Excessive police violence, then all the lies

A gang of hoodlums stupidly attempted a heist at an office where people pay their water bills, just a stone's throw from the headquarters of the Institutional Protection Service (SPI), which includes Panama's presidential guards and intelligence unit. Armed SPI agents rushed to surround the office, a shootout ensued, an architect who happened to be doing business at the utility office was taken hostage, and in a hail of bullets her captor was wounded and she was killed. The government quickly blamed the robbers for the killing.

Well, under some sort of felony murder rule, that blame may be properly placed --- the stick-up men committed a violent crime and somebody died in the predictable gunfire that ensued. But ballistics experts found that the bullet that killed the architect could not have come from any of the robbers' weapons. A SPI agent fired that shot. But which one? The death weapon has disappeared, that is, has been illegally withheld from prosecutors and their forensic specialists by the presidential guards.

The truth of the matter is that the SPI's reaction to a situation in which an innocent hostage's life was at stake was reckless, and the government's obstruction of justice afterwards is criminal.

When the police opened fire with shotguns on Kuna protesters and a photojournalist from La Prensa at the Bayano Bridge, they arrested 97 protesters and issued a press release saying that all the shooting was by the Kunas. But no weapon was recovered from the Kunas, no paraffin test indicated that any of those arrested had used a firearm, and a couple of days later a judge had to free the 97 detainees. The only published eyewitness accounts of the incident to which individuals have attached names say that the police did all the shooting.

There are similar police disinformation and cover-up campaigns with respect to the shooting deaths last August of two members of the militant SUNTRACS construction workers' union, one at the hands of police.

The Torrijos administration's propensity for uncalled-for violence and its tendency to lie about the particulars are steps on the road toward a police state. But what else would one expect, when the Minister of Government and Justice was a member of Manuel Antonio Noriega's high command and the vice minister was General Noriega's adjutant?

But Balbina Herrera is the Minister of Housing, and the ministry she heads (MIVI) held an outdoor public hearing on 12 Panama City rezoning requests at the height of rainy season. A number of these proposed rezonings were highly obnoxious and opposed by most of the neighbors who knew about them, but the time, place, format and excessive stacking of the public hearings were designed to reduce public discussion of the merits and demerits of each proposal.

The assembly and president already passed a law attempting a post-dated legalization of Balbina Herrera's flouting of laws requiring public hearings on important urban developments in the former Canal Zone --- a disgraceful bit of legislation that's being challenged in court as it should be. Now Balbina and MIVI are moving to set precedents that minimize the public input that's mandated under the new urban development law.

The bottom line? Less transparency, less public debate, more opportunity for corruption.

Balbina, a former legislator and former mayor of San Miguelito, wants to be elected mayor of Panama City in 2009 and she's riding pretty high in the polls. But the woman carries some heavy baggage.

There are some with long memories who would like to hold every PRD candidate personally responsible for every abuse during the long dictatorship and in the party's post-invasion history. It's a big party, and though it votes as a bloc in the legislature, it really does have different factions and different personalities to the extent that each candidate ought to be judged on his or her merits, party affiliation being just one of these.

But Balbina Herrera should properly have to answer for everything that MIVI has done under her leadership. The increased number of men sleeping on the streets is in large part her fault, as it's her policy that when MIVI tears down a slum or there's a fire, displaced single men are not eligible for housing assistance. Both as head of MIVI and as a member of the Cabinet Council, Balbina should answer for development projects that encroach into national parks, destroy historic sites, bulldoze precious wild areas, evict families who have lived on beaches or islands for generations to make way for developments marketed to foreigners, crash overburdened utility infrastructures and destroy the scenic views that have been one of Panama's principal attractions. As a mayoral candidate Balbina should also have to answer for everything that the cabinet sent to the legislature while she was a minister --- things like the failed proposal to legalize the first offense of domestic violence, the larcenous BANISTMO law that was passed and the ongoing attempt to privatize the nation's water resources. The responsibility for those things may be collective, but she was part of the group that sent them to the National Assembly.

The lame excuse for a public hearing on 12 rezonings in one outdoor meeting on a rainy night, however, strikes right at the heart of the issue of what kind of city our capital ought to be. Do we really want that style of municipal government?

How is a military drilled and trained to defend freedom, peace and happiness? This is what Major General O'Ryan has to say of an efficiently trained generation: 'The soldier must be so trained that he becomes a mere automoton; he must be so trained that it will destroy his initiative; he must be so trained that he is turned into a machine. The soldier must be forced into the military noose; he must be jacked up; he must be ruled by his superiors with pistol in hand.' This was not said by a Prussian Junker; not by a German barbarian --- but by an American major general. And he is right. You cannot conduct war with equals; you cannot have militarism with free born men; you must have slaves, automotons, machines, obedient disciplined creatures, who will move, act, shoot and kill at the command of their superiors. That is preparedness, and nothing else.

editorial