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Five hopefuls want to run Panama City

On October 16 at the Universidad Latina and on October 19 at the TVN studios the "Five Bs" who would be mayor of Panama City --- Bobby, Bosco, Bernal, Blasser and Batista --- squared off for the first two televised debates of the season. The PRD/Partido Popular nominee Bobby Velásquez and Panameñista/MOLIRENA candidate Bosco Vallarino, who had recently been through contested primaries, came into the debates leading in the polls in part on the strength of name recognition, with independent and Liberal nominee Miguel Antonio Bernal running a distant third.

The two debates shared a weakness born of certain news reporting, academic and legal realities in this country.

In Panama, the powers and functions of municipal governments are more limited than in most other countries. Cities' powers of taxation and sources of revenue are tightly circumscribed. The national government controls major street projects, water and sewer services, police and fire protection, education and the greater part of urban planning and building permit issuance. The major media don't assign their top people to the city hall beat and television hardly covers municipal government at all.

Panamanian higher education is highly specialized. Journalism majors learn the inverted pyramid style of writing a story, if all goes well how to write a coherent sentence and how to do what the boss tells them to do. However, in large part because Panama has nothing approaching a world class library and because the ossified political patronage system atop our higher education system has yet to figure out what to do about the Internet, journalism majors generally don't know how to do research about a person or subject. Worst of all, journalists don't seriously study political science, history, the arts or sciences or any of subjects that they will end up covering. Conversely, doctors, lawyers, economists and business administrators who are educated in Panamanian universities never get the chance to take a journalism class and rarely learn how to conduct a competent interview or in many cases even how to ask a coherent question.

Thus when we have televised debates, there is a tendency to get news anchors who know little about our system of municipal government, bolstered by community leaders and activists who know their fields and how they relate to city hall but who are inept at phrasing questions.

In the first debate, televised on RPC, the questions tended to be very general, all five candidates got to answer each one. That format included opening and closing statements. The time limits were not well respected. The second debate, televised on TVN, featured different questions directed to individual candidates (although occasional queries to more than one), a rather strictly enforced time clock and an inequality of time by way of directing more questions to the perceived front runners.

The opening and closing statements in the first debate were the candidates' best opportunities to sound the themes that they want to emphasize.

Iván Blasser, the Union Patriotica / Cambio Democratico nominee, said that "Panama needs a true plan, which contemplates all 21 corregimientos." He complained that all of the city's infrastructures are collapsing and opined that the city needs to rethink about its placement of tall buildings. He concluded that he wants a "super city," with more jobs, more playgrounds and sports fields for the kids and better education.

Miguel Batista, the Vanguardia Moral de la Patria candidate, started out by noting that "the contruction industry gives an important impetus to the national economy," but complained that it's trying to fit 40-unit towers into neighborhoods with infrastructures built for single-family homes. He said that a mayor has to set budget priorities. He concluded by vowing to fight poverty if elected.

Bosco Vallarino started out by declaring that "I read the papers, and, like you, I am indignant about how our tax money is managed." He vowed to get rid of things (and people) that don't work, attacked the PRD in general and a contract with a Spanish company to manage the Cerro Patacon landfill and recycle refuse there. "We need honest government," Vallarino said, concluding that "God is the great protagonist."

Miguel Antonio Bernal started out by noting that "the quality of life we are living in the capital is ever more deteriorated." He attacked the Cinta Costera project and "people who don't live in the city" making harmful decisions about its development. He referred to inequalities by neighborhood. In his concluding remarks he promised to be "a mayor for everyone, a mayor with independence." He vowed to "enforce the law."

Bobby Velásquez began with a reference to disasters caused by construction of residential neighborhoods in flood plains. He advocated planning that lets people live within walking distance of the services they use. He said that he wants builders to be able to invest, but they must do so in the public interest. He concluded by advising that people "have to respect the police" and saying that every corregidor should be a lawyer.

Transportation, trash, crime, urban planning and the new city hall into which the El Hatillo building is being converted were the main substantive issues in both debates.

Only Velásquez supported the Cinta Costera, a national Ministry of Public Works project for which the Torrijos administration has floated at least six financing proposals, all of which invoke a special assessment to be added to the city property taxes of those who live nearby. The PRD candidate opined in the second debate that it will resolve many of the capital's traffic flow problems. Throughout both debates Bernal repeatedly referred to it as the "Cinta Coimera" (Bribery Belt) and noted the Brazilian-based Odebrecht construction company's long record of corruption. Blasser equivocated on the subject in the first debate, saying that "it's not a priority." Batista called the project "an act of corruption." Vallarino also categorically disapproved of the project.

