editorial

Martinelli's attack ads

Ricardo Martinelli, the presidential candidate of the Cambio Democratico and Union Patriotica parties, is trying to become the undisputed leading opponent to the PRD's Balbina Herrera by launching a series of attack ads against the other major opposition presidential candidate, Panameñista Juan Carlos Varela. Some of the ads accuse Varela of putting his own interests ahead of the country's by opposing the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the Panama canal when it was submitted to the voters in 2006.

Fine --- let the debate begin as Martinelli started it. But let's not restrict it to the simplistic and partial terms in which Martinelli started it. Let's pursue all of the important threads of the issues he has opened.

Let's see --- putting personal interests ahead of the country's? As to the canal expansion, Martinelli has failed to specify what those interests of Varela's were. We do know, however, that Martinelli is in the cement business and thus he had a personal interest in the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan.

Generically --- putting personal interests ahead of the country's? Should we now talk about how, when he was a minister serving in the Moscoso administration, a government post office was installed at one of his Super 99 supermarkets?

And what about the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan, the way it was sold to the Panamanian people, how many Panamanians actually bought it, and how it's going? Moreover, what about Martinelli's performance as Minister of Canal Affairs in the Moscoso administration? These questions would go to the heart of Martinelli's qualifications to be president.

Let us note some things that have already become apparent rather than merely predictable about the financing of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan to expand the canal:

• The government propaganda told us that the project would be “self financed,” but now we know that the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) intends to borrow money to finance it;

• The financial projection for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan depended on US imports from China growing at the same rate they did between 2000 and 2005 through 2025. But these imports are not growing, they are shrinking, and nobody outside the ACP is predicting a return to the rate of growth in US imports from China that we saw in the first five years of this century;

• The financial projection for the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan depended on no competition for the canal along Arctic routes until 2050, and the ACP and in one of the uglier campaign ploys the government and ACP pressured a prominent University of Panama professor who projected a much quicker thaw to retract that predictions. But the North Pole is warming faster than anyone predicted, such that this year, for the first time in recorded history, it became possible to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean. The Northwest and Northeast Passages will open up as commercial shipping routes for part of every year before the canal expansion is done; and

• During the referendum campaign the ACP told us that the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan would create 297,400 jobs and now they will not admit to this figure, or even to Fraudito Barletta's 240,000 jobs prediction which they bandied about in the foreign press and for which Barletta was rewarded with a million-dollar ACP publicity contract for an ad agency owned by his family.

Martinelli is running for president in part as this shrewd businessman who would be able to capably manage the nation's finances, but what about these economic incongruities in the plan for which he attacks Varela's patriotism for not supporting?

Let us also recall that despite a massive publicity campaign paid for with public funds --- one that despite the Electoral Tribunal's Yolanda in Wonderland rulings had nothing at all to do with public education about the details of the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan --- only one-third of the Panamanian electorate voted for the proposal, with about 10 percent of the voters casting “no” ballots and a large majority abstaining. The “yes” vote hardly went beyond the PRD hard core, so is Martinelli now impugning the patriotism and integrity of everyone other than the PRD and himself? That would be a weird way to rally opposition voters to his candidacy.

And what about Martinelli's tenure as Minister of Canal Affairs? Now that he's brought the canal front and center in his campaign, there are some other issues that ought to be addressed in the campaign:

• The lack of transparency in the ACP, as demonstrated in the information disclosure regulations that he promulgated as Canal Affairs Minister to replace the old US Freedom of Information Act that had guided the old US administration;

• The lack of transparency in the ACP, as demonstrated by its refusal to translate key studies supporting (or only allegedly supporting) the Torrijos - Alemán Zubieta Plan into Spanish, given that many of these studies were done when Martinelli was Canal Affairs Minister and he was the one who did not insist that they come in Spanish versions so as to be intelligible to the majority of Panamanians;

• The lack of transparency in the ACP, as demonstrated by the creation and promulgation during Martinelli's tenure as Minister of Canal Affairs of this myth about a sudden and dramatic improvement in canal safety, which was done by changing the definition of “accident” from whenever a ship touches a wall or a gate in the locks, another ship or the floor of a lake, sea or channel in canal waters, to only those incidents in which an insurance claim is filed, and then comparing statistics compiled using the old definition with those compiled using the new definition and misrepresenting them as if they were the same things;

• The abolition of the canal's apprenticeship program as one of the very first things that Martinelli did as Minister of Canal Affairs, and which doesn't appear to fit in with his current campaign theme of providing good jobs to young Panamanians; and

• The scrapping of the canal's multilingual print shop, rather than its continuation or its transfer to the City of Knowledge or some other institution to become part of the international academic publishing house that Panama lacks and that this important national asset could have become.

