opinion

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SPI: harbinger of disgrace

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The images of the cowardly and savage beatings of defenseless sick people by members of the SPI presidential guards have given us one more irrefutable example of this administration's unacceptable violation of the Panamanian people's dignity.

For those who believed, naively or sincerely, that the present administration had "turned the page" or that they don't nurture in their minds and actions an insatiable desire for repression, subjugation and violence in order to continue their unstoppable corruption, nothing else is needed to begin to see what's really coming next in their plans: remilitarization for the "legitimate" establishment of a crude police state.

For those who believed and tried to make believe that the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) was created "to protect human dignity, respecting and defending human rights," the acts they committed outside the presidential palace itself, recorded on the cameras of Telemetro Channel 13, speak more than 1000 words.

For those who, in their daily demagoguery, tell us about how "we live in Panama under the rule of law" and pretend that the SPI were not allowed "to carry out any abusive, arbitrary or discriminatory practice that entails physical violence," the cowardly attack disqualifies them from continuing their deceptions.

For those who pilfer hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars in their disgraceful government publicity and sell the idea that the SPI "is prohibited from inflicting, instigating or tolerating acts of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," you'd better understand what's wrong with these actions and those of the more than 1000 SPI, members of today's version of yesterday's dobermans. After all we've put up with during the 21 years of the Torrijos - Noriega dictatorship, the US invasion and these 17 years of permanent government abuses against our liberties, we shouldn't be allowed to forget the teaching of Lao Tzu: "The army is the harbinger of disgrace, not virtue. When it is necessary to resort to the army, its use should be very limited, as even in its moments of glory and triumph its influence is disastrous. Those who admire military force are those who accept crime, and he who accepts the principle of crime is beneath human morality."

However, the reaction of those responsible officials at the presidential and ministerial level are beneath human morality and that obliges us to pay more attention so as not to allow what they did to wallow in the sea of impunity. In effect, the president's flight abroad and the rosary of falsehoods by the minister of the presidency --- who is immediately responsible for the SPI's actions --- only presage more disgraces for Panamanian society in the field of human rights and in the defense of the dignity of the inhabitants of our country.

Alexis de Tocqueville knew to alert us early on that democracy without active citizens and left to professional politicians will end up producing "a flock of timid and industrious animals." His compatriot Victor Hugo always emphasized: "Between the government that does evil and the people who consent, there is a shameful solidarity."

Decked out in the garb of false legality, the harbingers of disgraces and their militarist instruments will not refrain from repression against protests or criticism from the unemployed, the hungry, the frustrated, the deceived. Their Integral Security Plan is underway and it will not be stopped, at least not unless we Panamanians fight for democratic liberties and human rights, and keep them from erasing from our hearts and our memories the truths that "no tiger becomes a vegetarian" and that "the monkey, although it may be dressed in silk, is still a monkey."

Jackson, Frankensteen's monsters
Bernal, Beating the truth into our heads
Silkwood, Condi Rice and Latin America
Gangadharan & Nagy, Ecuador's foreign policy
Racheotes, Open the US gates to immigrants
Araujo, Central America's gangs
Gutman, Eric Volz and Nicaraguan injustice
Garraway, The criminal threat to tourism

Pilgrim, The Caribbean garbage problem

Sirias, In this corner...