editorial

A Panagringo perspective...

Calling all patriots,
here and there

What's a good way to lose one's freedom, the rule of law, even one's own country?

Many are the ways, but one of the classic means is to leave the defense of liberty, justice and homeland to condescending elite interest groups that have other priorities and politicians who are beholden to or afraid of those elitists.

Both Panama and the United States have in recent years seen their own distinct series of scandalous and ruinous political pathologies, one of the common elements of both being the cowardly acquiescence of those of the purported opposition. In neither country has this particular illness run its course.

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After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration embraced unprovoked "preventive war," torture, secret imprisonment without right of habeas corpus, various measures to spy upon and oppress those Americans whose opinions differ from the president's and measures for truth suppression and the dissemination of scurrilous disinformation. Too many Democrats in Congress, either because they were afraid or because they never really believed in either the US Constitution or international law, went along with it.

Despite the wishes of rank-and-file Democrats, Senators Feinstein and Schumer backed a nominee for attorney general who refused to characterize waterboarding --- repeated near-drowning, as was commonly used by the Spanish Inquisition --- as a form of torture and illegal practice. Still, had they possessed the will, the remaining Democratic senators who opposed Mr. Mukasey's nomination had the votes to filibuster his nomination to death. They cowered instead and now the United States has another pro-torture attorney general.

Despite the wishes of rank-and-file Democrats and indeed the huge majority of the American people, the Democratic congressional leadership has come up with an Iraq War "plan" that would leave many thousands of US troops in Iraq for many years after the 2008 elections.

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The great majority of Panamanians have long believed that it's essential to keep the Panama Canal technologically up-to-date and competitive in the world economy. Yet the great majority of eligible Panamanian voters either abstained or voted against the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the canal when the October 2006 referendum was held. That, despite an unprecedented and illegal expenditure of public funds for "yes" campaign propaganda.

The supposed "opposition," with but a few honorable exceptions, derided the "no" campaign as unrealistic or worse. The mainstream media were bribed not to question the Panama Canal Authority's absurdity that a canal expansion that will directly employ no more than 7,000 people at any one time will create 297,400 jobs through a multiplier effect of a scale unprecedented in human economic history. Few Panamanian news media, none of them in the corporate mainstream, dared to respond to the ACP's endlessly repeated and state-financed lie that Mr. Alemán Zubieta has improved canal safety --- what he really did was change the definition of "accident" from whenever a ship touches a wall or gate in the locks to the far less frequent incidents when an insurance claim is filed, then fraudulently compare statistics under the old definition and the new one as if they were the same thing.

Now we find that, with the precedent of massive public spending for one side of a political campaign having been established with the acceptance of virtually all opposition legislators, Martín Torrijos is spending tens of thousands of dollars a day on narcissistic and by and large false propaganda to promote himself and his party, Balbina Herrera is using public funds to run for mayor of Panama City and the disgraceful candidacy of the pro-impunity for human rights violations magistrate Graciela Dixon for a spot on the International Criminal Court was bankrolled by taxpayers' money. Freedom of belief and expression are being shoved aside by a government-financed system that tells Panamanians what to believe. Even if most people here are not satisfied with our public institutions the possibility of meaningful change becomes more remote in the face of the information control and distortion regime now in place.

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So, what to do?

In the USA, the expulsion of the Republicans from the White House in 2008 is necessary but insufficient. People who have up until now counted for nothing in comparison to the corporate lobbyists and political insiders need to take history into their own hands and force the Democratic nominee out of the grip of the illusion that the Iraq War can be continued, and out of an easy acceptance of torture and other forms of lawless tyranny. In the Democratic primary cycle the two consistently anti-war and anti-torture candidates are Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich. Even if neither of these candidates wins the nomination, it would still be good for the health of American democracy if the eventual nominee has to depend upon delegates committed to the two men who stand for complete withdrawal from Iraq to get the nomination, and upon the enthusiastic support of America's anti-war majority to win the White House. If 2008 will not be a year for the antiwar movement to play third party splinter politics in the general election, it will also not be a time for those who would force a prompt end to the Iraq War and compel a renewed embrace of international standards of decency to play timid "go with the presumptive winner and hope for the best" games in the primaries and caucuses. Anti-war voters should cast their primary and caucus ballots for anti-war candidates.

In Panama, people need to get more sophisticated about resisting a corrupt and incompetent political class. Protesters who only know how to block the street need to learn how to run an effective election campaign on a low budget. The banner of voting out all incumbent legislators needs to be unfurled again. People who dislike what the politicians do ought to boycott businesses associated with acts of corruption or crooked politicians. Those who oppose one facet of our political system's abusive behavior need to use their heads, put their hearts in the right place and support those who do battle against its other abuses. The true civil society --- women and men from all walks of life, not just the spokespeople of officially "respectable" organizations --- needs to create and strengthen alternative media for informing the public. The political bait-and-switch artists will offer us all manner of astroturf, but now is the time for Panamanians to embrace true grass-roots politics.