editorial

Another example of why we need a new constitution

After the contract that didn't go to the lowest qualified bidder, the cost overruns, the giveaways to Herman Bern and the Club de Yates y Pesca, the threats of special tax assessments on the neighbors and the months of Avenida Balboa traffic nightmares, the Cinta Costera is about done. It includes recreational facilities that the city needs, pedestrian ramps that will probably be the scene of thrills and tragedies for skateboarders, trees and lawns that may or may not thrive in the thin soil above the rocky landfill, roads soon to be as congested with traffic as Avenida Balboa was before and private areas built with public funds.

On his way out of office, Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro has quite properly declared that this was the national government's boondoggle, not the city's, and that the municipal government should not be expected to maintain it.

In a reasonably ordered country, the city government should be willing and able to absorb the public areas of the Cinta Costera into the municipal park system. But our political system is formally ordered by a constitution that we inherited from the dictatorship. (That is, to the extent that we have the rule of law in which the constitution means anything, which in many cases we don't.)

Under the present constitutional order, cities have few ways to raise revenues, which are insufficient to pay for all the things that a well run city should do.

The sort of constitutional problem inherent in the Cinta Costera maintenance issue can usually be surmounted by the national government transferring the funds for the city to take care of it. However, we have a Torrijos administration that has looted the public trust handing a financial crisis, unpaid bills and a depleted treasury to its successor. The bill for the Cinta Costera is unpaid and the money to pay for its maintenance is not in the budget.

Decentralization is a slogan and a cause but something short of a solution for all of Panama's problems. Still, it would be more democratic and efficient for cities to have the powers and resources to run urban parks. The transfer of costly responsibilities without providing the means to carry them out is one of the corny demagogic tricks that the national government shouldn't be allowed to pull. The de facto suppression of detailed debate about local issues by the din of national elections held at the same time when local officials are chosen also infringes upon the municipalities' democratic self-governance.

Our system of local government is broken, as we are reminded by the spat over maintaining the Cinta Costera. Although some patch may be contrived to cover this hole in Panama's constitutional order, we really do need to set new rules for such situations. We should write those new rules, and deal with many other shortcomings at all levels of governance, by way of a constitutional convention that puts the dictatorship's systemic deformities behind us.

Beating heads on the streets of Tehran. Photo by Mona Salehiravesh

Ahmadinejad's "re-election"

By many indications, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's sweeping re-election victory was a massive fraud. However, because independent poll observers weren't present, the vote count --- if indeed there was one --- was conducted in secrecy and the system allows for no recounts, there is not and could not be much direct evidence of fraud.

That Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the Majlis (parliament) got the upper hand in the first place by the systematic elimination of candidates by religious authorities is undeniable. Nor can it be reasonably denied that the full resources of the state --- including of Iran's press --- were put at Ahmadinejad's disposal, to the exclusion of his opponents. Even if there was a truthful vote count, there was no fair election campaign.

Getting behind the rhetoric from successive US administrations, the truth is that the 1979 Iranian Revolution brought with it democratic elections. An Iranian electorate traumatized by the abuses of a US-installed monarchy was, however, not disposed to accept American definitions.

However, most of Iran's electorate had not come of age and much of it hadn't even been born when Khomeini took over from the Shah. They grew to expect a certain amount of democracy within the framework of the Islamic Republic and over the past few election cycles have been seeing their right to choose ever more circumscribed. Now it has come to the point where Iranian democracy is a cruel joke.

But so are Egyptian democracy, Saudi democracy, Jordanian democracy and Kuwaiti democracy, to name several countries allied with the United States and to furthermore mischaracterize their political systems. If democracy according to North American and Western European norms becomes a prerequisite for a nation's relations with Middle Eastern countries, then by ignoring serious flaws it might be possible to talk to the Lebanese, the Iraqis and the Israelis, but not with the leaders of most countries in the region.

So, what to do about Ahmadinejad? The truth is that there is little that outsiders can do. It's up to the Iranian people to deal with the problem.

Sure, people fleeing from Iranian repression should be given refuge and safe havens from which to speak out. Sure, leaders in other countries should tell the unflattering truth about Ahmadinejad, a vicious racist whose American entourage is led by the notorious David Duke. Sure, if the democratic forces in Iran are forced underground and organize armed resistance, progressive people outside of Iran may be justified in giving such a movement aid and comfort.

Still, a government should talk to the people who run another country, even if the respective leaders despise one another. Moreover, "We don't like your political system" isn't proper justification for a war. In this instance, a commitment to the survival of another nation whose foreign minister represents a political party that chants genocidal slogans at its political rallies --- Israel --- is not a good reason to attack or even refuse to talk with Iran, whose president likewise threatens Israel's very existence. Although his adversaries will vilify President Obama with inappropriate analogies as they have in the past, he ought to maintain communications channels with the government of Iran. The American people should understand that this does not constitute an endorsement of Ahmadinejad.

In Latin America there are some different dynamics. Threatened with isolation by the United States and many of its allies, Ahmadinejad has been showing up on diplomatic missions in this region from time to time. When the Iranian president paid a visit to Nicaragua and Daniel Ortega, it was easy enough to dismiss as a matter of two pariahs starved for company. Ahmadinejad's visit to Brazil, which was announced with great fanfare and then suddenly canceled, is a bit more difficult to explain.

Then there are the Iranian president's visits to Latin American oil producers. Venezuela and Ecuador have democratically elected governments and are OPEC members. Some of the oil cartel's member nations have elected governments but some of them, like Saudi Arabia, don't even make a pretense of democracy. Presidents Chávez and Correa don't go around making ideological pronouncements against the Saudi monarchy or other non-democratic OPEC countries, and they shouldn't be expected to do so with respect to Iran.

However, as men who identify themselves with the forces of progressive change in Latin America, Chávez and Correa really do need to put some distance between themselves and Ahmadinejad. The sort of racism that Ahmadinejad represents is one of the things that the millions of men and women who make up Latin America's "Pink Tide" are trying to wash away. This region has also seen too many rigged elections and too many dictatorships for its people to be fooled by Ahmadinejad's crude pretenses. Latin American leaders should take care not to feed the monster.

Bear in mind...