Dry season and its discontents

photo by Eric Jackson

Not just Carnival season...

A longer, not entirely welcome school break

This boy playing in the Zarati River north of Cocle is having a great time, and the delayed onset of the public school year might very well meet with his full approval. Private school students will get no such reprieve --- their classes start on March 9 as scheduled --- but the Torrijos administration proved very effective at awarding contracts for school repairs and renovations to the "right" people, to the extent that some 420 school buildings are not ready for the schools to open in March as usual. The Ministry of Education dragging its feet in making teacher assignments also didn't help. Right now it seems that the government will open the public schools in April, but that in turn might be delayed by teacher strikes.

Ah, just what Panama needs. The Seguro Social clerical workers settled their strike, and a few days later that institution's medical technicians walked out in what has turned into a prolonged strike. There are still contract negotiations to come with the nurses. Meanwhile, retirees are blocking the road to demand pension increases and to vent their fury at a government that had promised them a raise and then added the proviso "later." Now some teachers' strikes?

The roads are a mess anyway, with construction projects, major repairs and the crumbling away of infrastructures that have been neglected for years all coinciding to turn driving in Panama City --- and several other parts of the country --- into an interminable Hell. Add a traditional form of protest (that is, a road blockage) over some very real grievance here and there, and voila! --- total gridlock. We have been seeing a lot of that lately.

Also, raw sewage bubbling out onto the streets of the capital. Also, frequent water outages in many parts of the country. Also, a crime wave that has become so bad that we have cops fleeing their homes because of threats from criminal gangs. Also, this disastrous attempt to trash the old metro area public transportation system (taking at least 600 of the 1500 buses off the streets) without any possibility of replacing it before President Torrijos leaves office has gone beyond annoying the public to splitting the president's party.

photo by José F. Ponce

Nothing seems to be working right in Panama these days --- including the Panama Canal's financial plans --- and it's a huge political problem for the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Their presidential standard bearer for the May elections, Balbina Herrera, is at less than 30 percent support in the polls and if those numbers hold through the voting it will be a thrashing much akin to the one that Guillermo Endara handed Noriega's guy, Fito Duque, in the 1989 elections.

(In 1989, Noriega tried to rig the vote by sending soldiers around to multiple voting stations to cast ballots, but it turned out that the rank-and-file of the Panama Defense Forces also cast their votes against the military dictatorship. The Torrijos administration has made a big deal about exalting the cops and reorganzing Panamanian law enforcement along military lines, but it would not surprise me --- although there would be no way to really know --- if the PRD loses the police vote. Yes, we have some crooked cops and other colleagues of theirs who would like to be soldiers, but then there are a lot of men and women who take pride in their police profession and who believe that it's their duty to arrest maleantes rather than to strengthen their grip on our public institutions.)

Businessman Ricardo Martinelli seems set to win the presidency, but most other races --- for legislators, mayors and representantes --- appear to be up in the air. It's early for people to decide in these contests, but usually the presidential candidates have these coat tails that drag other people on their parties' tickets up or down with them depending on what the case may be.

For the PRD, desperation has set in at all levels.

Balbina has been running ads denouncing Martinelli for a series of deaths of kidney dialysis patients when Martinelli was head of Seguro Social during Toro Pérez Balladares's PRD administration. What apparently happened was that bad chemicals --- outdated ones, or the wrong ones or such --- were used and before investigators could get to the scene they were switched, the evidence was destroyed and everyone who knew anything maintained his or her silence. I say "apparently" because it's still an unsolved case. It was a black eye for Martinelli, former First Lady Ana Mae Díaz de Endara criticized Martinelli for it and he foolishly charged her with criminal defamation, whereupon former President Guillermo Endara used an anti-gay slur to characterize Martinelli, who then charged the ex-president with calumnia e injuria. Ana Mae was acquitted, Guillermo was convicted but pardoned, and the whole story probably has a lot to do with why Vanguardia Moral is running a hopeless third party campaign rather than joining the opposition alliance.

Martinelli is threatening criminal charges over Balbina's attack ads, which is surely a bad move. The thing is, because of his problems at Seguro Social and because one of the Electoral Tribunal's creepy partisan tricks this year is to criminalize anti-Balbina attack ads, he's not in a position to talk about the mass poisoning scandal that has characterized the PRD administration in which Balbina Herrera was a cabinet minister and the PRD's Panama City mayoral candidate was the head of the SINAPROC disaster relief agency.

