Front Page: Continuity and change in Panama and the Americas

video by the US State Department

Continuity and change

Watching the US Secretary of State at her Town Hall of the Americas in the Dominican Republic, as shown above, leaves me with cause for concern and reason for hope. Those sensations were reinforced by President Obama's speech at the Summit of the Americas opening session.

I suspect that a lot of people of my grandparents' generation who believe in many of the things that I do felt the same when Franklin D. Roosevelt announced his Good Neighbor Policy and an end to the Gunboat Diplomacy of the previous era. Looking back in hindsight one can truthfully say some unflattering things about US relations with Latin America during FDR's presidency, but it would take a pretty cynical revision of history to say that he did little or nothing to improve hemispheric relations.

The pretenses that Mexico's President Calderón and Colombia's President Uribe are other than what they really are --- the illegitimate product of a massive election fraud and a corrupt and repressive narco-politician respectively --- may be standard diplomatic niceties. There are certain nasty things that are better left unsaid in certain settings, but the creation or reinforcement of certain myths for domestic public consumption isn't very healthy either.

A friendly hand offered to the leftist governments from which the United States has been estranged, above all that of Cuba, I take as something positive. It is reported that Raúl Castro is offering a prisoner exchange deal to the Obama administration. But the Miami exiles complain that the five Cuban spies serving long sentences in the USA whom Castro most wants released are not the same as the many dissidents --- including more than 20 journalists --- being held for political offenses in Cuba.

The Miami exiles do have a good point. The Cuban political prisoners are more akin to many of the US political prisoners, people like American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier and some Black Panthers who have been incarcerated for going on 40 years now. Some of the US and some of the Cuban political prisoners were framed, and more of them broke the law for political reasons. In some of the cases innocent people were wronged and in other cases unjust laws were broken and there really weren't any victims. If Raúl Castro offers to free his country's political prisoners in exchange for the five celebrated spies --- undercover agents who had infiltrated a movement that had sponsored vicious acts of terrorism, including a bomb plot that would have killed many innocent people here in Panama had it been carried out --- that would be a reasonable offer for Obama to accept. But wouldn't it be much better for the two governments to dicker, demand more on each side, and get some arrangements, partly explicit and partly tacit, that bring greater measures of justice to both the United States and Cuba?

The Obama administration wanted to avoid making the Trinidad summit into something that might be dismissed as the "Cuba summit." There was and is other important business, so it's a point well taken. But is the US president just offering old medicine in new bottles --- the failed "War on Drugs" and continued globalization according to a NAFTA template that's primarily designed to promote the profits of multinational corporations rather than the interests of the majority of people in the countries involved --- or are we seeing the first gestures toward a healthier set of relations with respect to those matters as well?

My hopes are higher than my expectations, but that's the usual for me.

* * *

Bobby out looking for votes. Photo by the Velásquez campaign

The Panama City mayor's race is turning into a big-time rumble, even as the presidential contest appears to be a runaway yawner of a Martinelli landslide.

Between now and Election Day, look for PRD candidate Bobby Velásquez, once the front runner, to continue to be beaten up over something remarkably akin to the end game of the Watergate scandal.

Recall that Colombian hustler David Murcia Guzmán --- being held in jail in Colombia awaiting trial on charges that he ran a massive pyramid scheme and now under indictment in a US federal district court in New York for drug money laundering --- has alleged that he paid $6 million into the PRD's campaign coffers, $3 million apiece for Balbina Herrera and Bobby Velásquez. He also claimed that he had been protected by members of the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) presidential guard. All of this was denied by the candidates and President Torrijos.

At first Velásquez claimed that he had nothing to do with Murcia. Then Velásquez said that he had, upon reflection, actually met with Murcia at an apartment at the Miramar. Then, from a number of sources, we heard details of a meeting between, on the one hand, Bobby Velásquez and his father, and on the other, David Murcia, which had taken place at the Hotel Sheraton. Velásquez is still denying that he ever took money from Murcia, but now he's no longer denying the meeting at the Sheraton. Thus, although he's denying the most damning allegation, his denials are undermined because he has already been caught in two deceptions in this scandal: first he said that he had nothing to do with Murcia and then he owned up to meeting Murcia only once, at the Miramar.

(And what, other than the money, did Murcia say he had to do with Bobby? One of the things Murcia claims is that he brought in the makeup expert and photographer who made Bobby look so cute in all those messageless campaign billboards.)

Meanwhile, the president was forced to back down and admit that the SPI guarded Murcia, after all.