Martinelli may well have good answers to each of these questions to which he has opened the door by way of his attack ads. Let's hear them. Let's have a real debate about real issues in this presidential campaign, and, although the brief attack ads have their place, let's have a debate that goes much deeper than sloganeering.

Let's also be clear that while Martinelli's ads have been the occasion for this editorial, this is not an endorsement for one of his opponents or a non-endorsement or anti-endorsement of his candidacy. All of the presidential candidates need to show greater respect for the voters' intelligence. Right now that need is most acute for the opposition, as we are in that phase of the 2009 presidential race in which de facto leadership of the anti-PRD parties will be won and lost.

One Bolivia

Do any of you readers know what happened when a number of US states decided to secede from the United States of America? Probably all of you do --- what ensued was at the time one of the bloodiest wars in history, the American Civil War in which more than 600,000 people were killed, slavery was ended and the powers of the federal government were confirmed.

Leave it to a US president who beat John McCain in the decisive 2000 South Carolina primary by having his minions suggest that McCain was insufficiently respectful of the Confederate flag to support secessionism in another country. But Bolivia is one country and it's the overwhelming consensus in Latin America that the old white power structure centered in Santa Cruz should not be allowed to break off the lowland provinces that have the gas and oil now that the country's overwhelming indigenous majority has elected one of their own, Evo Morales, as president and is about to pass a new constitution that those who used to run the country don't like.

One of the unfortunate things about US politics is that the “Washington Consensus” on Latin American economic policies has ever less support in Latin America and in many countries the supporters are confined to relatively tiny white oligarchies. That there are so many congressional Democrats who still cling to the “Washington Consensus” policies in the wake of Latin America's political “Pink Tide” and the failures of the World Trade Organization's Doha Round of negotiations and efforts to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas is both sad and ironic. Democrats shouldn't be aligning themselves with “white power” militants, either in the United States or in Bolivia.

Was the Bush administration interfering in Bolivian politics as Evo Morales charges? All of the evidence is not on the table, but the known indications are that it was. We don't know which Bolivian political groups the US government was funding because the White House has blocked access to this information. We do know that the Bush administration asked Peace Corps volunteers and at least one Fulbright scholar to engage in improper activities in Bolivia, and that US diplomats frequently met with secessionist leaders from the Bolivian lowland provinces. Under those circumstances the expulsion of the US ambassador might have been a politically risky move, but it was well within diplomatic norms.

Will the United States now intervene to support the division of Bolivia? That would be a huge disaster, with political, economic and military dimensions. The consequences of doing such a thing can't be accurately foreseen in all their details, but they would surely include a Latin America increasingly alienated from the United States. The Democrats in the US Congress should be united and emphatic about withholding their support from such a foolish adventure.

Bear in mind...

Also in this section:
Editorial, Martinelli's attack ads and One Bolivia
Watt, John Carlson
Bernal, The Heliodoro Portugal case
Sirias, The magic of Antigua, Guatemala
McCain, Spain's in Latin America
Obama, Lipstick on a pig
Baker, Time to reform Wall Street
Center for Economic & Policy Research, Disclose which Bolivian groups Washington funds
Birns & Rivero, Bolivia and the profound US - Latin American communication breakdown
Tharin, Behind the violence in Bolivia
Liu, China's and Taiwan's checkbook diplomacy in Latin America
Sánchez, Latin America's space race
Phillips, US elites look the other way from global hunger
Toledano, Puerto Rico as another lone star state
Pilgrim, US market upheavals threaten the Caribbean
Kula, Panama --- where I want to be
Leis, Progress through profound citizenship
Stephenson, Remarks to the Chamber of Commerce
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