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Jackson, Revolutionary justice

An unintended lesson about the need for revolutionary justice

by Eric Jackson

Ah, the Democratic Revolutionary Party --- neither all that democratic nor all that revolutionary these days, just a political patronage machine that delivers primarily for a section of the very rich, like Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party did in the waning decades of its 70-year rule. But now the Torrijos administration, despite all of its excuses and denials, has made the case for revolutionary justice in Panama.

Revolutionary justice is not about a regime change in which those ousted are summarily lined up against a wall and shot, gulags for dissidents or other abuses that have occasionally been carried out in its name. Revolutionary justice is the setting aside of the rules, trappings, precedents, decisions, property rights, privileges and immunities, expectations and statutes of limitations of a corrupt old regime as part of a process that reaches back to right old wrongs.

Beach front land in Panama Oeste that can be bought for $100 per square meter is an unusual bargain these days. Land with no beach frontage along an access road a half-mile up from a beach is hard to find for less than $20 per square meter. On the private market you're not going to get swamp on a Panama Oeste beach for less than $10 per square meter.

And now we know that President Torrijos's uncle got a large chunk of beach front land on Punta Chame, a little less than half of it covered in mangrove swamp --- until he illegally destroyed that wetland --- from the government for eight-tenths of a penny per square meter. Government and Justice Minister Olga Gólcher got another piece of beach front land nearby from the government for $2 per square meter.

This, in the name of "Agrarian Reform." This, at long last, is the end product of the president's father's "revolutionary process."

Oh, no. It didn't start with Martín Torrijos. Mireya Moscoso and her family and friends and political entourage grabbed beach properties too. A number of people in the Pérez Balladares crowd came into possession of valuable assets, got silent pieces of the action in government contracts or were otherwise unduly enriched in the late 90s. The Hotel Miramar was an encroachment upon public property. Well-connected private parties have grabbed pieces of urban and rural parks and privatized public beaches with varying success for years.

So who owns what? Possession is nine points of the law and the sins of the father should not be held against the son and there's a statute of limitations and things have been settled by decisions of the courts and the passage of time ought to count for something and blah, blah, blah.

All well founded arguments, and all beside the point. There must and will come a time to settle accounts. Not the way that Colombian drug lords do, mind you. The days of reckoning should proceed with all due civility and decorum and process of law, but in flagrant disregard of the privileged ones' expectations, many of which are the products of their own self-interested actions.

Panama really does need to dispossess those who hold property derived from public corruption, including those who have come into possession of assets that their relatives stole from the Panamanian people. We need to trace and recover the millions that were stolen from the Social Security Fund during the dictatorship, the money that disappeared from the Van Dam bridge project, General Manuel Antonio Noriega's ill-gotten wealth, the proceeds from racketeering in immigration visas and so on. We need to evict a bunch of people from the beach front properties they illegitimately obtained through their familial or political ties to this or the previous administration.

None of this can be done under our current corrupt legal system. That's why Panama needs some revolutionary justice.

How can you have both the rule of law and revolutionary justice? The latter is something temporary that comes after a long period when the former has been perverted. If it's more than a transitional measure it's not really revolutionary.

An outstanding example of revolutionary justice was given by the Nuremberg Tribunals, which punished abuses that were not only legal but in many cases obligatory under the Nazi regime in Germany. An example of an abuse in the name of revolutionary justice is Cuba's ban on "counter-revolutionary propaganda," which, far from righting any historical injustice, is one of the laws used decades after the old order's fall to suppress all independent journalism on the island.

Looking back in US history, the non-recognition of the property claims of many British Empire Loyalists, the elimination of the inheritance law of primogeniture --- the exclusive right of the first-born son --- and the abolition of nobility and its privileges were some of the legal consequences of the American Revolution. This, rather than Robespierre's Reign of Terror, was the best late 18th century example of revolutionary justice.

Later, the dispossession without compensation of the most valuable assets of the southern planter class --- their slaves --- was the most important legal event of the American Civil War. President Lincoln's extra-constitutional military order known as the Emancipation Proclamation was a defiance of existing law that was only some years later ratified by constitutional amendment. It was an act of revolutionary justice, a turning of tables without regard to prior legal dispositions, that freed the slaves.

Panama needs a new constitution because the present order only works well for a small predatory caste. It's going to be a difficult enough struggle to get the reforms we need, one that will at the very least require a public decision to only elect presidential and legislative candidates who support a referendum on a new constitutional process that's unfettered by the deal that Mireya and Martín struck in 2004.

But before we settle into a regular new constitutional order in which the law says what it means, means what it says, commands general respect and plods along with due deliberation so that people can reasonably predict the consequences of various actions, Panama needs to have a revolution. I'm not talking about burning tires in the streets, or around the necks of lackeys of the old order. I'm talking about upsetting some very cynical expectations about the quiet enjoyment of ill-gotten wealth and the pseudo-legal principles upon which they are founded.

Landau, Reality check for Panama City real estate craze
Sirias, Ocean Embassy's meeting a stiff challenge
O'Barry, Of dolphins and decency
Weisbrot, Dragging the World Bank into the 21st Century
Lehmann, The European Union and MERCOSUR
Gutman, ¡Candido Amador Recinos, presente!
Sánchez, Venezuela's security and foreign policies
Wheeler, Morales makes a power play

Silié, Garifunas emerge from oblivion

Pilgrim, Gunman on campus

Bernal, Our rights at risk

Jackson, Revolutionary justice