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Predictable games are well underway
by Eric Jackson

This time five years ago, it was pretty clear that Mireya Moscoso was going to control her party's nominating process in order to choose her successor, and that despite token opposition that Martín Torrijos would be the PRD nominee. The eventual runner-up in 2004 was drafted by a party not his own after Mireya made her choice and it was clear that he wouldn't be well received.

This time, nothing is nearly that certain. The constitution has been amended to require presidential primaries, for the time being most of the parties are extending that mandate down the ticket, there's a dogfight to be the PRD standard bearer and the opposition is in increasing disarray and will be until at least after the Panameñistas hold their primary. Meanwhile, the media barons and the PRD-dominated electoral tribunal are grappling for such measure of control over the electoral result as can be had by controlling the polls.

The PRD race

According to independent opposition mayoral candidate, early appearances are that the voters are set to turn against the oligarchy next year and that would favor Balbina Herrera in her primary race against Juan Carlos Navarro. The one sort of credible published poll, the one that Dichter & Neira did for La Prensa, indicates Herrera jumping out to a big lead against Navarro.

However, Navarro belittles that survey, which asked the public at large (except on islands and in the comarcas) whom they favored among a list of candidates (real and theoretical) of all parties. If they asked PRD members only --- that is, those eligible to vote in the primary --- about just Herrera versus Navarro, the result wasn't published.

The conventional wisdom is that among the hardcore PRD base Herrera has the advantage, but Navarro is running hard against that perception. He's spending more than Balbina at this point, and not entirely on mass media. Many more rank-and-file PRD members who could use the work thought they were going to get jobs from the Torrijos administration than actually got them, and the mayor has been hiring a lot of these people to hit the streets and campaign for him, passing out leaflets and canvassing other potential primary voters face-to-face.

In an organizational sense the PRD is a rather traditional political patronage machine, but one that has embraced neo-liberal free trade policies that don't allow it to shower jobs and gifts on its followers as had been the case during its formative dictatorship years. The national government is loosening some of the constraints in this and next year's budgets, but a lot of expectations have already been crushed. Herrera, the consummate machine politician, is defending the Torrijos record, promising continuity for the current administration's programs and pleading bureaucratic obstruction for all of Martín's and her promises that haven't been kept.

Navarro is also promising continuity, but he has opposed Balbina and Martín on enough specific things that he has leeway to attack the close alliance that Herrera maintained throughout her tenure in charge of the Housing Ministry and must maintain to finance her presidential campaign.

Already under fire from Navarro and others for using public funds to promote her candidacy, Herrera need not worry about the Electoral Tribunal but does have to be concerned about how things look. Navarro has sniffed that he has the resources to pay for his own campaign, and now Herrera has announced that despite ordinary political practices, she will disclose his contributor list to the public. (Actually, she has asked the Electoral Tribunal to do so, which leaves her into a position to deflect criticism if they decide not to do so --- then there would be no disclosure that she could make by herself anyway, and she could again blame it on a bureaucracy, again without acknowledging that her party controls those apparatuses.) This argument can also be turned against Navarro, because a scion of the Tropigas fortune can afford to pay for a presidential campaign in a way that a woman who has grown affluent in public office but grew up in the slums can't.

Navarro has been running an issues-based campaign, promising a metro mass transit system, bridges to ease traffic problems in Rio Abajo and connect Colon's Costa Abajo with the rest of the country, to pay more attention to development in the central provinces, to get tough on illegal immigration from Colombia, to decentralize government and to "attack poverty head-on." Herrera has been speaking less about concrete issues and appealing to PRD members' sense of whom they can trust.

Opposition disarray increasing

The disunity and consternation on the anti-PRD side of the presidential race is expounded by Guillermo Endara, who complained at a press conference that the leaders of his Vanguardia Moral de La Patria, the Union Patriotica and MOLIRENA, after a series of meetings, reached an informal agreement about how to proceed toward a unified opposition. They decided to first meet in a public session with the Panameñista candidates, then with Cambio Democratico leader and presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli. But then Panameñista party leader and presidential hopeful Juan Carlos Varela blew off the invitation and demanded that the three other parties break their agreements and separately negotiate with him. Martinelli, for his part, said he'd only agree to a private meeting. Panameñista candidates Alberto Vallarino and Marco Ameglio said they'd accept the three parties' offer. Endara, who has already won his party's primary, then announced that "under no circumstance will I ever renounce my candidacy for the presidency of the republic or step down." He said, however, that his party would leave the door open for all the opposition parties that really want to see a "real and effective" opposition union.

MOLIRENA, for its part, announced that if the squabbling continues it will have to nominate its own candidates for president and other offices and fight the 2009 election campaign alone.

On the opposition side as well, polls have become important in the pretensions of would-be kingmakers. One of the two reputable polling firms that has worked Panama for years, CID/Gallup, has been fired by EPASA, which publishes El Panama America and La Critica. EPASA is owned by descendants of Harmodio Arias, who are related by marriage to Alberto Vallarino. When CID/Gallup came out with poll results that not only didn't show Alberto Vallarino taking the lead among all opposition candidates, but instead showed Juan Carlos Varela doing so, with Ricardo Martinelli not far behind, El Panama America declined to publish the survey and severed its long-standing business relationship with CID/Gallup.

