Torrijos put to the test

There are certainly others to blame as well, but now several overt or surreptitious policies of the Torrijos administration have erupted in violence and threaten to take the country into a place that would be nightmarish for all. Everyone needs to step back, take a breath and think long and hard about the consequences that could come if everyone stays on the same course that they had been before.

In Colon on February 15, the provincial director of Reforma Agraria was shot in an assassination attempt, with first reports that it had to do with a land dispute. The politics of assassination are a horror without end. The politics of island and beach land grabbing, quite often with the implantation of forged or otherwise bogus documents into the public record with the connivance of officials at Reforma Agraria or other government offices, which has in some cases led to the eviction of people from lands that they own for the benefit of politically connected hoodlums, are also a horror.

The capture and punishment of this particular assailant and anyone who may have taken part in this crime with him is necessary, but it won't solve the problem that led to this violence. Nor, for that matter, will the government's call for more tolerance. Only the end of land grabbing and the corrupt participation of public officials in it can calm the situation.

Also in Colon, on February 12 police and members of the SUNTRACS construction union had an ordinary confrontation that began with the latter blocking the roads but escalated with the police not only firing with shotguns and pistols, but doing so at labor militants on one side of a four-lane road from positions on the opposite side, with people caught in a traffic jam separating the sides. Then both labor protesters and drivers who objected to being put in the middle of a shootout were roughed up.

It then got far worse when SUNTRACS members seeking medical attention showed up at the Policlinical Hugo Spadafora, and were attacked by motorcycle cops at that hospital's entrance. One of the officers shot an unarmed man who was seeking medical attention in the back, killing him.

Sending his police to attack a hospital entrance where people are seeking medical attention was a new low for President Torrijos, whose police chief justified the action and, having announced the result of a purported inquiry, said that the National Police would investigate the National Police conduct in the incident. Why the conflict of interest on the investigation? Because President Torrijos planned it that way, with his law enforcement reorganization that took the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) away from the prosecutors of the Public Ministry and put them under the control of the National Police.

The prosecutors filed homicide charges against the police sergeant who fired the fatal shot, but the National Police control the evidence room. What's more, the National Police are under the supervision of former Colonel Daniel Delgado Diamante, then part of General Noriega's general staff and now Minister of Government and Justice, and former Major Severino Mejía, then General Noriega's adjutant, now Vice Minister of Government and Justice.

So is Panama going over the brink into a period dominated by death squads and assassins, or will we avoid that? Certainly SUNTRACS and other Panamanians with grievances against the government need to review their tactics. Blocking the road over every grievance is a downright stupid tactic, if the truth is to be told, and political assassination is infinitely worse. However, the decision to plunge the country into violent convulsions or step back and settle problems in a more sane fashion is mainly for Martín Torrijos to make.

Hillary and Obama,
Florida and Michigan

By just about all indications, 2008 ought to be a year in which the US political paradigm realigns into a Democratic era. However, a lot of things could change between now and November and John McCain, as frightening and debilitating as his declaration of willingness to lead the country into a 100-year Iraq War might be, will still be a formidable opponent. Surely if the Democrats self-destruct he will be in a position to keep the White House in Republican hands.

The close race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is not really a factor that weakens the Democrats. The way that it ends very well could be. The supporters of the candidate who does not get the nomination must go on to November with an intellectual and emotional understanding that the nominee won the race fair and square.

That's why Florida and Michigan are potentially devastating problems. The politicians in those states decided to jump to the head of the line in violation of party rules, and the Democratic Party penalized them by declaring that their primaries would not count and their delegations would not be seated. Both Obama and Clinton agreed to that arrangement, but now Hillary, who was the only candidate on the ballot in Michigan and whose supporters ran the only campaign on the Democratic side in Florida wants to renege and take most of the delegates from those states.

It's easy enough to say "Nice try, Hillary," but were she to pull that off and win the nomination as a result there would be nothing nice to say about it. It would be the rough equivalent of the Vietnam War supporter Hubert Humphrey getting the 1968 Democratic nomination despite the massive victories of antiwar candidates in that year's primaries and caucuses. It would be a disaster for the Democratic Party and for American democracy.

Still, it's not right to exclude such large and important states as Florida and Michigan just because their political leaders behaved badly.

Sometime in early June, there should be fresh Democratic caucuses in Florida and Michigan and the results of those contests should determine the composition of delegations to be seated at the Denver convention. For flouting the rules, the penalties imposed should fall on those who created the problem in the first place --- Florida and Michigan should be stripped of their super delegates. The exclusion of those states' top Democratic elected and party officials, but not the voices of their rank-and-file Democrats, is the most fitting response.

With any luck, the race will be pretty much decided by June anyway and the adjustments made to correct an error would amount to a fair statement of principles that allows the party to go united into the general election campaign.

Bear in mind...

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

Rebecca West

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile.

Hunter S. Thompson

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word --- excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Pearl S. Buck