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Graciela Dixon. Photo by the Supreme Court

Brazil and Uruguay back her for International Criminal Court post, former diplomat joins her opponents

Dixon picks up new support, new opposition

by Eric Jackson

Outgoing Supreme Court magistrate Graciela Dixon, who is traveling the world in a campaign to fill one of three vacant seats on the International Criminal Court bench, is picking up new support and new opposition.

Her campaign has taken Dixon and a small entourage to Geneva, Cuba and New York. Their travel expenses are being picked up by the Panamanian government, in keeping with the notion of using public funds to advance private political ambitions that has now been enshrined as a regular part of our political system.

In the latter venue the PRD's growing apparatus to garner the absentee vote in the 2009 elections is throwing its support to Dixon, but because the United States is not only not a party to the Statute of Rome that created the court, but under the Bush administration has been actively attempting to destroy the institution by way of insisting on bilateral treaties to exempt torturers and other human rights violators of US nationality from its jurisdiction. Within New York's Panamanian community, which is largely of West Indian descent, her supporters' emphasis is on Dixon's Afro-Antillean roots and there are instances of the typical US-style suggestion that anyone who opposes her has ulterior (read "racist" in American political code) motives.

Those kind of "identity politics" don't play so strongly in Panama, but the solidarity of the political class and the legal profession have worked in Dixon's favor. However, those alliances are beginning to break up as the president's and his party's popularity decline and historic foes awake from their lethargy of recent years and go on the attack.

A case in point is Carlos Guevara Mann, who teaches international law and political science at the University of Panama and served as a diplomat in the Moscoso administration. Citing both international treaties negating statutes of limitation for human rights violations and Dixon's rulings in several cases that such rules bar investigations or prosecutions of disappearances during Panama's dictatorship, Guevara Mann in a La Prensa column called upon the representatives of the 120 countries that have ratified the Statute of Rome to reject Dixon. He called for a careful examination of the records of the five candidates for the three open seats on the court, "so that they can be filled by individuals who can testify to an authentic commitment to human rights."

Online, retired insurance executive Juan Manuel Handal, who runs the Carta de Panama email bulletin board, joined in with a statement that "her past and present make Graciela Dixon totally unacceptable to be a member of the ICC. In fact, her nomination can be construed as an effort directed at sabotaging that court's functions."

Dixon's rivals for the job, France's Bruno Cotte, Trinidad-Tobago's Jean Angela Permanand, Uganda's Daniel David Ntanda Nsereko and Japan's Fumiko Saiga, have not so far elicited vocal opposition to their possible appointments. Outside of Panama the opposition to Dixon is led by Argentina's Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, who are mothers and grandmothers of those disappeared by their country's dictatorship of the 70s and 80s. Dozens of human rights groups and leaders in several countries have joined in opposing Dixon.

However, it seems that Dixon will get the backing of most Latin American countries that are parties to the Statute of Rome. Her public endorsement by the governments of Brazil and Uruguay, both headed by people who were persecuted by their countries' dictatorships, is plugged by her supporters as  a major boost.

The vote to fill the court vacancies is expected to take place at the United Nations headquarters in New York sometime in late November or early December. Dixon's tenure as a member of Panama's Supreme Court ends on December 31.

Also in this section:

Environmentalists join forces against Petaquilla
Graciela Dixon picks up support, opposition

US-RP tensions going beyond Pedro Miguel González

Roadside campaigning in Chame - San Carlos
Panama News Briefs