editorial

Who needs Noriega when those in power act like Norieguistas?

It's the Minister of Government and Justice's job to throw foreigners who destroy our national archaeological treasures out of Panama. It's her job to expel foreigners who make death threats. It's her job to exclude foreign citizens convicted of embezzling from banks from this country.

And Olga Gólcher? In support of Gustavo de la Cruz, a Colombian who has come here and destroyed at least eight archaeological sites and made death threats, and also in support of that Colombian's French ex-lawyer's convicted bank embezzler business partner, Andre Beladina, she has not only taken a dive on her duty to exclude such elements from this country, she has sent in the National Police who are under her supervision to attack and kill union members on these criminals' behalf. Why would she do that? Because the Colombian who makes death threats and the French embezzler's partner happens to be one Héctor Alemán, a PRD legislator, her predecessor in her post and Martín Torrijos's 2004 presidential campaign manager. Because she's a Norieguista crook.

Gólcher's also supposed to throw foreigners who are convicted child molesters out of Panama. But Ronald H. Kelly, a Canadian ex-priest with a 10-count conviction of sexually molesting little boys on his record, is a special case. Hundreds of millions of dollars from the retirement fund of Canada's United Food and Commercial Workers union disappeared in Kelly's possession, and in the eyes of Norieguista thugs like Olga Gólcher, massive misappropriation of working people's hard-earned assets washes away all the sins in the world. Thus Gólcher shirks her duty and lets Father Ron stay here.

So it shouldn't surprise anybody that Gólcher is the chief apologist for the stabbings and shootings and murder of union activists by the employees of a Brazilian company that served as the clearinghouse in a massive bribery and bid-rigging scandal that forced a president of Brazil out of office, that she would condone the robbery of a journalist by those same hoodlums, that she would blame the victims. Gólcher is, after all, a Norieguista thug, and moreover that company's spokesman won't forthrightly deny the persistent rumor that the president's cousin owns a piece of that company.

(And does THAT explain why Odebrecht got the Cinta Costera contract even though it lost the bidding against other experienced and well-qualified competitors? Does THAT explain why the government has ignored a court-ordered receivership and allowed the insolvent PYCSA to transfer its greatest asset to Odebrecht, in flagrant disregard of the law and as a big-time fraud against PYCSA's creditors?)

Who needs Noriega back? We have a Norieguista administration that's now killing people. Just because the lazy US corporate mainstream media would rather rely on Panamanian government press releases than seek and publish the truth, and lazy US politicians with other agendas would rather look the other way, does not change the reality of what's going on here.

Let's just hope that this generation of Panamanians doesn't repeat the mistake of expecting the Americans to solve this most difficult of problems for us.

...and speaking of Noriega...

The former dictator's lawyer, one Julio Berrios Herrera, has taken charge of renovating a house in an upscale part of the Panama City corregimiento of San Francisco that once belonged to General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Theoretically, it was expropriated by the government soon after the dictator was overthrown in the 1989 US invasion.

Ah, but after the expropriation procedures, the house was put into the hands of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Surprise, surprise! Today's Minister of Economy and Finance, Héctor Alexander, was Noriega's Minister of Planning and Economic Policy.

Oh, yes, President Torrijos and the National Assembly are doing their bit, too. The legislature, whose Government and Justice Committee is headed by Jerry Wilson, a Noriega Supreme Court magistrate who 18 years ago "acquitted" the dictator of the charges for which he was later convicted and imprisoned in the USA, passed a law saying that if Noriega comes back, he will serve his pending sentences for murder and other serious crimes under house arrest. President Torrijos signed that law.

What does this tell us about the ways in which the current administration is thinking? It's not that Noriega is ever going to come back to a position of power and influence. However, among the many things that it suggests is that the ruling party is no longer embarrassed by its Norieguista past, that it no longer cares how it looks to the rest of the world. In turn, that probably means that its US lobbyists have told the Torrijos administration one of two things: either that the US House of Representatives will pass the free trade agreement no matter what ugly things the Panamanian government may do in the weeks preceding the September vote, or that that treaty is a lost cause so it really doesn't matter if the people in power come across like a bunch of thugs in the halls of Congress.

Bear in mind…

Literature is huge --- they can't fit her even into the Library of Congress, because she keeps not talking English.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.

Cicero

Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

Mary Tyler Moore