Bernal proposed a municipalized bus system. Batista suggested a Panama City - San Miguelito - Arraijan - La Chorrera regional bus authority. Blasser didn't have a specific proposal of his own, but did express sympathy for bus drivers who work long hours in a dangerous job for little financial reward and said that resolving the transportion issue is important. Velásquez, also without advocating a specific proposal, said that there should be a municipal referendum about what to do with the transportation system.

Bosco Vallarino spent the better part of both nights alleging generalized corruption, generally offering no evidence, and the prime target of his attack was the landfill management / recycling contract that the city has conceded to the Asociacion Accidental Urbaser - Plotosa, a subsidiary of the Spanish-based multinational ACS corporation. The contract calls for the dump at Cerro Patacon, which was never properly set up and run as a sanitary landfill in any modern sense of the word, to be retrofitted with methane gas collectors and drains to collect and treat the vile liquids that seep out of the garbage layers. New landfill spaces would be set up with more modern environmental protections, and the company would recycle the trash that comes in. After many false starts toward privatizing the management of Cerro Patacon, this past January the city council authorized Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro to negotiate directly with the ACS subsidiary and in April a contract was agreed to and approved. The no-bid procedure, the secrecy of negotiations and opinions about privatization in general and whether or not the city got a good deal in particular have all been grist for critics. However, to date no critic has presented clear and convincing proof of anything grossly illegal or unfavorable to the city.

"They'll start charging" for garbage pickup, Vallarino alleged, vowing to rescind the ACS contract. He offered no particulars about what he'd do for solid waste disposal or treatment.

Velásquez promised to closely monitor the ACS contract to protect the city's interest, and noted that one of the big disaster problems in the capital is storm drains clogged with trash. He also opined in the first debate that "all waste systems in Panama are bad for the environment" as they are currently run.

Bernal did not directly address the Cerro Patacon contract issue but advocated a recycling initiative that first involves local schools and businesses.

Vallarino also echoed complaints by a rival bidder about the city's most recent purchase of garbage trucks. Challenges in the city council and the courts delayed that acquisition and caused problems both for city sanitation crews and Mayor Navarro's presidential aspirations. However, the complaints that the garbage truck fleet purchase was a scam have never been substantiated.

Vallarino promised to buy 100 new garbage trucks and put them to work on 25 new pickup routes, declining to mention whether he would charge city residents a pickup fee or raise taxes to finance this expansion.

Blasser also advocated expanding the garbage truck fleet, but was not so specific as Vallarino. He said that he thought that separating trash for recycling on Cerro Patacon is a good idea, and in the first debate opined (generally incorrectly) that "solid waste is a problem for us but an asset for developed countries."

Batista likewise noted that recycling can be a profitable business and opined that the city should end up making money off of its solid refuse.

As it ended, Vallarino was the only candidate who gave no explicit support for the concept of recycling.

There was no discussion in either debate about preventing the creation of solid wastes in the first place.

Crime is an issue that affects the city in many ways, but is only in a few relatively minor instances a city responsibility. Yes, there is a municipal police department, but its only functions are to guard city buildings and facilities and perform security duties at city events. Only Bosco Vallarino hinted at expanding these functions, advocating buying a fleet of police cars for this force and opining that "the mayor is chief of police in the city."

For minor crimes the corregidores, who are mayoral appointees, run the courts of first instance. Velásquez says that he will appoint only lawyers to those posts. Maybe law professor Bernal might also do that, but his emphasis was on enforcing the law and giving nobody any special privilege of impunity --- and Velásquez agreed with that point.

Velásquez was the only one who defended the Torrijos administration's security policy and its controversial law enforcement reorganization decrees. In the first debate Batista talked about being held as a political prisoner during the dictatorship and Vallarino alluded to his work as a US agent during the pre-invasion destabilization of Panama and a propagandist with the invading forces during the December 1989 American attack itself to draw distinctions between themselves and what they see as the PRD's remilitarization policy. Bernal, the best known adversary that the dictatorship had among the five mayoral candidates, avoided talking about that period in his life but said that the recent decrees "won't serve to put the brakes on insecurity."

The questions about the crime issue set off talk about theories about whether juvenile crime is prevented by more sports programs, whether the emphasis should be on crime suppression or social programs and so on. Most of the candidates said that both repressive measures against criminals and improved social conditions to prevent the creation of more criminals were necessary. Several of them mentioned the importance of family values.

Then there was Bosco Vallarino, who repeatedly brought up religion. "The only law you can't change is God's law," he argued.

And what about the principal moral issue in public affairs, in the estimation of most Panamanians, corruption?

Nobody owned up to being a crook. Vallarino kept repeating that he's an honest man who wants to run an honest government.

But then in the second debate the question got to the structure of corruption, specifically about conflict of interest, and more specifically what Vallarino would do with respect to the construction industry and the matter of building and zoning permits, given that he has investments in the construction sector himself. He really didn't say how he would address conflicts of interest, either generally or in particular. "I am not a corrupt man," Vallarino answered.

