opinion

Rays of hope in the gloom
by Eric Jackson

So do the latest disturbances tell us that Panamanian society is torn down the middle, with ugly violent passions ruling the day?

Is that the lesson I drew from my brief detention at the San Carlos police station?

In mid-morning on February 15, having been told of riot police massing, I walked up to the highway to see if traffic was backed up, then took a peek at the police station to see if there were any lines of prisoners in hard hats. Seeing neither of those things, I did a little bit of grocery shopping and headed on foot through the town and down the hill to my mother's house.

Before I got where I was going I heard a couple of shots in the distance from the Vista Mar construction site, and suspected that the battle was on. Nevertheless, I had a bit of work to do on the computer. Then came a call that the police had indeed turned traffic away near Vista Mar. I finished the document upon which I was working and headed back up toward the Pan-American Highway. En route I noticed several paddy wagons, the backs empty but for some shields and other riot gear.

The traffic was moving on the highway but there was a line of prisoners, some wearing hard hats, and a crowd of cops at the police station.

Among the police, one was doing pushups. Was this a disciplinary measure for some minor offense? I began taking photos from the overpass, then descended and started taking pictures from outside the fence at the police station.

Some young cops in riot armor came dashing out and conducted me into the police station. A lieutenant demanded to see the photos in my camera and I told him it was none of his business. I was sent to a small room to talk to a major, who was in plain clothes. He wanted to see the photos in my camera and I insisted to him that it wasn't his business. He wanted to know for which medium I work and to see my cedula, and I told him the former and gave him the latter.

After having my name and ID number written down on a list, I was allowed to go, with a warning that I could only take pictures from the outside of the station. Which, of course, was what I had been doing in the first place.

Outside I met a lawyer friend looking for an arrested client, the sister of one of the SUNTRACS bustees, and a subcontractor at the Vista Mar project, looking to bail out his work crew.

So, should I despair about the coming maelstrom? I really don't see why.

Yes, things have gotten out of hand and are deteriorating. President Torrijos and the Norieguistas that he has put in charge of the now centralized law enforcement apparatus are exceptionally vicious these days. Imagine --- attacking a hospital entrance and shooting an injured man who was seeking medical attention in the back, and then the skinhead police chief defending that. This government is way beyond the pale.

Except that, despite Chief "Kojak" Mirones's declaration justifying the deadly hospital attack, the prosecutor promptly pressed homicide charges against the sergeant who did the shooting.

Except that, most of the leading opposition political figures, conservatives and no big friends of organized labor though they might be, said that Torrijos has gone too far in his vendetta against SUNTRACS. The president responded with a blistering and dogmatic charge of "opportunism."

Except that, the president was unable to unambiguously win control of his own party in the internal PRD elections, and is now engaged in all sorts of carrot and stick games in an attempt to control the votes of people elected on other party factions' slates.

The Torrijos administration is a lame duck. It's lashing out like a wounded animal predictably will, and its legions of retainers are desperately grabbing all they can while they still can.

But this is not the Panamanian people. Picking another fight with SUNTRACS may have been good for points in public opinion polls in the past, but it's no guarantee for an exhausted PRD administration's revival now.

Conversely, there is no sign that people are lining up to join the SUNTRACS revolution. Within the left itself there is a weariness of the street blockade as the preferred form of political action. Several cabbies have told me that although they deplore what the government is doing, they also hate the traffic jams and fear that their ability to earn a living will be set back by a broken windshield if they happen by one of these street brawls. Most people I meet just wish that both sides would cut it out.

What we hear are the gasps and wheezes of worn out political models. What we see are more and more exasperated people on the sidelines, ready to embrace something new and get past this annoyance.

Quick and positive changes taking place this year, or the voters' choice of a different direction in next year's elections, are hardly inevitable. There is, however, reason for hope. On the surface it appears that everything is rigged for more of the same, but below the surface forces are at work that could give us a very different picture this time next year.