One of the really fun highlights of all this has been Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez implicitly calling President Torrijos a liar. She said that her husband bought her a weekend at one of the Sheraton's luxury suites down the hall from the one in which Murcia was staying, and that her SPI guards recognized their colleagues guarding Murcia. After Murcia was arrested in late November, she said, she notified the Presidencia of this. Yet in March President Torrijos was still vehemently denying that the SPI had ever guarded Murcia, only to be forced into a retraction a week or so later.

This, shortly after Gómez had announced that, especially because the campaign finance reports that will never be revealed to the public aren't due to be filed until 60 days after the election, she can't continue the investigation about whether Bobby and Balbina received illegal foreign campaign contributions. But then La Prensa published interviews with three of the SPI agents who were fired for guarding Murcia and they said that Bobby Velásquez came to that Sheraton meeting empty handed but left with a suitcase. Murcia's Brazilian friend Alex Ventura said he also saw the same thing, and that Murcia had told him that the suitcase contained $2 million in cash. Bobby flatly denied the claim that he left with a suitcase.

All of a sudden, the investigation that was stalemated started up again. You see, the Sheraton has security cameras that should have picked up the Velásquezes leaving with a suitcase if that happened. Just as the end game about the Watergate scandal was about the contents of the White House tapes, the attention of the Attorney General and a curious public turns to the Sheraton's video records. If they were "lost" or "mistakenly deleted" Panamanians will make the same presumption that Americans made about the 18-minute erasure in one of the critical Nixon tapes. If the Velásquezes are caught on video leaving with a suitcase, then Bobby really needs to start thinking about a last-minute resignation as the PRD's candidate.

The result of this soap opera? We should know for sure on May 3, but for now Bosco Vallarino is bragging that an unpublished CID-Gallup poll has him leading with 35 percent, to 30 percent for Bobby Velásquez, to 17 percent for Miguel Antonio Bernal, with 18 percent undecided. Leave it to Bosco the Clown to still be arguing that a vote for Bernal might elect Velásquez.

In fact, Bobby has fallen like a rock, more than 20 points. He's down to the rock-bottom solid PRD base that the party mobilized even during Noriega times. None of the undecideds are for Bobby Velásquez, and he's not going to eat into Vallarino's or Bernal's support either. He's not going to win the mayor's race except perhaps by some fraud that would have to be fairly flagrant.

Bosco Vallarino, center, with real estate developers Gabriel Diez Sr. and Jr., the former who's the Minister of Housing in the Torrijos cabinet, at a real estate speculators' show last year in Barcelona.

And Bosco? He got some PRD help to dodge what should have been a fatal blow to his campaign and stay in the race.

You see, back in 1994 Bosco Vallarino stood before a US federal judge in Miami, raised his right hand, and swore the following oath:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

On the face of it, that's a problem for any candidate for public office in Panama, or anybody who wants to vote in a Panamanian election. You see, 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.

Bosco took advantage of that US citizenship to vote from a Miami address in 1996. He denied this when first confronted with it, but when Florida voting records contradicted him he backed down.

Bosco first said that he was proud to be an American citizen, then denied that he was, arguing that by returning to Panama and carrying on as a Panamanian citizen he had effectively renounced his US citizenship. He cited a 1911 treaty to that effect, which was abrogated by the US side in the 1980s and superseded on the Panamanian side by constitutions, treaties and laws dating back at least to the 1940s.

Between Bosco and his committee, at least a half-dozen contradictory explanations of the circumstances of his US citizenship were forthcoming. One was a legal absurdity, that he inherited it from his maternal grandmother. Under US law, unless you are a minor in the care of a grandparent, American citizenship passes through parents, not grandparents.

Bosco said that he was obliged to take US citizenship after he had gone into exile in 1987, because the dictatorship had oppressed his mother. But when he raised his hand and swore that oath, the dictatorship had been removed for more than four years.

(Bosco's mother? Beyond the non sequitur of her son's claim that he took out US citizenship well after the fall of the military regime because of its mistreatment of her, his mother's name does not register among those who were recorded as jailed, tortured, bloodied on the street, killed or disappeared in the Truth Commission's report. But there were people who suffered in various ways under the dictatorship that the report overlooked. Those who did time as political prisoners whom I consulted say that they don't remember that she was incarcerated in the time of the tyrants.)

Anyway, the uproar led the Electoral Prosecutor to file a complaint, and after much hemming and hawing, the Electoral Tribunal issued a truly remarkable decision, wherein not one but two PRD-controlled public institutions made public declarations of their own incompetence.

The electoral math tells most, but not all, of the story. In essentially a one-on-one contest with Miguel Antonio Bernal, Bobby Velásquez becomes an historical footnote and Panama City gets a mayor who's beholden to none of the party bosses and not inclined to play all the old games. Bobby's hopes are illusory even with Bosco in the race, but with Bosco out it would be a total humilation for Bobby.

