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Volume
14, Number 12 |
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Also in
this section:  Panama's sweetheart? At one time
polls were showing Balbina Herrera as the most popular presidential
possibility by a wide margin. By all credible accounts things
are closer than that now that she's in a hotly contested PRD primary
contest.
From all the flags, posters, billboards and radio and TV ads, you'd think that the general election was next week instead of next year Like a tale told by an idiot? photos and story by Eric Jackson Full
of sound and fury and signifying nothing?
So it seems with all of the campaigns that appear to have no message whatsoever about any issue that affects the lives of the voters to whom they are directed. 'He or she has a photogenic smile, belongs to this or that party or faction thereof, is honest and hard working and a winner and your friend' is all that most of the candidates are saying, very loudly and many times. That, of course, is not entirely the case. Balbina Herrera, for one, made a recent swing through the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, and took a stand on President Torrijos's practice of campaign events where he passes out envelopes containing $35 to mothers who keep their children in school. She said that in her administration, there would be $70 in those envelopes. Balbina's principal primary challenger, Juan Carlos Navarro, has been talking about a whole range of issues, as has dark horse PRD hopeful Laurentino Cortizo. On the opposition side the presidential candidates have mostly been reacting to the news of the day with their issue-oriented comments, but none of these statements --- not even Marco Ameglio's plan for "real change" within the first few months of the administration he hopes to lead --- have grabbed nearly as much attention as the 'I'm the best candidate to throw the rascals out' motif. The campaign has made a lot of money for the ad agencies, billboard companies, printers and mainstream media, and the candidates are passing out all sorts of goodies, most often bags of food, baseball caps or t-shirts. In the giveaway department, Balbina has jumped into the lead by chartering a plane that took nearly 100 people to El Salvador to see Panama's soccer team humiliated and eliminated from the 2010 World Cup qualifications in the first round. About 20 of those on board were journalists, and while some politicians have grumbled from time to time about Balbina buying reporters and editors, the mainstream news organizations have generally maintained an editorial silence about this latest example of open corruption in the news media. But there you have it folks --- Balbina's showing you that it's not just male politicians who have a taste for whores.  From the Lipstick Jungle to City Hall? Among the principal beneficiaries and powers behind the thrones in today's Panamanian political scene are the ad agencies, into which the president of Panama and the mayor of Panama City are both married. So is Bobby Velasquez, the apparent front runner for the PRD mayoral nomination in Panama City, taking media slickness to another level, and are his image makers giving him good advice? There are some capital residents who wait with bated breath to see how the voters will respond to a male candidate who appears to wear pink lipstick. The main event of the moment is the July 6 Panameñista Party primary, for which millionaires Alberto Vallarino (banking, resorts, etc.), Juan Carlos Varela (Hermanos Varela liquors) and Marco Ameglio (Bonlac dairy products) are spending a bundle. Varela and Vallarino in particular are also publishing a lot of the propaganda for candidates for lower offices who have aligned themselves with their respective campaigns. Because name recognition is crucial the farther down the ticket a voter goes, the candidates for mayor, National Assembly deputy and representante of parties who are not having a primary at the moment perceive the need to get their names and faces out too, lest the Panameñistas steal a march on them. Thus the incredible multi-partisan clutter, more than 10 months before the May 2009 general election. There are, in the mix, a number of well-known names and faces from the legislature plastered along the major traffic arteries, with these candidates coming primarily from the PRD, which holds its primary in September. some of these candidates' posters and billboards align them with Balbina Herrera, and just a few with Juan Carlos Navarro. Given what the polls have been saying for a long time, there's a different dynamic on the incumbent side of the equation. Essentially the posters for legislators featuring the Balbina heart exist to impart the message from Balbina to primary voters that she is of the party's old guard, notable members of which are supporting her. The problem for those deputies, and maybe for Balbina, is that the general public hates the legislature and, as in 1989, 1994 and 2004, is probably set to oust the great majority of its incumbents. Starting with the Panameñista primary but likely with more emphasis when the PRD members vote, look for a number of incumbent legislators to get the boot. Since the last time around election laws have been changed such that those who lose in one party's primary can't run on another party's ticket, so primary defeats will be definitive.  Wait a minute! Take back Bella Vista? A PRD candidate for representante is saying that, when his party holds that city council seat? What's this weirdness all about? Ah --- Mr. Kosmas is challenging the incumbent, Virgilio Crespo. Hard to say about the PRD primary, but Crespo is in political trouble because many Bella Vista residents are annoyed with irresponsible development that has destroyed historic buildings, threatened parks, caused even worse traffic jams and spewed raw sewage onto the streets, and because the local representante has not been perceived as a force for more sensible development policies voters may well take out their discontent on him. 
