editorial

Torrijos should (but won't) resign

Panama has a presidential rather than parliamentary political system, a politically manipulable rather than an independent judicial system, and a venal political class that considers those rare men and women of honor among it to be species of chumps. Thus we are stuck with a disgraced president at the tiller of state and a crew that's fighting for and grabbing such spoils as can be had before the inevitable.

It's worse than that, actually, when one considers this country's history:

• We have had but one presidential assassination in our more than a century as a republic, and President Remón was shot by his presidential guards. We have had a number of police and army coups. Now the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) presidential guards have been disgraced and entangled in the David Murcia scandal and personnel of low and high rank are being thrown to the wolves, but it was the politicians, not the SPI, who created this mess. As if that wasn't bad enough, we find the National Police, including a major, and customs and immigration officials caught up in the scandal. So we're going to have militarized law enforcement, who are cavalierly used by the politicians to break the law and then left holding the bag when scandals break? That's really asking for a return to the era of the coup d'etat, and even if it doesn't get to that point it has to demoralize our cops at a time when they are confronted with a major crime wave.

  
  

• We had a Supreme Court magistrate whose impeachment trial included a tape of him negotiating a $20,000 bribe to let a Colombian drug trafficker walk, yet resulted in an acquittal. Special maneuvers were made to keep him off the bench, but the toxic result of the failed impeachment has reverberated throughout our entire government ever since. There is now a well grounded expectation that for top officials there is no accountability for anything, and President Torrijos is living in the shadow of that cloud.

  
  

• We have seen the tragic results of Panamanian public corruption that has become so flagrant as to attract the interest of US prosecutors and courts. Building on the dirty work of his predecessors, Torrijos has turned Panama into a refuge and headquarters for international criminals at least as notorious as that which existed in Noriega times.

Torrijos categorically denied that the SPI was guarding David Murcia, then retreated and alleged that it was unauthorized moonlighting by three low-level presidential guards, then arrested two high-ranking SPI officers when that proved not to be the case. He appointed his Minister of Government and Justice to conduct an "independent" investigation, and the next day that same man was placed at the scene of one of the crimes to be investigated. (This, while his previous Minister of Government and Justice is facing a murder charge.) Now the Murcia scandal, which centers around Colombian organized crime funding for the PRD's candidates for president and mayor of Panama City, has touched the National Assembly, the National Police, Customs and Immigration. Now the scandal dominates the news in Panama and is the subject of an indictment in New York.

If the president had a shred of decency, he'd resign.

As that's not happening, people need to adjust to the situation --- especially the foreigners who live here, and most of all the foreigners and dual citizens of the American community. There is an opportunist element among us looking for a piece of the action whenever they see profitable corruption and those who are doing this now need to be shunned. There are naive newcomers who expect to get things they want or need from PRD politicians in the run-up to the May 3 elections and these people need to be seen as something worse than ordinary fools as they are enablers for the corrupt.

In these last months of a disgraced regime, the attitude of citizens and foreign residents alike ought to be one of sullen non-cooperation with the government and ruling party.

New dynamic in the mayoral race

This editorial was written on March 21, and as of that time the latest polls showed the PRD's Bobby Velásquez leading the Panama City mayoral race, but dropping like a stone.

Those polls were taken on the basis of samples that were too small to be very useful, some of them were taken by companies without records that would make them credible, and over the years there seems to be a systematic underestimation of anti-establishment candidates because a lot of people won't admit their intentions to vote for such people to pollsters or anyone else whom they don't know.

The worst fault of those polls, however, is just that they were taken before the most spectacular revelations about the involvement of Bobby Velásquez and his father in the Murcia scandal. The momentum is clear, and though it's limited, it can't be reversed. Bobby Velásquez is going to get the hardcore PRD vote --- somewhere around one-third of the electorate --- and nothing else. He may even lose a few of the ordinarily well disciplined PRD voters. Whatever the polls might show, Velásquez is headed toward a defeat.

Thus Panama City voters ought to more carefully examine the two viable candidates who remain, the Panameñistas' Bosco Vallarino and the independent Miguel Antonio Bernal. One of these two men will be the next mayor and given the city's many serious problems, which one of them wins does matter. The roles that they have played in the community, their standings in their respective professions, their educational credentials and more importantly their knowledge of the city's problems, the merits of the controversies in which they have been embroiled over the years --- all of these need closer scrutiny.

There is nothing dishonorable in making a statement of faith or ideology and casting a ballot for Bobby Velásquez, registering a protest vote by opting for Vanguardia Moral's Miguel Batista, or putting a spoiled ballot in the box. (Putting a blank ballot in the box, however, creates an opportunity for a corrupt election official to fill it out for the candidate of his or her choice.) People have a right to their opinions and that should be respected.

But the practical choice is Bernal versus Vallarino and pragmatic voters should look again, and look more closely, at these two men.

Bear in mind...