Bernal rallies his forces to defend his ballot spot

Bernal says the fix
is in, fights on
by Eric Jackson

Who sets the ethical standards for top judges in Panama? Forget about what any code, any law school ethics class, or any international standard might tell you. When it comes to ex parte meetings between judges and parties to cases before them or before lower courts --- the sort of thing that gets a judge not only removed from the bench but disbarred in most jurisdictions --- the standard was set in 1999, when a less that sufficient majority of the legislature voted to convict Supreme Court magistrate José Manuel Faundes, thus acquitting him. The judge had been heard on nationwide radio and television in a taped phone conversation with a defense lawyer --- the prosecution not being on the line, and thus in an ex parte conversation --- negotiating a $20,000 bribe to let a Colombian drug suspect walk. The critical mass of the Panamanian political class approves of bribery itself, and to them ex parte communications between judges and parties are just gravy.

So what if the president of the Colegio de Abogados Honor Tribunal --- roughly equivalent to, but lacking most of the powers of, a bar association disciplinary committee in the USA --- decides to challenge the way things are done and run for that public office that, other than the presidency, has the most populous constituency in Panama? In that case the traditional politicians gang up to remove the threat before Election Day.

And what's the legal procedure?

Well, they make and break rules as they go, but lo and behold, into the mix there was, on the morning of the trial of an attempt to impugn Miguel Antonio Bernal's mayoral nomination by the Union Patriotica, an ex parte meeting between an Electoral Tribunal magistrate and one of the men trying to quash that nomination.

Bernal's is an insurgent campaign, but with people from across the ideological spectrum who agree that the racketeering organizations that are Panama's political party leaderships need to have their wings clipped. So if there is the temptation to boast that "the people's revolutionary spies are EVERYWHERE, and well know the depths at which these reactionary worms slither," that would be inappropriate in this case. You see, it was a member of Bernal's inner circle of advisors, Ricky de la Guardia, who happened across magistrate Erasmo Pinilla and Liberal party boss Joaquin Franco III meeting at 9:30 in the morning at the Electoral Tribunal offices. Let us not try to simplify and label de la Guardia's opinions, but the man is a veteran of the US forces in Vietnam, so let's also not use the Viet Cong rhetorical style to identify this witness. But Pinilla and Franco were, Bernal claims, caught by de la Guardia meeting ex parte on the morning of February 27 and that screams nasty things as far as Bernal is concerned.

Bernal denounced the meeting as yet another example of the flagrant corruption that characterizes the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal and the party leaderships that it serves. He told a crowd of supporters gathered at Plaza America on Avenida Central that he and the Union Patriotica had good lawyers handling the trial that was getting underway, but that he wasn't going to dignify what he considered a rigged proceeding by actually attending it.

So what's the trial all about? Bernal is an independent, beholden to no political party. He's also, despite not being independently wealthy, a renowned vote getter. In 1999 he finished a close second in a photo-finish three-way mayoral race, garnerning more than 30 percent of the vote when the published opinion polls had him in single digits just before the voting. That he accomplished with a ragtag grass roots campaign that spent about $37,000, as compared to more than $1.2 million spent by the eventual winner, Juan Carlos Navarro. Thus small parties in danger of extinction can save their ballot status with Bernal as their Panama City standard bearer. A party has to get four percent of the vote to stay alive, and they can do that at any levels --- representantes, National Assembly deputies, mayoral candidates or presidential hopefuls. Winning a double digit percentage of the vote for mayor alone in Panama City is generally enough to keep a party on the ballot.

The first small party to announce that it had nominated Bernal, Guillermo Endara's Vanguardia Moral, soon backtracked on that position when former First Lady Ana Mae Díaz de Endara decided that, as is the case between her and most other people, she doesn't get along with Bernal. But not long after Vanguardia Moral reneged, the Partido Liberal, the smaller of the PRD's junior partners in the Torrijos administration and on the Balbina Herrera ticket, nominated Bernal. In all of the months since, there has been pressure from the PRD for the Liberals to dump Bernal, and even if the leadership has been inclined to go along with that they have not been able to muster the votes within the party to rescind his nomination. At the last moment to finalize electoral slates and alliances, the Union Patriotica, a part of the Ricardo Martinelli coalition, accepted the resignation of its mayoral nominee Iván Blasser and nominated Bernal in his stead.

Then, after the announced date to impugn candidates had come and gone, the number five guy in the Liberal Party, its secretary general, filed a challenge to the Union Patriotica mayoral nomination. Such an impugnment is unprecedented: it is the norm in Panama for candidates to run on multiple tickets, and it's quite common for parties that are allied in one race to run against one another for some other office.

Bernal expects that the Electoral Tribunal will render a partisan decision and void his nomination by the Union Patriotica. The most likely "legal reasoning" would be the invention of some heretofore unknown formal requirement for a candidate's resignation and a finding that since Blasser didn't jump through the hoops that didn't exist when he stepped aside, he's still the Union Patriotica candidate and Bernal can't be. We are, after all, dealing with Norieguista lawyers. They come from a long tradition of pseudo-legal electoral judgments.

If that's done there will be appeals by both Bernal and the Union Patriotica, and in any case the latter party says it's sticking by Bernal no matter what. For the PRD to get its way, however, another shoe has to drop. The Liberals would have to remove Bernal from their ticket to get him completely off the ballot. However, this would likely amount to the party's suicidal loss of its ballot status and even if some of the leaders might be bribed to go along with such a move there would be resistance from within.

Bernal on the ballot for mayor on just the Liberal ticket, while he's no longer being on speaking terms with the Liberal leadership? That's a distinct possibility, and one that the PRD's Bobby Velásquez and the Panamenistas' Bosco Vallarino surely don't relish.

Indeed, at the Plaza America rally, Bernal wasn't talking like someone who wouldn't be on the ballot on May 3. His talk was peppered with one liners and asides about his principal opponents.

"Bosco Vallarino suggested that we take a poll among opposition voters between him and me, and the one who finishes second should drop out," Bernal recounted. "The main problem with that is that Bosco's an idiot."

"I didn't have to change my name to run for office," Bernal noted. "I didn't become a 'Michael Anthony BER-nal' or a 'Mickey Bernal.' But Roberto Velásquez hijo had to become 'Bobby' Velásquez because people remember Roberto Velásquez padre from things he did during the dictatorship."

And so on.

This mayoral race is far from over.

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