Front Page: Bosco the Clown and Murciamania

photo by the Varela campaign

Bosco the Clown!

Why in the world would somebody renounce his Panamanian citizenship, leave a paper trail to prove it, and then run for mayor of Panama's capital city?

Is it that he's uneducated? Relatively speaking, that adjective does apply to Bosco Vallarino, who's the only mayoral candidate without a university education. But then a wide range of people, from Abraham Lincoln to Michael Moore, have been very successful in life without university degrees.

Is it that he was brought up in a social milieu that believes that there are never any consequences for the things that they do?

Is it because, as has become obvious on the campaign trail, Bosco's a guy who never does his homework, and moreover expects that other people won't do so either?

Enough of playing amateur shrink who hasn't examined the patient. Let Bosco Vallarino explain it for himself.

But the sub-total is that to become a naturalized US citizen, as Bosco Vallarino admits that he did, he swore an oath of allegiance to the United States and part of that oath was a renunciation of his Panamanian citizenship. The bottom line is that under the rules set down by the Electoral Tribunal, having acquired a second citizenship, Bosco Vallarino is ineligible to vote or run for public office in Panama.

(I am a dual citizen by the circumstances of my birth in Panama to American parents. Article 13 of the Panamanian Constitution provides that "Panamanian citizenship by origins or birth can't be lost, but express or tacit renunciation of it will suspend the citizenship." When the Electoral Tribunal declared last year that it was interpreting this to mean that Panamanians who had acquired other citizenships but are living here as Panamanians would not be allowed to vote, The Panama News editorially opposed that ruling. But there it is.)

So now the Panama City mayoral candidate of the Cambio Democratico, Panameñista and MOLIRENA parties has some big problems. So do those parties. So does front running vice presidential nominee Juan Carlos Varela, who elevated Vallarino to be his party's mayoral nominee, and the man at the top of the leading ticket, Ricardo Martinelli. If these guys can't vet their nominee for mayor for such a simple thing as his citizenship, what other nonsense might we expect from them once in office?

Let the legal and political fireworks show begin!

* * *

There are other interesting questions about the circumstances of Vallarino's US citizenship that bear directly on his record in the community and are amenable to very different interpretations.

If you look at Vallarino's published resumé, you find some interesting claims and admissions. In 1986, he says he was in Panama working for the Telemetro TV network. At that time, he was also moonlighting with the Voice of America, for whom he started to work in 1985. Then, Vallarino says that he was from 1987 to 1989 on the editorial board of a clandestine magazine called Resistencia Civil and in 1988 and 1989 the director of the clandestine radio station La Voz de la Libertad. Between 1987 and 1989, Vallarino says, he worked with the Panamanian Embassy in Washington. (Remember, this was after Noriega forced Eric Arturo Del Valle out as president, but the US government recognized Del Valle as the president and the embassy remained in the hands of people aligned with the US-recognized president rather than Noriega.)

Sometime in the late 1980s, no earlier than sometime in 1986, Vallarino went into exile in the United States. He was back in Panama with the invading US forces in December of 1989, going around the capital in body armor, riding an armored personnel carrier and using a loudspeaker to urge people to support the Americans. Afterwards, he got a job with the Endara administration.

So was Vallarino a US resident for five years, in order to become a naturalized citizen in the normal way?

Ah, but there is another way, and Six Minutes to Freedom, the celebrated book by Kurt Muse, whom Noriega's boys arrested in connection with the clandestine La Voz de la Libertad broadcasts, suggests it:

The money and equipment Kurt had received from Uncle Sam was all off the books, and they’d accomplished more with it as amateurs than anyone had a right to expect. Uncle was pleased....

"Uncle," as in the US Central Intelligence Agency. At various points in history, the CIA has been generous in handing out US citizenship to foreigners who were intelligence assets for, or collaborators in, the covert operations that the agency supported.

So a question arises. Did Bosco Vallarino get US citizenship by the normal route by naturalization after five years' residence, or was it a reward for his services before and during the 1989 US invasion?

Put it another way. Was Bosco Vallarino one of your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free --- or was he the man from Uncle?