One can obliquely tie Balbina to the scandal by pointing out that as a cabinet member she went along with a budgetary maneuver that denied medical examiners the funding to do the proper toxicology tests to make a timely and certain determination in most cases as to whether bodies had the residues of the toxic diethylene glycol in them, and following up on that maneuver by then denying the families of most of the hundreds of victims any recourse because they couldn't prove the truth of the matter by way of toxicology tests that the PRD blocked until it was too late for them to be of much use.

The bochinche on the street, however, is far more damaging to Balbina.

The thing is, due to Panama's banking and corporate secrecy laws it's impossible to prove or disprove that gossip with evidence that would be legally admissible in, say, a calumnia e injuria trial. See, the popular legend has to do with the ownership of the company that imported the mislabeled Chinese chemicals and sold them to the government. The owners of that company have never been identified by prosecutors and the families that have been left destitute have been left with no legal recourse against that part of the long international chain of negligence. So is the rumor a carefully planted lie? It could be --- but then the PRD did set themselves up for that one if it is.

Rather than criminal defamation charges and appeals to election authorities, it would be better if the candidates and political parties openly raised the poisoned cough syrup issue. They should lay their cards on the table and talk about the systemic failures that the disaster and its sordid aftermath uncovered, as well as the matter of who, by their actions or inactions, messed up and to what extent. However, such talk is rude and mean and only the guiltiest of parties have all the relevant information.

Balbina has opened the door to that rough stuff with her attack ads. Now let's see if Martinelli is brave and honorable enough to respond as a true leader in a true democracy ought to.

Meanwhile, at the local government level, the PRD is moving through Liberal proxies and the Electoral Tribunal in an attempt to throw Panama City mayoral candidate Miguel Antonio Bernal off of the ballot. You don't see many more deficient legal pleadings --- in any case, in any court, in any jurisdiction --- than those filed against Bernal. It's a complicated set of maneuvers that's being attempted and if they don't fully succeed then Bernal's opponents will be the ones in really big trouble. A campaign doesn't pull this sort of thing on an opponent and fall short of its goal without strengthening that opponent.

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archive photo by Eric Jackson

Panamanian general election campaigns traditionally don't get going full-blast until after Carnival, and Carnival is now upon us.

The lawsuit about Panama City's celebration has been tossed out. It will be on the Transistmica as planned. The exodus from the city, however, is already well underway.

Me? I'm in the Interior but will head back to the city for the Antillean Fair, which is on Carnival Saturday and Sunday on the grounds of the Afro-Antillean Museum in Panama City. (It's not far from Plaza Cinco de Mayo, across from Seguro Social's El Marañón pediatric clinic.) All that West Indian food and culture, and the family-oriented atmosphere, combine to attract crowds of all ethnicities and it's always my favorite part of Carnival.

I surely won't make it to the biggest party of all, in Las Tablas, but I probably will catch the festivities in one of the Interior's smaller and more traditional venues.

Do have a good Carnival. Do take care.

If you are going to brave the crowds at Las Tablas, know that there are teams of pickpockets circulating and don't take your valuables with you.

If you are going to drink, don't drive. If you are going to drive, watch out for that idiot in the other car who has been drinking.

If you are going to spend the holidays on the beach --- especially those of you who are visiting from northerly latitudes or who are recent arrivals --- understand that the tropical sun burns your skin faster than the sun does where you come from, so slather yourselves with sunscreen accordingly.

If a dip in the water is part of your plan, remember that rivers and oceans are elemental forces and every year's Carnival casualty list includes people who ignored that reality and drowned.

If love at first sight happens upon you, be aware that we still have the worldwide AIDS epidemic and take the proper precautions.

Have a safe and happy time, and if you're a visitor, go back home and tell your friends all about it and bring them back for next year's festivities.

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At Girl Scout camp. Photo by Eric Jackson

If neither political intrigue nor large crowds in which the alcohol flows freely are your cup of tea, there are still many interesting things ongoing in Panama.

We have a vibrant cultural scene, including the English-language theater. The Cimarron traditions, which trace their roots back to colonial days when slaves ran away and set up African-style villages in the jungle, will be celebrated in Portobelo shortly. Carnival may be a high point on the nation's cultural calendar, but it's by no means the end of it.

We are a beautiful little country, rich in history, where something fresh is always in season.

Yes, this country has its problems. But so many people, from so many walks of life and in so many different social niches, are lending a hand to provide their small parts of the solutions. Some are working to save souls, others to save lives, and still others are honoring those who have served. The Panama News is not one of these "BUY NOW! It can only go UP!" so-called happy news publications, nor is it one of these sensationalist "if it bleeds it leads" rags. Good news is part of the news, and we report that, too.

Enjoy.

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