opinion

Who speaks for the community?
by Eric Jackson

We have a career diplomat who speaks for the US government as the American ambassador in Panama. She has served in Panama before and is ex oficio a member of the American Society board of directors, but let me say, with the risk of offending many people, that neither Ambassador Stephenson nor the American Society of Panama really represent the American community in this country. Much less so does the American Chamber of Commerce, which has its origins as a spinoff from the American Society.

We have how many tens of thousands of US citizens living here, and how many hundreds are in any way connected with the American Society? After many years in which the American community of Panama was Republican-dominated, the local chapter of Democrats Abroad ran the local GOP organization off the field this year --- so where does that leave AMCHAM, most of whose members are not Americans, and most of whose American members are Republicans?

These questions are raised not to be a jerk, nor to claim that I somehow speak for the community --- surely I do not --- but because we have a new administration coming into office in Washington, some important matters of US-Panamanian relations pending, and a process of investigation, fact-finding and contact-building already underway. Our vicious little Rush Limbaugh wannabes, all the people who rush to get their pictures taken with new US ambassadors so as to somehow verify their own worth, all those little enclaves of Republicanism in which they seek to pass judgment on who's "with the program" as a "real American" simply should not be allowed to misrepresent themselves, the nature of Panama or the American community to the new administration. The American people voted for change, and that includes a change in the ways of making and executing foreign policy off of which such people thrived.

So who represents whom? I think that if some congressional staffer comes here wanting to talk to Democrats, Democrats Abroad ought to be active and well enough organized to meet with that person and give a range of views that occurs among local Democrats on that subject. (Democrats Abroad also has another mandate to keep active between elections --- President Obama is calling on the people who worked for his victory to do so.) If the visitor from Washington wants Republican views, a meeting with Republicans Abroad ought to be in order. Americans with particular knowledge, involvement with respect to certain issues or contacts with certain sectors ought to be consulted when that's important.

Hillary Clinton will be in charge at the State Department, and let's hope that she has learned from the shortcomings of US relations with Panama during her husband's administration. 

Recall that a little in crowd clique at the American Society embarrassed the State Department by vetting the wife of a wanted American pyramid scammer to head the Easter egg hunt at the US ambassador's residence. 

Recall that when the US Armed Forces withdrew from Panama at the end of 1999 and had all this surplus equipment to give away, the American military was intermarried with all levels of Panamanian society and thus knew who was real and who wasn't and what groups could use which stuff, but the State Department fought tooth and nail to control that process. It turned out that the embassy had few contacts beyond the Panamanian government, the Catholic Church and the ultra-rich in Panamanian society and botched its end of the job. 

Recall that the Clinton administration started out by feeding the Pérez Balladares administration's corruption --- for example, by incarcerating Cuban raft people at an old firing range without facilities, and giving the bottled water contract to Toro's son-in-law's company --- and ended up pulling Pérez Balladares's US visa over a scam wherein Panama provided documents to Chinese citizens seeking to illegally enter the United States.

I cite these things neither to criticize Obama's cabinet choices in general nor to warn of Hillary's failure in particular. My expectation is that she'll recognize changing times, draw the appropriate lessons from history and in the course of carrying out Obama's general guidelines lead US foreign policy out of the Dark Ages of the Bush administration and into better times. The American people have given the Democrats a mandate to do that sort of thing.

The mandate for change runs not only to specific policies, but to the ways that policies are made. At one point early in the primary campaign, Barack Obama panned the process of congressional fact-finding missions, and he was right. Now he's going to be president and he wants to make certain changes not only in the specific details but also in the general orientation of US relations with his neighbors. Square one in that process is to know what's real around the world. He would be wise to not populate that space with people and organizations upon which the Bush administration relied as purported representatives of Americans living abroad, and who thus played their special misinformative role in the nightmare years during which Washington's divorce from reality became ever uglier.

So who "represents the American community?" Those who claim to do so certainly don't. Nobody does in its entirety. Democrats Abroad Panama probably represents a majority in a certain sense, but it's not a monolithic organization.

AMCHAM's American members represent a certain segment of the business community, analogous to similar GOP-leaning business groups in the United States. They don't reflect the full range of economic needs and aspirations of this country's American community.

The VFW may be on the whole a bit more conservative than the entire American community, but it does represent the interests of the many US veterans who live here. 

Current and former Peace Corps volunteers, American missionaries working in impoverished communities, US citizens active in Panamanian charitable groups, and Americans who live in the "popular" neighborhoods among ordinary people are the ones to talk to about the realities confronting most Panamanians in their daily lives. "My maid tells me" just doesn't cut it.

There are eminent scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute with whom to talk about certain important environmental and scientific questions, and about their knowledge of many other subjects that has been acquired in the course of living and working in Panama. However, when one gets to know the STRI crowd one will find that they have their disagreements among themselves and that the Smithsonian wears the blinders of certain institutional imperatives like getting along with Panamanian governments. 

There are plenty of American retirees here, many of whom ought to be consulted in some way about the special problems they face living abroad.

What there aren't are any shortcuts in rebuilding a deteriorated network to inform Washington of the realities on the ground in Panama, and in about 180 other countries.