Bernal campaign picks up steam

Rustic emblems of the Bernal mayoral campaign

Bernal mayoral bid picks up nominations, endorsements, cash
article and photos by Eric Jackson

The final chapter is far from written in the 2009 Panama City mayoral race. As these words were written the cast of characters was still undetermined.

That cast surely includes the front runner in the most recent polls, the PRD's Bobby Velásquez, whose running mate is the Partido Popular's former legislator Aníbal Culiolis. But the third party in the PRD's presidential alliance, the Liberals, has nominated independent candidate Miguel Antonio Bernal.

The mayoral options also include television song and dance man Bosco Vallarino, of the Panameñista Party, which recently cut a deal on the presidential level to join Ricardo Martinelli's slate. Vallarino has been running second in the mayoral polls, but the grand opposition alliance that his party just joined is mostly just at the top. Before it bolted from its alliance with the Panameñistas to back Martinelli, MOLIRENA specifically withdrew its support from Vallarino and it seems that when Juan Carlos Varela belatedly brought his party into an alliance with Martinelli Vallarino didn't get that support back. Meanwhile, the original junior partner in the Martinelli coalition, the Union Patriotica, saw its mayoral hopeful Iván Blasser going nowhere. The Union Patriotica leadership has recommended that the party embrace Bernal as its mayoral nominee and MOLIRENA is considering a Bernal nomination as well.

On January 23 more than 300 supporters gathered at Lung Fung for a dinner dance benefit for Bernal and the mood was upbeat. As far as these things go a lot of money wasn't raised, but already Bernal's fundraising is well ahead of his 1999 campaign, in which he finished a close second in an three-way race, spending about $37,000 as compared to winner Juan Carlos Navarro's $1.2 million.

Three days earlier, Velásquez and Vallarino scuttled a scheduled televised mayoral debate by pulling out at the last minute, the both of them having been soundly thrashed (according to polls) in previous encounters.

So far Velásquez, who was director of the SINAPROC disaster relief agency during the deadliest national disaster since the 1989 US invasion, the mass poisoning by government-issued cough syrup that was tainted with toxic diethylene glycol, has avoided saying much of substance on the campaign trail. He probably won't be able to get away with that through the May election.

Meanwhile, Vallarino has been making dramatic announcements of programs and strident denunciations of sleaze. But the man has been shooting from the hip. His allegations of corruption in the purchase of city garbage trucks not only went unsubstantiated, they alienated representantes from opposition parties who supported that move. At his fundraiser Bernal took aim at another Vallarino campaign trail pronouncement. "Now he says that he's going to raise the penalties for crimes," Bernal noted. "How is this a function of the mayor's office? So now we know that if he's elected he intends to exceed his authority and abuse his powers."

Mayoral and vice-mayoral candidates Miguel Antonio Bernal and Grettel Villalaz

Villalaz and environmentalist leader Ariel Rodríguez

He may be getting party nominations, but Miguel Antonio Bernal is still an independent
and he's picking up support from independent activists from all around the country

Some of Bernal's roots trace through La Villa de Los Santos, and one of the various ways in which
that's reflected is by the support he's getting from cumbia musician Osvaldo Ayala and his band

news