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Volume
14, Number 10 |
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Also
in this section: Campaign
trends still fluid on both sides
by Eric Jackson At this point in the 2009 election campaign, with 11 months to go before the general electorate goes to the polls, we still don't know who the candidates will be. On the opposition side things are still particularly chaotic, and on the PRD side the conventional wisdom may not be all that wise. The PRD and its allies The big question is the presidential nominee, but pollsters and pundits have been saying for months that it will be a slam-dunk for former Housing Minister and party president Balbina Herrera. But in recent days we have seen a glimpse of how things may not work that way. Herrera had confidently told some of the few reporters to whom she will talk that the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) would hold its primaries on August 24. That information was duly published in the rabiblanco media. But it turned out that the party set its primary election date for September 7, and Herrera complained that the extra two weeks of campaigning discriminate against candidates with fewer resources. So what does this indicate? Actually, things that were already apparent. Despite polls that are taken among the public at large rather than just the PRD members who are eligible to vote in the primary, and which ask about a range of actual or potential presidential nominees rather than just the PRD hopefuls against one another --- polls in which Herrera appears to have a commanding lead --- the actual contest with Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro is far more competitive. People should have figured that one out in the PRD internal party elections, when Balbina fielded a slate that attempted to gain control of the National Executive Committee but ended up winning only two of the nine seats. Herrera probably does have an edge and is running a defensive campaign in which she has little to say about issues of substance and won't talk to independent journalists. (She maintains a bunch of reporters on a payroll, but it seems that in most cases editors and news directors know who they are and are limiting the amount of paid-for "coverage" that Herrera gets.) Her appeal is to long-time party members, and emphasizes her long history that started as a leader of General Omar Torrijos's student supporter apparatus. There are two problems with that. First, there has been a big influx of young voters and patronage seekers into the ranks of the PRD and the strategy of assuming the posture of a long-time, hard core Torrijista is not necessarily going to work with these people. Second, the PRD may have started out as a political patronage machine with substantial leftist influences, but that was decades ago and now it's a big business oriented party dedicated to privatization. Although it's true that the Torrijos administration is borrowing and spending substantial sums on expanding the public payroll in a bid to keep the PRD in power, it's also the case that a lot of long-time PRD members who had expected government jobs when the party won the 2004 elections didn't get them. A shortage of plums is always a problem for traditional machine politicians and it does seem that Herrera suffered from that malady as a member of the Torrijos cabinet and won't necessarily benefit from the recent upsurge in public spending. Meanwhile, Navarro has in his two terms as mayor had some patronage of his own to dispense, and as scion of the Tropigas fortune he has the funds to hire a lot of those disappointed members of the PRD's working class base as campaign workers --- which he has done. By the visible evidence of advertising, Navarro is spending substantially more than Herrera. At a glance, he also has more campaign workers on the streets than his opponent does. And if it is the case that he has to come from behind to win, not only does he have those extra two weeks of campaigning to do it, the primary scheduling matter has to be an annoying suggestion that Herrera's not such a big party favorite as she likes to portray herself. Add to that the sum of things gone wrong in the campaign season, which also accrues mostly to the mayor's favor. The latest problems for Herrera have struck in rural Chiriqui and the heart of the capital. In Tole, a largely indigenous district in eastern Chiriqui province, the primary for the PRD nomination for the legislature is getting rough and supporters of the rival candidates, Raúl Rodríguez and Orlando Barría, are destroying one another's signs. Barría's signs also happen to feature Balbina Herrera. Leave it to Balbina to admonish both camps, alleging that "what happens is that there are some candidates with double agendas and the mask comes off the moment they campaign." Well, of course she'd want to distance herself from Barría now --- he's accused of practicing law without a license and has taken recourse to his candidate's immunity to stay the criminal charges brought against him. It doesn't help that the biggest figures in the wave of financial scandals afflicting the Ministry of Education are Balbina's San Miguelito acolytes from way back, nor that she has had to rely on the PRD's control of the Electoral Tribunal to avoid legal consequences for her and her supporters' illegal use of public funds to promote her political fortunes. Navarro has his problems too, but under the Panamanian system of government in which municipal governments have relatively few powers or resources, can shift blame to agencies of the national government in most cases. The basic problem is that Panama City is increasingly chaotic, with sewage running in the streets, increasing traffic gridlock, a public perception of rising crime and a number of developments that by any objective measure are ill-advised and in many cases extremely annoying to neighbors. The sewage, of course, is the department of the national state-owned IDAAN water and sewer utility, the traffic problems lies pretty much on the desks of the national government's Ministry of Public Works and Transito Authority, and crime's mostly a matter for the National Police. The unpopular developments --- one of which recently brought Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez to a public hearing in El Cangrejo to register her opposition as a private citizen --- may now be under someone else's jurisdiction, but virtually all of these projects advanced with Balbina Herrera's blessing while she was Housing Minister. Beyond the PRD presidential primary, there are a couple of other noteworthy developments on the ruling coalition's side of the electoral process. First, in the Panama City mayoral race the great majority of voters in the capital have not formed an opinion, but among those who have Bobby Velásquez has by every measure jumped to the fore, leaving Noel Riande and other PRD hopefuls for the mayoral nomination in the dust. Second, the Partido Popular, which will be at high risk of losing its ballot status next year; and the Partido Liberal, which has legislators but no ballot status to lose, seem set to take what they are given by the PRD. Talks for a 2009 alliance are being handled on the PRD side by President Torrijos. Look for the PRD to leave some nominations vacant so that their allies' incumbents can run for re-election with PRD support, and so that the junior partners can try their luck in races that the PRD can't win. The opposition The July 6 Panameñista primary remains the key event, after which certain trends will set in for the chances of an opposition alliance or alliances. The three major presidential candidates, Juan Carlos Varela, Alberto Vallarino and Marco Ameglio, have agreed that since their party is the largest opposition force in terms of registered members it must lead any opposition alliance. This annoys all the other opposition parties. It appears that despite a bunch of last-minute entries into the race for the Panameñista presidential nomination, this is essentially a two-candidate race between Varela and Vallarino. The winner's personality will shape the possibilities for an opposition alliance. Cambio Democratico founder / leader / presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli is making his bid to be the man around whom the opposition coalesces. The Panameñistas, particularly Varela, are unimpressed, as is Vanguardia Moral leader Guillermo Endara. Suggestions floated in various mainstream media that MOLIRENA and the Union Patriotica were on the verge of forming an alliance with Martinelli elicited quick denials from those parties. In the crowded field of would-be opposition Panama City mayoral candidates, a Dichter & Neira poll had television show host and Panameñista hopeful Bosco Vallarino out front, but with several other candidates within the margin of error and the whole field still showing single digit support, if that. In the mayoral race alliances will be needed for any chance to beat the PRD, but the possibilities for those won't start opening up until after the Panameñistas and the Union Patriotica make their choices. Miguel Antonio Bernal, who appears to have the Vanguardia Moral mayoral nomination, is preparing to do a petition drive in October to get ballot status as an independent, which if successful would leave him on the ballot if the opposition parties agree on a unified candidacy other than his own. Also in
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2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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