On urban planning in general, with the exception of the Cinta Costera, the candidates were mostly saying similar things. Except for Vallarino they all to a greater or lesser extent criticized the inappropriate construction of tall buildings in places where the infrastructure can't handle them. Vallarino included, they all denounced the private appropriation of public spaces.

It would seem that Velásquez will have a harder time than the others convincing voters concerned about these issues because his party has been in power both at the municipal and national levels when these abuses have proliferated. But while declining to criticize the policies of either President Torrijos or Mayor Navarro, he argues that he's of "a new generation of PRD."

The city's movement of its main offices from what are generally conceded to be inadequate premises on Avenida B to the El Hatillo Building came up in the second debate, with Batista questioning the wisdom of the move and Vallarino both opining that the city would have done better to build a new city hall than to renovate an old building and insinuating that there's something corrupt about the decision that the city made. "If you have the proofs," Velásquez suggested, "file the complaint."

For both debates there were call-in or email-in "insty polls," both of which suggested that Bernal won each time. Those are not random and thus are unscientific, but it seems that both Bernal and Velásquez came away from the first two televised confrontations doing what they needed to do.

Velásquez, a physician, should never have been confused with an idiot. However, his campaign message through the primary was absolutely vacuous, consisting of getting his dolled-up face postered all around the city. Now he has stood before the voters and, even if he ducked a lot of questions, was articulate. He's defending an increasingly unpopular administration and so far manages to do it without looking like a traitor to the hardcore PRD or a Norieguista thug to those voters whose memories of the PRD are not fond ones. He'll hold onto the PRD base, which is about one-third of the city's voters.

Bernal, a lawyer, university professor, radio show host and activist on many fronts, should never be confused with a madman. However, he's a guy who was beaten within an inch of his life by the dictatorship's goons and, once he got out of the hospital, still wouldn't shut up. He's a guy whose job has been threatened due to his criticism of the University of Panama's rector, but the threats didn't shut him up about that subject either. To those Panamanians who make opportunism their religion, that makes him by definition a nut case. But Bernal didn't rant, didn't seethe with anger, wasn't flippant, made no promises that were ridiculous or onerously expensive on their faces and brought some serious proposals to the debates. Yes, the movers and shakers in the established parties will deride him as someone less that credible because he doesn't play by their rules --- but that's one of the main points that he himself likes to make.
 
Blasser came across as serious and articulate, but with a style that was cautious to a fault and little in the way of a compelling message. His standing may have been helped by the debates.

Batista said some worthy things, but his style throughout both debates was one prolonged rant against the PRD. He rarely looked into the camera. He started as a fringe candidate of a small party that has yet to capture the popular imagination and his performance didn't get him out of that box.

Vallarino's presentation was also a hardcore anti-PRD rant, with some allegations and proposals that Batista lacked. Moreover, this guy knows how to make a presentation on television. But unless the first two televised debates are allowed to be forgotten, or unless a lot of anti-PRD voters confuse shooting from the hip with strength, Vallarino hurt himself very badly with his performances. First of all, the Panameñistas are still not completely recovered from the scandals of the Moscoso administration, and if Vallarino was part of MOLIRENA then, that party, too, was immersed in that same administration and its sleaze. Had he ever said anything back then it might be different, but his repeated proclamations that he's honest and his invocations of religion don't draw the line of distinction that he needs. His refusal to answer a question about conflict of interest came awfully close to Richard Nixon's infamous "I am not a crook" declaration. Second, several of his positive proposals were nuts. He complained that there's no program to treat the polluted water in the city's rivers, as if you treat an ecosystem of that sort as if it were a sewer line. Then there are his 100 new garbage trucks and 25 new collection routes --- nice round numbers that suggest that they came off the top of his head rather than from any serious study of the problems that need to be solved. And if one kept a head count of specific new programs suggested --- on top of his general complaint about the city's $15 million capital improvement program being too small --- the question of how he intends to pay for all this begins to glare. Third, Vallarino alleged or suggested corruption with respect to the Cerro Patacon administration concession, the purchase of city garbage trucks and the decision to move City Hall to the El Hatillo Building, but in none of those cases did he cite anything remotely like evidence. If he doesn't come up with some proofs of those things very soon, he'll be stuck with the reputation of a hip-shooting clown.
 
Will the voters see it as this reporter does? Maybe not. After all, the guy with the very worst attendance record in the National Assembly aggravates that status with his game of regular changes in party membership, yet he got himself re-elected. And in any case, most Panama City voters differed from this reporter in that they didn't see these debates. All of a politician's brilliance in a debate, or conversely a performance in which a candidate makes a complete ass of himself, changes nothing at all if nobody is watching.