So what if Bosco actually wins? Well, first of all the Electoral Tribunal just said that it was incompetent to judge who's a citizen, not that a guy who renounced his Panamanian citizenship can legally hold public office in this country. The PRD still controls the Supreme Court and presently controls the capital's municipal administration and some 4,000 jobs that go with it. With Bosco as mayor, the PRD would be in a position to blackmail him. For example, they could say that unless he keeps their party members in their city jobs, they'll go to the high court to have him removed.

Yes, Bosco says strident things about the PRD on the campaign trail. But he also hobnobs and does business with PRD politicians and developers. As shown above, he was all smiles at that Barcelona real estate speculation fair with Housing Minister Gabriel Diez padre and developer Gabriel Diez hijo.

Bosco has also done publicity work for one of David Murcia's alleged accomplices, Brazilian real estate scam artist Alex Ventura Nogueira of Ice Tower and Iron Tower infamy. Ventura, who talks up these big upscale projects, takes people's pre-construction deposits for units in them and lives off the interest until sometime quite later when it's announced that the projects aren't happening after all, paid for Bosco to hype his scams in Cancun.

Bosco also does work for Grupo Viveros, a notoriously thuggish outfit whose principals include Balbina's campaign manager, PRD legislator and former Torrijos cabinet member Héctor Alemán. Another principal in that outfit, which has broken a number of environmental, historical preservation and labor laws in the course of its Isla Viveros development, is one Andre Beladina, a disbarred former French lawyer and convicted bank embezzler.

After the Electoral Tribunal decided to let Vallarino stay on the ballot despite the constitution, he went over to the Don Bosco Basilica to be photographed in prayer. Well, yes. He's in good standing with the religious right, both in the US Republican Party and as the favorite of the conservative Catholic organization, Opus Dei.

But how much attention does God pay to people who swear oaths renouncing their Panamanian citizenship "so help me God" and then pretend that they never meant it?

Reinforcements arrive for the final campaign push. Miguel Antonio Bernal Castillero,
left, is back in Panama from his studies at McGill University in Montreal to help his father
(right) in a ragtag insurgent campaign to be mayor of Panama City. Photo by Eric Jackson

So. Third place in Bosco's and other people's polls? Isn't Miguel Antonio Bernal's a lost cause?

Well, in the last polls, shortly before the 1999 mayoral election, Bernal showed up in a distant third place, with 16 percent. On Election Day he doubled that percentage, coming in second and within a whisker of upsetting Juan Carlos Navarro, who spent more than a million bucks compared to Bernal's $37,000.

Bernal seems to be one of those anti-establishment candidates with support that, so it is said, "flies under the radar." It's actually a common phenomenon in Latin America, the best known example of which was in 1990 in Nicaragua, when the last polls showed Daniel Ortega with 40-some percent of the vote and a nearly 20-point lead over Violeta Chamorro. But essentially all of the "undecideds" were people who had decided to vote against the Sandinistas and didn't care to admit this to a pollster or any other stranger. In Latin America, there is a fear factor that creates a gap between what anti-establishment candidates get in the opinion polls and what they get in the ballot boxes. Bernal is braver than a lot of other people. He was beaten nearly to death by the dictatorship's goons and he has supporters intending to vote for him but a bit reticent to admit this to a stranger, lest it get them beaten on the head in similar fashion.

So was the CID-Gallup poll that Bosco's so jubilant about genuine? It seems to be a likely snapshot in time to me. As in Bosco, who had just spent a couple of weeks playing martyr, getting a few points of "bounce" in the poll. As in Bobby having fallen through the floor, and maybe with a point or two more to drop. As in if you add the undecideds to the Bernal column, you'd have Bernal and Bosco tied and Bobby a few points behind. Those are a lot of assumptions and rough calculations, but with two weeks to go I see a tightening three-way race with Bobby really in third place and the contest turned into a duel between Bosco Vallarino and Miguel Antonio Bernal.

* * *

Did the Catholics of San Carlos lynch the Easter Bunny?
Photo by Eric Jackson

Well I don't know. Not only did they string up the Easter Bunny, but when this photo was taken kids were waiting for their chance to bash the hanging rodent with a baseball bat.

Ah, yes --- Easter in Panama. José Ponce and I took some glimpses of a couple of the many varieties of that religious experience.

Palm Sunday, as usual, was the end of the Ocean-to-Ocean Cayuco Race.

Our Cool Internet sites feature gets back to some music videos that you people in North America in particular aren't likely to have heard on the radio. (Yes, we also link to some reading material for the thinking people that readers of The Panama News tend to be.)

And news of the economy? Mostly it's horrible. But for us, there's a bright spot.

Enjoy.

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