And that also raises a question about Vallarino's work for Voice of America. Was he a CIA "asset" while working as a reporter?

That may seem of little importance to many people, but believe me, as a journalist who, on the basis of my gringo accent, has occasionally been accused by dim-witted campus radicals of being with the CIA, it matters to me. The US intelligence services aren't supposed to use journalism as a cover but they notoriously sometimes do, and that puts real reporters in danger of being beaten up on campus or worse.

I don't know the answers to these questions, but the truths of these matters are important to at least one Panama City voter.

* * *

One final point on the Bosco Vallarino citizenship affair, which is going to grow over the days to come. The Vallarino campaign did not answer my questions about Bosco's citizenship (nor would the American Embassy, on the record or before I had already ascertained the facts), but I alerted some other news organizations, including one for which I write a weekly column.

One of the papers in that conglomerate, the tabloid El Siglo, did get Bosco Vallarino to admit that he was a naturalized American. But he specifically denied to El Siglo that he had voted in the 1996 US election.

Again, a guy who never does his homework and expects that nobody else does either? Voting records on file as public records in Miami and Talahassee say that Vallarino did indeed vote in the 1996 US election.

So now it's not just a matter of the technicalities of citizenship laws, what the man did during a controversial period of Panamanian history, the merits or demerits of his ideas and associations, or the quality of the proposals he brings to the mayor's race. What's in play now is whether voters can believe anything that Bosco Vallarino says.

* * *

It remains to be seen whether the revelations about Bosco Vallarino's citizenship will breathe new life into the moribund PRD mayoral campaign of Bobby Velásquez. Bobby, Martín and the PRD in general have been caught lying about the David Murcia scandal, Bobby most egregiously of all. I would expect that independent candidate Miguel Antonio Bernal is the big gainer from Vallarino's troubles.

The big loser is Panama's current political system, which has institutionalized corruption that's enabled and enhanced by campaign contribution secrecy laws, too much power for party bosses and election authorities with a pronounced partisan tilt.

Let Bosco the Clown and Bobby Velásquez stand as Exhibits A and B of why Panama needs a new constitution.

* * *

That nefarious fiend who tormented Charlie Brown all those years, the Kite-Eating Tree

So, do you disagree with all of the above? Are you inclined to tell me to go fly a kite?

Well, I almost did that. I went to Amador for the annual Kite Festival.

* * *

This is the second issue of our semi-annual fundraising appeal, and the weak economy both here and in the USA is showing in that department. We do thank everyone who has donated, and urge those of you who have not to pitch in to make The Panama News a better publication. It's easy enough to do with a credit card by PayPal. Some people send us checks in the mail (see the address at the bottom of page). You can also come by our office in the Muchachas Guias building near the end of Calle 3^ra in Perejil and drop off contributions there. If neither José Ponce nor I are around the office, you can leave an envelope with the Girl Scout leaders --- our landladies --- across the hall and it will get to us.

The survival of The Panama News doesn't necessarily depend on this fundraising drive, because we are committed to what we do. The quality will be affected, though, because the improvements we want to make will require some money. So please pitch in, even if you can only afford a little bit. We don't front for pyramid scheme guys, gangsters and crooked politicians so the portion of our income that comes from readers does make a big difference.

* * *

While the president and his ministers were busy handing out goodies in hopes of turning the tide in an election campaign that's flowing against them, most people were interested in other things. José Ponce made his usual rounds. Fernando Alvarez sent us photos of an encounter among different cultures at the Balboa Academy. Rainy season began in Colon, but elsewhere we appreciated the dry season colors while awaiting the rains. Some of us marveled at the discoveries of science, and others appreciated the beauties of such artistic genres as painting and the opera. But we are getting into the final stretch before national elections, so this time the Cool Internet sites are dedicated to Spanish-language videos in which presidential and mayoral candidates say what they have to say.

I will get back to the music videos in that latter feature, I promise. But I leave you with this ditty by musician and comedian Pedrito Altamiranda, which is all the rage down here at the moment:

Enjoy.

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