editorial

SMN corruption is but one more sign of a lost War on Drugs

Why isn't anyone with any brains pointing a partisan finger at the PRD and the Torrijos administration over the fall of Ricky Traad, the guy who raised campaign funds for the PRD and went on to style himself as the "rear admiral" in charge of Panama's coast guard, the National Maritime Service?

It would be a wonderful opportunity for the opposition to bash those in power, except that Traad et al were arrested under the auspices of the Torrijos administration and except that this sort of corruption has affected successive governments and all of the major political parties.

So why doesn't anyone in the political class point out that this is yet another sign that the War on Drugs is a failed public policy?

Actually, there are a few voices saying that but most politicians refuse to acknowledge the obvious in part because the United States is pushing the War on Drugs and at one time went so far as to invade Panama using drug trafficking as a pretext.

But you know what? As an anti-drug measure the 1989 US invasion failed.

Is it realistic for Panama to call it quits on a decades-long attempt to fight drug addiction by reliance upon the criminal law? That's a foreign policy question. As a matter of domestic policy we would go a long way toward solving a lot of our problems were we to seek our own way on the drug issue, and to so intelligently might also address much of the foreign policy problem.

It might be better, with respect to drug or any other type of smuggling, to dispense with Panamanian citizens' constitutional immunity from extradition and adopt a policy that anyone who uses our territory to smuggle things or people in violation of the laws of another country is liable to be turned over to the authorities of the offended country. It would be a wise policy to insist that, even if we decriminalize drugs here, we don't want investments of the money that foreign drug mafias have made because we don't want a gangster business culture in Panama.

Without stripping away the presumption that the accused are innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a fair trial, let us understand what this latest sensational drug bust symbolizes. Once again we are shown that the huge amounts of money involved in the profits of an illegal business that thrives on an insatiable popular demand end up corrupting the very institutions that must not be corrupt if we are to have the rule of law.

To recognize the failure of the War on Drugs is not the same thing as denying that cocaine addiction is a serious public health problem, any more than admitting the failure of alcohol prohibition in the United States was an endorsement of alcoholism. We can admit that the unhealthy legal vices of alcohol and tobacco use are legitimate public policy issues without embracing impractical bans, and we ought to be able to do so with respect to marijuana and other currently prohibited substances.

We know what doesn't work. It's time to try something more sophisticated.

No tears for RCTV, but new ideas about media freedom are needed

The Panama News is for not only letting Cuba's 25 imprisoned journalists out from behind bars, but also for letting them and others work in Cuba as free and independent journalists. We're against gag laws here in Panama, in countries with left-wing governments like Chile and Ecuador, and in countries with right-wing governments as well. We believe that freedom of the press is an individual right that anyone may choose to exercise. Even if it's most often exercised through large organizations it belongs to the people and should not be abridged by any government registry, university journalism department, jealous professional organization, political party, wealthy media baron or state broadcast monopoly.

Such abridgments happen all the time in all sorts of societies, with all manner of excuses proffered.

In the peculiar case of television there are some technical reasons why the number of signals has been so limited, but these are mostly anachronistic and are likely to become even more specious as technology advances. True, there aren't a lot of VHF spaces to go around. True, it costs a lot of money to run a TV network. However, with cable, the Internet, UHF and no valid technological argument to oppose public access there should be a multiplication, not a consolidation, of the number and ownership of television signals worldwide.

When the subject is RCTV and its license, let's summarily cut through all arguments about limited TV bands. In this context it's a contrived issue. The heart of the matter here is treason, a harsh word that we use advisedly.

In April of 2002 the management of RCTV was a party to a US-backed scheme in which a march on the president's house in Caracas was promoted by television and other means; thugs aligned with the organizers of that march opened fire on those who were purportedly their own people; RCTV and a cabal of military officers, business leaders and right-wing politicians lied about what they had done and blamed President Hugo Chávez; and these same people abducted the president and purported to take over the government, setting off a brief wave of bloody repression in which dozens of people were killed and pro-Chávez media were physically attacked.

RCTV is a party to mass murder, an attempt to oust a democratically elected government and the closure of the rival public television network. In most countries the company's managers would be behind bars for that. Were Venezuela the repressive dictatorship that its opponents allege, RCTV would have lost control of its broadcast frequencies five years ago. However, RCTV was allowed to continue. It took advantage of the government's restraint to incite an oil strike and general business lockout aimed at toppling the government, and then to back a recall movement and other electoral attempts to oust Chávez.

The editorial stance that Chávez is a bad president whom the voters should reject was and is RCTV's right. The expectation that they'd get their broadcast license renewed after what they did in 2002, however, is unreasonable.

RCTV was for its own freedom and licentious behavior, but against anyone else's right to broadcast a different opinion and against the Venezuelan people's right to freely elect their leaders. That the managers of the corporate mainstream media throughout the Americas have sprung to RCTV's defense both says revealing things about the nature of these people and underlines what's at stake in other countries of the region.

But even if he was severely provoked, Chávez's decision to replace RCTV with yet another state-owned channel is unfortunate. It's a long-run setback for Venezuela and its Bolivarian Revolution even if the immediate result is an improvement in quality over the previous TV programming.

Over the course of the 20th century there were all sorts of socialist systems tried. The idea of exclusive state or ruling party control over the mass communications media is one of the more notably failed socialist experiments. The only reasons why the idea survives are the egos of politicians and the also noteworthy failures of the monopolistic and oligopolistic capitalist models of mass media control.

Venezuela might exercise a lighter editorial touch over the new network, as many democratic governments around the world have done with their public broadcasting. Still, it would have been better to devolve the former RCTV frequencies to something independent, whether that might be a cooperative of creative people, a private businesss corporation, a foundation dedicated to public access productions or whatever.

New technological possibilities give us the silver lining to this cloudy situation, and Chávez should not leave those consolations to his enemies at RCTV. You see, whatever he does with the channel over which RCTV lost its lease, he can create --- or better yet just stand back and allow others to create --- all manner of new options on cable, on satellite, online, on low-powered UHF and so on.

RCTV is thinking about those options. It's considering a move to Panama and a new life as a cable network.

There are international treaties that prohibit the broadcast of propaganda in one country that's overtly aimed at overthrowing or destabilizing the government of another country, and even if these have been flouted many times, Panama should abide by them. RCTV should never be allowed to do the things it did in April of 2002 from Panamanian soil.

However, if RCTV wants to come here and be a cable network in exile with a right-wing editorial stance in its news department and a bunch of programs that a lot of Venezuelans apparently like, that's something that this country ought to allow. To have a new international cable network operating out of Panama would be a positive step in our economic and technological development, even if its programs are largely obnoxious.

As we confront the possibility of RCTV moving here, Panama needs to face up to the realities of our own partisan-aligned, culturally deficient, socially irresponsible and too homogenous television scene.

One of the most offensive aspects of Panamanian TV is the careful exclusion of another Venezuelan video signal that would be popular here. The rabiblanco media barons have kept TeleSur off of our broadcasting frequencies and out of our cable selections. Especially if we let RCTV come here, that de facto ban ought to end.

The granting of positions to TeleSur and RCTV would naturally lead local voices now excluded from our television to insist that there should be no privileges given to Venezuelans that are not also the right of Panamanians. That, too, would be a healthy thing.

Bear in mind...

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

Dolly Parton

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Charles Mingus

Aging is not 'lost youth' but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Betty Friedan