The
Panama City mayoral race may get another wild card. Former Mayor Mayín
Correa, who came in third in a tight three-way 1999 race, behind Juan
Carlos Navarro and Miguel Antonio Bernal, has joined Ricardo
Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party and may run to get her old job
back.
Bernal is running and seems set to get the Vanguardia Moral nomination, but in October he will begin a petition drive to get on the ballot as an independent. It does appear that the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal has rigged the petitioning rules to make it well nigh impossible for independent candidates to get on the ballot, but the process of gathering signatures is a good way to build and perfect a campaign organization, gather a list of independent supporters and put the Torrijos administration's election-rigging tactics front and center in the national debate. Also, if Bernal qualifies for the ballot and Vanguardia Moral decides to discard his candidacy in favor of a negotiated unit slate with one or more other opposition parties, he's still on the ballot. (PRD election rigging tactics? Well, the government is spending a ton of money on ads telling voters what wonderful things the current --- PRD --- administration is doing. President Torrijos seems to be unavailable for the most part, traveling abroad to hobnob with oil sheikhs, discredited foreign politicians, diplomats and just about anyone except a reporter who knows about Panama and might ask him a tough question. When Torrijos does show his face in public in this country, however, it's generally to hurl insults at the opposition. Meanwhile more than 90,000 voters have been eliminated from the poll lists, and not all of them because they have died or left the country. Meanwhile all manner of legal sophistries are being bandied about by electoral prosecutors to "legalize" the use of public funds for PRD campaigns. Meanwhile the Electoral Tribunal has issued Rube Goldberg-style rules for petitioning to get independent candidates on the ballot. Meanwhile most of the mainstream media are aligned with or dependent upon the PRD. Everything is in place for another election fraud like the one in 1984 when Noriega's boys --- many of whom now serve in the Torrijos administration --- stole the election from Arnulfo Arias and gave the presidency to Nicolas Ardito Barletta, at least until Noriega got tired of Fraudito a few years later.)  "Only the people save the people." Indeed. Leftist labor leader Priscilla Vásquez is taking the difficult road of running for the National Assembly as an independent. FRENADESO, the labor / left umbrella group, is mounting an election boycott, arguing that the system is rigged and that people shouldn't take part in electoral politics unless and until there is a new constitution that takes away the current regime's advantages. But this stand has split the left. The problem is compounded by a further split among leftists who reject FRENADESO's position on electoral politics. The Partido Alternativa Popular (PAP), headed by former University of Panama professors' union leader Olmedo Beluche, is signing up members in order to gain ballot status, but they're reporting new members in the low hundreds as the yield for the petitioning weekends, when they need to be signing up members in the high thousands to gather the more than 60,000 adherents needed to qualify for ballot status. Once signed up as a member of PAP, a person can neither run as nor sign a petition for an independent candidate. Meanwhile Priscilla Vásquez, a clinical psychologist who leads one of the unions representing Seguro Social workers, heads the small Panamanian Workers Party (PTP), which takes similar stands on most issues to those taken by PAP and FRENADESO but advocates participation in electoral politics and has decided that running independent candidates is the way to go for this election cycle, given the legal and political realities. Vásquez herself is running for the legislature, and although the arcane rules of proportional representation in Panama City's multi-member assembly circuits work to the disadvantage of independents, if she can get on the ballot there is a good chance that public disenchantment with the entire political class would give her the protest votes she'd need to be elected. 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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