opinion

An unexpected judgment
by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The perfidy of placing in doubt the legitimacy of my --- and our --- mayoral candidacy, based on legal sophistries and the complicit silence of allegedly democratic leaderships, met with a reaction from the citizenry that opened the doors to a judgment that, for me, was unexpected.

This sordid power play, which had as its directors the thuggish sector of the PRD over which Martín Torrijos presides, the partisan political class and the godfathers of its candidates for mayor, was aimed at impeding the democratic right of independent citizens to be able to run for office and the right of parties to endorse independent candidates. However, it failed to accomplish its purpose.

The Electoral Prosecutor asked for the rejection of the requested impugnment. He took this position, he said, with “the aim of getting respect for our constitutional legal norms and the regulations with respect to them.”

Attorneys Hernán García and Rolando Villalaz, acting respectively on behalf of the Union Patriotica party and myself personally, clearly established that the Union Patriotica's actions to embrace our independent candidacy for mayor complied with the Union Patriotica's internal statutes and rejected, during the trial, all suggestions that the nomination was made in violation of those rule or of the Electoral Code's provisions. They emphasized that what that party had done was always legally sustainable.

The Electoral Tribunal magistrates' order “to MAINTAIN the nomination of Miguel Antonio Bernal for Mayor of the District of Panama by the Patriotic Union Party,” produced not only an unexpected judgment, but also this time, conformed with that body's stated legal obligation: “The Electoral Tribunal is created to guarantee the freedom, honor and effectiveness of the vote, and Election Law is to guarantee democracy as a system of government that gives credibility and legitimacy to popular representation and the consolidation of our Rule of Law.”

It's up to us, then --- to all of us, as citizens --- to know, stand up for and deepen, in a dignified fashion, our political rights. We have to keep the sentence from the Electoral Code that's quoted above from becoming a dead letter at any time. We have to oblige compliance with those principles in favor of all citizens, on a permanent basis, within and outside of the electoral sphere.

In their unexpected judgment, the magistrates also said something that, in addition to being a fundamental principle, we ought to publish and press for its real application. “Political rights, as fundamental human rights of the first generation, are evolving in accordance with modern trends in the direction of universalization, questioning whatever limitation (de jure or de facto) that restricts political participation and abolishing norms of exclusion, including against independents; therefore, democratic ethics impose values on politics, making it more pluralist, participatory, inclusive and competitive, and our reasoning proceeds within this conceptual framework.”