But by any counting Vallarino is not far behind Varela and Ameglio is a distant third, and the tactics of the two Panameñista front runners are not only making for a bruising presidential primary, they're affecting the possibilities for opposition alliance negotiations.

That's because Varela and Vallarino are each fielding rival candidates for lower offices. For example, the former backs Telemetro song and dance man Bosco Vallarino and the latter supports party activist Luis Camacho for mayor of Panama City, with the Panameñista Action Movement (MAPA) faction and other party members backing independent Miguel Antonio Bernal, whom Endara and his Vanguardia Moral party endorse, for the job. With the Panameñistas announcing that all of their candidates will be chosen by primary, that's bound to create expectations that can get in the way of alliances at the legislative, mayoral and representante levels.

The conventional wisdom is that the Bosco Vallarino candidacy is Varela's sign of sectarian defiance to the rest of the opposition. To those who feel that it's aimed at them it's a de facto statement that Varela's more interested in his leadership of the Panameñista party and his party's leadership of the opposition than he is in offering a serious slate of candidates around which other parties can unite. If Bosco Vallarino wins the mayoral primary none of the other parties are likely to support him. However, if Luis Camacho, who has held elected office as Calidonia's representante --- wins his primary he would be taken seriously, even to the point of Endara and Vanguardia Moral dropping their support for Bernal to back him. If all opposition unity moves fall apart, however, then there are other candidates angling for the Union Patriotica and MOLIRENA mayoral nominations.

There are similar dynamics in legislative races, especially in the single-member circuits.

In short, everything is on hold until the Panameñistas vote in July, and in the aftermath of that there would either be a demand by Varela for the other opposition parties to drop their candidates and support his triumphant faction or some more even negotiations between a party that has rejected its president in a primary and the other opposition forces.

So whither the soul of the Panameñistas? Are they the party that arose out of a movement that copied the symbols and racism of the Ku Klux Klan and stripped all Panamanians of Asian, Middle Eastern or Afro-Antillean descent of their citizenship? Are they the party of women's suffrage, socialized medicine and suspicion of globalization on Washington's terms? That argument is being played out over whether the party should accept an invitation from the International Democratic Union, an alliance of many of the world's right-wing political parties, to join that organization. Varela is for it, Vallarino is maintaining his silence and Ameglio is just saying that it's "a delicate subject," but there are factions in the party that are railing against the idea and it has been decided that for now individual Panameñistas may participate as observers only at the group's meetings.

At the end of March the Union Patriotica's Billy Ford predicted a grand opposition alliance within a month's time. That's not happening, but it's still way too early to rule out the possibility. The deadline to forge alliances doesn't come until early next year.

Meanwhile it's ever more apparent that if the ticket is not led by Ricardo Martinelli, Cambio Democratico won't be part of any grand alliance. Martinelli, who has served in the cabinets of PRD and Arnulfista administrations, is running at the top or close to the top of the opposition presidential hopefuls depending on how the polls in question are conducted, and may figure that opposition voters will rally behind him if the opposition leaders can't unite behind someone else. It could happen.

Even if he's not destined to be elected president in 2009, a double-digit showing that he'd still have if half of his supporters went elsewhere would keep his party on the ballot and could give it the balance of power in a divided legislature. That kind of assurance would allow him the luxury of making alliances further down the ticket. The right combination of circumstances could even put him in the position of being the final piece in an all-but-grand alliance that leaves a Panameñista rump as the "third force" potential spoiler ticket.

And the polls?

The 2009 presidential race will be decided first by whether enough people are satisfied with the government we have, second by what sort of alliances if any the opposition parties can muster and in the end by a poll-driven polarization between the PRD nominee and the opposition candidate perceived to have the best chance of winning. Right now one of the two historically credible pollsters is off the scene, with the cancellation of EPASA's contract with CID/Gallup, and there are many reports (which are denied by the principals, less than convincingly) that La Prensa is on the verge of dumping Dichter & Neira because the latter company also polls Panama for other people and apparently not just with the rigged questions that La Prensa has been publishing of late. If that divorce comes to pass, the Latin American affiliates of both the Gallup and Harris organizations will be sidelined --- or so some media barons who hope to be kingmakers may hope.

So who would be the replacements? The Electoral Tribunal, two of whose three members are PRD, is moving to have a hand in that. Under a 2006 election law, pollsters now have to register with the tribunal, which has in turn issued regulations about the academic credentials it will require of anyone who cares to conduct a poll in Panama. Who certifies academic credentials in this country? Why, the PRD-controlled University of Panama, which has this reputation for bogus certifications. 

So if the end game in 2009 is to be poll-driven, one should not expect that this will automatically be an objective process. The partisan fly-by-nighters --- that is, those employed by one party in particular --- may have the field to themselves.

When it all settles down...

When all is said and done, one-third of Panamanians will support the PRD. How many more than that depends on its choices of candidates and how the public perceives the economy to be performing. At the moment there are signs of economic troubles, brought about by high inflation and hard times in the United States.

The PRD will not win a two-way race on its bedrock percentage of the vote, and probably won't even win a three-way race if as election day approaches people opine that the Torrijos administration is on the wrong economic track. Balbina Herrera and Juan Carlos Navarro each have their strengths, but being the continuity candidate may not necessarily be one of them.

With four or more opposition candidates in the field, however, the PRD ought to win. That's the lesson of 1994 to which the rank-and-file activists of all opposition parties are tending to point, regardless of their leaders' blind ambitions.