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Volume
14, Number 2 |
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Outlines of Torrijos immigration plan emerging PRD holds internal elections British corporate infighting, Panamanian scandal or both? DIJ takes over from PTJ Obama supporter who represents González becomes an issue for some Panama News Briefs Panama
connections may affect
Obama, Clinton campaigns by Eric Jackson US presidential elections don't turn on issues related to Latin America. People have tried to make them do so, surprisingly often with some sort of Panama connection. Did Teddy Roosevelt get re-elected in 1904 because he "took Panama" the year before? He would have gotten back in anyway. Did Gerald Ford lose in 1976 because Ronald Reagan made a challenge to the Panama Canal Treaties a centerpiece of his losing but bruising primary campaign? Ford had far worse problems, starting with his blanket pardon of Richard Nixon. That infamous photo of George H.W. Bush sitting on the couch with one Manuel Antonio Noriega couldn't rescue Michael Dukakis. True, Wilbur Mills was run out of Congress in disgrace for getting drunk and doing something silly in the Potomac Tidal Basin with a stripper known as "The Argentine Firecracker," but he was never presidential material to begin with. This year a Panama connection with the dreaded "t-word" connection is starting to become a topic of newspaper and Internet discussion about the Barack Obama campaign, and from another angle Hillary Clinton may have a similar problem. Obama's controversial advisor US relations with Panama are strained because this country's National Assembly, in its infinite wisdom, chose one Pedro Miguel González as its president for the 2007 - 2008 term. A lot of Democrats in Congress were looking for a good excuse to oppose a US - Panama free trade agreement because rank-and-file members of their party overwhelmingly hate such deals even if the business interests that finance their campaigns insist upon them. The González selection was manna from heaven because the man's wanted by the FBI for terrorism. Back in July of 1992, on the eve of what was to be George H.W. Bush's triumphal visit here to celebrate his invasion and thus boost his re-election campaign, US Army Sergeant Zak Hernandez was killed in a drive-by shooting in Chilibre. Both Panamanian and US authorities charged González, the son of a PRD legislator and party leader, who went into hiding. Well after the PRD came back to power in the 1994 elections González turned himself in to Panamanian authorities, and was held in comfortable conditions until his 1997 trial, in which he was acquitted. Washington has never accepted that verdict. The usually cited outrages were pressures on the judge and prosecutor and a Panamanian jury system in which jurors are government employees who stand to lose their jobs for a "wrong" decision. The judge's decision to allow the defense to argue that whether or not González did it hundreds of innocent Panamanians were killed in the 1989 invasion and no American soldier ever had to answer before a court for any of that and thus it would be unfair to hold a Panamanian responsible for the death of a US Army sergeant was an aggravating factor to those used to the norms of US criminal procedures. There was, however, a difficult bit of testimony for those arguing for González's "obvious guilt." A ballistics expert from Scotland Yard testified that a Kalashnikov assault rifle recovered from a farm owned by González's sister could not be proven to be the murder weapon that prosecutors argued that it was. The FBI crime lab said that it definitely was, while Panama's PTJ crime lab said that it definitely wasn't. The FBI, PTJ and Scotland Yard all had their various evidence falsification scandals over the years and the judge let the defense bring up the FBI's dirty laundry before the jury. González got himself elected president of the PRD's youth group, then ousted a PRD legislator in a primary for the seat that represents the Veraguas towns of San Francisco and Santa Fe. He was elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2004, both times with a plurality against a divided opposition. When he was elected to head the National Assembly this past September, US - Panamanian bilateral relations took an immediate turn for the worse. Key Democrats in the House of Representatives told Ways and Means Committee chair Charles Rangel that they couldn't vote for a free trade deal with Panama so long as González presided over the assembly. Senator Max Baucus, who presides over the committee that would consider the treaty on the other side of the Capitol said that it wouldn't even be discussed. The possibility that González might be somehow grabbed and taken before a US court seemed no longer so remote, and if that ever comes to pass the charges against him carry a possible death penalty. So what's a controversial legislator who's also considered a fugitive from American justice to do? Why, hire a good American lawyer, of course. As in one Gregory Craig. He is the expensive Washington lawyer of choice in PRD circles, having previously represented former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares in his fruitless attempt to get his US visa back and the Panamanian government on other occasions. How good is Craig? Well, in his most celebrated defense he had a client who clearly lied under oath, albeit about a matter extraneous to the case at hand. He got the guy off. See, Craig was Bill Clinton's lawyer in the impeachment trial before the Senate. Craig also has foreign policy experience, as in having been the number three man in the US State Department. González hired Craig to try to get the US charges against himself dropped. So when he's not working as a lawyer, what does Gregory Craig do with his time? One of the things he does is volunteer his advice and support to Barack Obama's campaign. The González through Craig to Obama connection --- surely just one of many instances in which a lawyer for an alleged criminal is supporting one of the US presidential candidates --- is being noticed. