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Miguel Antonio Bernal plays the guiro.  Photo by Eric Jackson

Will you be able to stand radio or TV by Election Day?

Campaigns at
full volume!

Miguel Antonio Bernal plays the guiro with Osvaldo Ayala's cumbia band at a mayoral campaign fundraiser, Balbina Herrera and Ricardo Martinelli carefully balance tendencies to attract young voters and alienate older ones through the use of hip hop appeals. The airwaves are electric with rage and it's going to get worse. Fewer than 149 shoplifting days for all you political appointees before the government changes!

Yep, campaign season. The voting is May 3 and if the tradition had been that campaigning begins in earnest only after Carnival, the PRD campaign is behind and has all the resources of government behind it, while the opposition has the Super 99 supermarket chain and the distillery that makes Seco Herrerano and Ron Abuelo backing it. That buys an awful lot of noise.

But isn't there any sober discussion of real ideas, in a restrained tone of voice? Of course there is. The candidates I support are all like that. It's the other ones whose discourse is idiotic garbage at any volume, and totally insufferable when they get shrill about it.

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As nasty as the primaries and ensuing struggles to put together the final slates got, things have fallen into place more or less as expected. We will have three choices for president, with the coalition that's in power on a course to be ignominiously thrown out on their ears as has happened every time since Noriega rigged the 1984 elections in favor of Fraudito Barletta. The voters will turn up their noses at the great majority of legislators seeking another turn at the feeding trough --- and replace them with similar breeds of swine. 

Here and there an honest and competent person with a highly developed sense of decency will sneak past the system's filters. If we are extraordinarily lucky we'll get a president who, despite all expectations based on past performances in public offices, despite all the vapid lowest common denominator pronouncements made on the campaign trail, will come to office and there excel and inspire. 

It usually doesn't work that way, but sometimes it does --- and then the questions become, excel at what and inspire whom? (Was it true that Nero found Uncle Caligula ever so inspiring?)

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Don't get me wrong. I intend to vote. For one thing, I think that there's at least one candidate to inspire my heartfelt and reasoned support. There's also at least one candidate so obnoxious as to make me hold my nose and vote for the most viable option, no matter how distasteful that person may be.

Those who find all options totally unacceptable should cast spoiled, blank or write-in ballots instead of staying away. For one thing, the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal, despite no statutory or constitutional mandate to do so, is taking people who fail to vote off of the poll lists for future elections. What a convenient thing in case the whole thing breaks down and they have to call a constitutional convention to set up a new system! The people most offended by the old system will be excluded from the very elections about the changes of which they may be the strongest partisans.

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So, down to the nuts and bolts of it, how's this election shaping up?

First of all, it's not the Americans' fault. Yes, Ricardo Martinelli and Juan Carlos Varela may have used the US ambassador's residence to hold the conversation that led to their alliance against the PRD, but they were there along with all sorts of dignitaries from across the Panamanian political spectrum to watch the Obama inauguration. They took advantage of an opportunity to do something that many Panamanians had been urging them to do for some time.

That grand opposition alliance makes the election Ricardo Martinelli's to lose. Lots of things can happen, but I doubt that this businessman and former government minister and Social Security director will make any fatal gaffes.

But other things might happen. We stand to experience one of the more unpleasant circles of Hell in the event that the PRD repeats the 1984 fraud. Anyone with half a brain ought to be able to foresee the nightmares that would ensue after a stolen election. 

(Powerful people in Washington and in international organizations like to pretend that Mexico has a legitimately elected government --- even as they're trying to figure out how many billions of dollars they are willing to spend to deal with the slow-motion collapse of Mr. Calderón's authority. Here in Panama, we count the bodies from drug wars born of the twin failures of the futile US War on Drugs and of the government in Mexico. I'm not saying that an ungovernable Panama is as massive a problem as an ungovernable Mexico, but given where we are it would still be no trifling matter.)

Any reasonably astute observer should understand the Electoral Tribunal's decision that it has no jurisdiction over the president's use of public funds to support his party's political ambitions indicates a clear and present danger of election fraud. However, Martín Torrijos doesn't seem to be very bright and doesn't seem to allow for the possibility that other people might be able to see through his games, as evidenced by his pronouncement that he "will not allow" Balbina Herrera to lose. 

It would thus be prudent for the sake of peace not only in this country but in the region to have more rather than fewer international election observers coming here. The threat is that in the wake of a fraudulent election Panama would have a severe social breakdown, which could allow one or more of any number of criminal organizations, extraneous insurgent groups, home-grown totalitarian factions or foreign powers to take advantage of the chaos. Better to warn off the neo-Norieguistas right now than to suffer the consequences of a rash act that could have been avoided.

Yeee-haaah! It's cowboy Ricardo Martinelli.  Photo by the Martinelli campaign

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What's fun about Panama lately?

Well, despite the fact that anti-Chinese racism seems to be socially acceptable here, we are a multi-racial society that has had a substantial Chinese component for more than 150 years and everyone who turned out at ATLAPA to celebrate the Chinese New Year was not Chinese.

I'm still recovering from this year's Panama Jazz Festival and have had time to reflect on the best of it all. It was a musical event, an outstanding educational project that once again made an end run around a dysfunctional Panamanian school system, and a social event not made for the suits one sees in La Prensa's social pages.

(Speaking of jazz, and of music in general --- do you see the little boxes toward the bottom of this page, the interactive Internet radio buttons? I need to review and update these things, and the best way to do that is to have the readers do it for me. Take the time to sample these links, and send me an email telling me of any that don't work or don't work well, and forwarding any suggestions to improve the selection that I offer. The main jazz link is to my undergrad university's radio station, Eastern Michigan University's WEMU, but there is also some Latin Jazz on the Batanga link and Yahoo has several different jazz channels. Mostly the music selections are in other genres, as I want to have a diverse and international assortment. There's always room for improvement.)