily share the opinions of their employers --- will look unfavorably upon their dolphin park proposal.

Stay tuned, even if you get the impression of a done deal. Whether or not Ocean Embassy is allowed the permits it needs to do what it wants, this argument is going to be with us for some time to come.

Ocean Embassy files criminal defamation charge against Fundacion Humanitas leader
Campaign tactics for dolphin park resemble previous Torrijos efforts

Not necessarily bored...

Torrijos law enforcement reforms encounter problems, still likely to pass
Panama News Briefs