news

Battle for control over
the PRD underway
by Eric Jackson

The last day to sign up to become a member of the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and participate in its internal elections was this past October 20. The last day to sign up to run for PRD convention delegate was December 10. The PRD deputy mayor of Colon, Mercedes Lan de Aciego, signed up by the deadlines --- and then found out that her name has been purged from the Electoral Tribunal's list of party members. A number of other party members in Colon found similarly.

(How might that happen? The Electoral Tribunal has for various reasons, mainly for not having voted in recent elections or for being registered in the wrong place --- or apparently or allegedly so --- stricken more than 90,000 voters off the lists ahead of the 2009 elections. You should check that you are registered and re-establish your registration now rather than be disenfranchised by the Electoral Tribunal, two of whose three magistrates are PRD, on the first Sunday in May of 2009.)

Despite the problems in Colon, there are a lot of party members who are eligible to vote in the January 20 internal party elections. There are more than 500,000 members of the party that General Omar Torrijos founded --- about one-quarter of the Panamanian electorate --- and more than 15,000 of these have filed to run for one of the precinct delegate posts or for leadership of the party organization at the corregimiento level.

The party hasn't posted the names of the candidates, but it has filed them with the Electoral Tribunal. That's because, in an unprecedented ruling, the tribunal has ruled that candidates for internal party elections are immune from investigation or prosecution for criminal activities.

How intensive is the scramble? There are multiple candidates for almost all posts, generally organized into slates. One reason why the National Assembly gave President Torrijos the power to legislate by decree over the next couple of months is that the legislators will be busy with the party elections, campaigning for their slates. It's mostly out of public view, but for the legislators, many of whom will not be around after the 2009 elections, it's a preview of the primary election struggles that lay ahead.

On January 20 the party elects its delegates and corregimiento leaders, then the party will hold its national convention, which the January 20 winners will elect the party's national executive committee (CEN), honor tribunal and officers, on March 2. There are myriad factions backing various candidates for national party leadership posts, but the contest for the party presidency comes down to former President Ernesto "Toro" Pérez Balladares versus Housing Minister Balbina Herrera. President Martín Torrijos will face no significant opposition for party secretary-general.

The CEN will then make the arrangements for primaries by which the PRD's 2009 presidential and legislative candidates will be chosen. If Pérez Balladares supporters sweep the January 20 party elections and go on to dominate the party convention --- not likely, but possible --- then he will be the clear favorite in the presidential primary. Within the party, polls say that the most popular candidate is Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro. Toro trails badly and the man whom the president and first lady had been favoring, Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro, has virtually no support with the rank-and-file. The mayor and the vice president are first cousins, but that hasn't stopped the rivalry.

The mayor, who's married with children, has suffered little damage from a whispering campaign accusing him of homosexuality. Lately the point of attack, led in recent days by National Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) Ricardo Vargas, is about problems with garbage collection in the capital. After time-consuming wrangling with the PRD-dominated city council, new garbage trucks were ordered, and driven from Mexico into Panama, arriving just after New Year. There, at Paso Canoa, they were parked, and while they were sitting Vargas issued a missive blasting the city for poor garbage collection as a human rights violation, then complained when the municipal sanitation director, Abraham Goti, sent a sarcastic reply that purportedly insulted not only Vargas but also his legendarily obnoxious press flack Ibeth Vega. Navarro stood by his subordinate. Meanwhile the trucks? By one version, it was Customs causing the delay. By another, the mayor had neglected to provide gas for the trucks' drive from the border to the capital.

And what's a president with a nonstarter favored candidate for his successor and no love lost for Toro to do? He might accept the mayor as inevitable. He certainly won't go for the dark horse candidate, Laurentino "Nito" Cortizo, who quit as his Minister of Agricultural Development over differences about trade policy with the United States. But then one day in late December, on Via España in front of IFARHU, this reporter came across a crowd of children being treated to ice cream, all of them wearing red t-shirts proclaiming "¡Vivian Fernández de Torrijos, SÍ!

You never know.