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News --- which has endorsed Obama --- called on Craig to choose between representing González and working for Obama. The daily newspapers here in Panama picked up on the flap and we are beginning to see emails from conservative Zonians attacking Obama for his alleged terrorist connection to González. The Clinton problem with terrorism in Panama If an indirect connection with alleged terrorists is good sauce in which to cook a gander, then how about a goose? In November of 2000 Fidel Castro came to Panama for an Ibero-American summit and gave a speech at the University of Panama. A group of anti-Castro Cubans lead by Luis Posada Carriles, an escapee from a Venezuelan prison who faces a 30-year term for having blown up a Cuban civilian airliner out of the sky over Barbadian waters, killing all 73 persons aboard, had come into Panama with bomb making materials, intending to set off a powerful blast in the auditorium while Castro was speaking. They had enough plastic explosives to level much of the university's central campus. The explosion would not only have killed Fidel Castro and the people in the room, it would have killed people at the nearby Seguro Social hospital complex and those unlucky enough to be driving by the campus on the Transistmica at the wrong moment. The Posada Carriles gang was apprehended, bits of evidence went missing, the Christian Democrat Attorney General oversaw a sluggish prosecution and the most severe charges were dismissed. The anti-Castro activists were, however, convicted of endangering public safety and given prison terms. There began an intensive Miami-based lobbying campaign to get the men pardoned. A key player in this effort was one Simon Ferro. Ferro came to prominence in Panama because he was a close friend of Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham. Rodham was the 1994 Democratic candidate for the US Senate, who ended up losing badly to Republican Connie Mack III. Ferro was chair of the Florida Democratic Party when Rodham made his run and was rewarded with an appointment as US ambassador to Panama. He was legendarily inaccessible to reporters and not particularly popular with the American community here. When George W. Bush became president Cuban-American Democrats were the most endangered of species in the US State Department and Ferro went back to his law practice, which included some lobbying as well. On her way out of office Mireya Moscoso issued a list of pardons that included Posada Carriles and his co-defendants, a number of criminals ranging from the ordinary to the notorious, some people involved in doubtful cases and about 70 journalists, including this reporter, who had been charged with criminal defamation. Members of Mireya's inner circle whisked the anti-Castro activists out of the country, with all but Posada Carriles flying back to a heroes' welcome at Opa-Locka Airport. The group's leader went into hiding, later to turn up in the USA and fight a long and controversial battle with immigration authorities. Several former Moscoso administration officials are now facing various criminal charges for their roles in getting the fugitive Posada Carriles out of the country before various extradition claims could be heard. There have been persistent but unproven rumors ever since Mireya's August 2004 pardons that a substantial bribe was paid to obtain the Posada Carriles gang's inclusion on that list. However the feat was accomplished, the man in the middle of it was Simon Ferro. And Mireya? She was a guest of honor in the US Capitol when Florida's Republican Senator Mel Martinez was inaugurated in 2005, and even though the paper trail clearly indicates that during her five-year presidency she spent an average of more than $1,000 per day public funds to buy herself clothing and jewelry, Washington has refrained from canceling her visa for corruption. The Clintons' indirect terrorist connection by way of the clients whom a lawyer in their entourage represented is nothing that the Republicans are in a position to complain about, and because Florida's Democratic primary is not counted this year due to a defiance of scheduling rules and further because Ferro does not play anything near as prominent a role in the Clinton campaign as Craig does in Obama's, she doesn't need to worry very much about general election flack over this issue. Hillary's remote Panama terrorism link problem --- if it is a problem --- will be in the Democratic primaries, with those voters eager for change about many things, including what many of them consider undue Miami Cuban exile influence on US foreign policy. The trouble with lawyers The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution --- a part of the Bill of Rights --- provides that: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. In US law schools prospective lawyers are taught, and a large percentage of American attorneys believe, that it's an ethical duty of members of the legal profession to ensure that unpopular persons accused of infamous crimes get proper counsel for their defense. This notion is not universally accepted, and attacks on it include the incessant conservative criticism of the American Civil Liberties Union and a series of Bush administration "War on Terror" policies whose most outstanding symbols are Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Indeed, right-wing Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has declared the Bill of Rights "an afterthought." In the mind of much of the electorate, a lawyer who defends criminals is an accomplice, whose job is to get his or her client "off on a technicality." This is going to be a problem for the Democrats this year, because the party's standard bearer will be a lawyer. Barack Obama had possibly the greatest of all distinctions that a law student could have, serving as editor of the Harvard Law Review, going on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Hillary Clinton was in the bottom half of her class at Yale Law School, but went on to serve with congressional committees, become a prominent corporate lawyer and put in her share of public service with the Children's Defense Fund. John Edwards is a Harvard Law School graduate who became wealthy and famous representing clients who had been injured by medical malpractice or faulty products. All major presidential candidates of both parties receive substantial funding from lawyers and have members of the legal profession playing important roles in their campaigns. However, many American voters believe that their government is dysfunctional precisely because it employs too many lawyers. If it's not the unpopular client of some attorney in the candidate's entourage, count on some other opportunity for lawyer-bashing to be taken in the 2008 US presidential campaign.
Also in this section: Outlines of Torrijos immigration plan emergingPRD holds internal elections British corporate infighting, Panamanian scandal or both? DIJ takes over from PTJ Obama supporter who represents González becomes an issue for some Panama News Briefs
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©
2008 by Eric Jackson
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