The PRD plays the politics of food

The PRD and the politics of cheaper food
photos by Eric Jackson

It's a variation on a tested political tactic, or actually several.

Opposition legislator Sergio Galvez, after all, virtually never shows up at the National Assembly --- only, it seems, when they are passing out money --- but runs these cheap food fairs at which rice and other staples are sold at cost and this activity has garnered him enough support to get elected and re-elected. He does this, however, at his own expense.

Politicians handing out things nominally at government expense? Happens all the time and sometimes it's considered legitimate and sometimes it's an electoral crime. It appears that the difference is whether there is political discrimination --- handing out scholarships to supporters's kids only as Haydée Milanés de Lay allegedly did would be an offense, but handing out land titles or envelopes containing $35 to people who qualify without regard to partisan affiliations is an old way of presidential politicking at which some folks look askance but nobody files complaints with the Electoral Tribunal.

In order to retain power in 2009, the PRD is using public resources to address one of its weak points, the food issue, on two points. At the consumer level, it's holding cheaper food fairs like this one in San Carlos, whose PRD mayor provided the tent and the city workers.

At this fair they sold the government brand of rice, Compita, created via the Agricultural Marketing Institute (IMA) to keep the price of Panama's staple grain down.

But Compita, which farmers and especially rice processors had reason not to like when its bags were filled with imported grains, is being turned into something different. On May 26 President Torrijos announced that it would buy the entire rice crop from Panamanian farmers, with the aims being to lower prices for consumers by eliminating most of the middle merchants' costs and also to stimulate farmers to grow more rice. At the same time, Torrijos announced better terms on government loans to rice farmers.

Will it alleviate Panamanian farmers' opposition to a free trade agreement, which would have them competing with subsidized US imports? Or, more important from the domestic political perspective, will it diminish the protests of the poor, whose minimum wage increase was less than they had lost to inflation since the previous adjustment and whose standard of living has continued to lose ground to inflation at an accelerated pace? Those, rather than the paternalistic style of Panamanian politics, will be the issues on which the PRD passes or flunks the test.

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