Push comes to shove on PRD "civil service" appointments

There once were ideologies by which one might distinguish the PRD from Panama's other historically major political movement, the one founded by Arnulfo Arias now embodied in the Panameñista Party. The PRD may have gotten its Torrijista name from General Omar Torrijos, but its roots go back to a corrupt and repressive but social reforming militarism that arose under General José Remón in the 1940s. Arnulfismo traces its roots back to the Accion Comunal movement of the 1920s, whose members preached a racist and authoritarian doctrine and copied their fashions from an American social movement that was popular at the time --- the Ku Klux Klan and its white robes and hoods.

Ricardo Martinelli is the first president since 1968 to come from neither Torrijista nor Arnulfista ranks, although he served in the cabinets of presidents of both factions.

With the defeat of the Axis powers and the rescission of the 1941 constitution that stripped all Panamanians of Afro-Caribbean, Asian or Middle Eastern ancestry of their citizenship, Arnulfismo drifted away from its fascist ties and racist emblems and became a primarily provincial party, known for its conservatism on certain points but also for its progressive roles in creating the Social Security system and the University of Panama and bringing about women's suffrage. More than anything, it evolved into a non-ideological, political patronage based modern political party whose membership tended to run in families.

After a dirty war against leftists and militant Arnulfistas that involved death squads, secret torture houses, and purges of the university and the press, Omar Torrijos co-opted a section of the Moscow-line communists, legalized labor unions, brought a certain amount of racial integration to government and called for national unity in a drive to redeem that part of the isthmus that was the old Canal Zone. But once that "fifth frontier" was erased there wasn't much to unify the coalition that Omar Torrijos built, the wealthy business interests in his coalition gained the upper hand, and the general's alcoholism degenerated to the point that he was drinking a fifth of Chivas Regal per day. He survived the October 1979 start of the Panama Canal Treaties' implementation by less than two years, dying in a plane crash during a driving rainstorm near a rustic rural airstrip. Then his intelligence man, or, as Omar Torrijos described him, "my gangster," maneuvered his way to the top. General Noriega at first used the business elite as his fronts, most notably with the fraudulent 1984 election of banker Nicolás Ardito Barletta as figurehead president. But Noriega, his military power base and the civilian PRD political patronage legion were taking too much from the economy for the health of the business climate. After he had a falling out with the Reagan administration the ruinous US economic sanctions finished the process of turning most of the economic elite against Noriega, if not necessarily the PRD. After the invasion the party was rebuilt under the leadership of banker Ernesto "Toro" Pérez Balladares and two other civilian political apparatchiki, Gerardo "Sombero Loco" González and Balbina Herrera. The party that came back to power in 1994 was led by and in service to members of the economic elite, and featured a mass organization operating throughout all sectors of Panamanian society and dedicated to securing jobs and government contracts for party members.

Post-invasion Panamanian politics thus became a battle between non-ideological mass parties over public sector jobs and other perks.

Between 1999 and 2004 Arnulfo Arias's widow, Mireya Moscoso, proved to be far too obvious a kleptocrat for public tastes, and moreover she showered the benefits of office on a tiny clique of families and left the Arnulfista mass base without influence or many benefits. In 2004 the party finished a distant third and in 2009 it proved unable to reassert itself as one of the top two political forces.

How badly the PRD has been broken in 2009 remains to be seen. In the Martin Torrijos years of 2004 to 2009 we saw a PRD that was led by and served the interests of a narrow collection of business elites, including especially the ad agency cartel and its partners in commercial broadcasting, sections of the banking and financial services industries and parts of the construction and real estate industries. As the administration ran its course, old Norieguistas became increasingly prominent. But because since the invasion the PRD had signed onto "Washington Consensus" neo-liberal economic policies, for most of the Torrijos administration there was a limit to how many party members could be brought onto public payrolls. There was even picketing of party offices by rank-and-file members demanding government jobs.

The Torrijos administration still managed to put a lot of PRD members in public posts, especially in his last two years. Not only that, it passed a series of so-called civil service reforms to lock PRD members hired on a political patronage basis permanently into jobs with the central government, at the National Assembly, in the diplomatic corps, in the University of Panama administration, in municipal governments and so on.

However, the PRD was catastrophically defeated at the polls, losing the presidency by a wide margin, the legislature so badly that there is no possibility of obstructive maneuvering, and key mayoral races.

President Martinelli and the coalition that carried him to victory came to office to find that virtually all public sector jobs were now PRD-held "civil service" posts. Never mind that there were no examinations for a lot of them, and rigged examinations for others --- things like "competitive" tests for a small number of openings, about which only as many people as there were openings were told about the tests. Martinelli also came to office with many unfinished construction projects underway, with contractors who had been selected by the PRD in irregular processes.

It was so flagrant that the FENASEP government workers' union --- not really a union, but a PRD front group --- went to the one branch of government still controlled by the PRD, the Supreme Court, to prevent the Martinelli administration from firing the more than 30,000 government workers given protection under the Torrijos civil service laws.

The new administration has been proceeding steadily but cautiously. Its new civil service director, Mariela Jiménez, warns that alleged civil servants who came in the latter years of the Torrijos time without competitive tests or even any minimal qualifications won't keep their jobs. The centerpiece on the Martinelli administration's counter-attack against his predecessor's packing of the civil service rolls will be a new civil service reform, one that will probably address several of the Torrijos laws, and one that gives greater scrutiny to higher-paid positions given civil service protection. Jiménez says that the new administration will do justice to the long-time government workers who did their jobs and met all the requirements, and do away with those "privileged functionaries" who got their jobs as political favors. Held up as a poster child for Torrijos abuses is one Alfonso Fraguela, the former president's spokesman who received a $4,000 per month salary and was put on the civil service rolls.

Meanwhile in some of the cities, the struggle has become acute more quickly.

In Panama City, the Méndez / Vallarino administration has sent a number of holdovers from the Navarro administration on vacation and these people, mostly in confidential or management posts, will notwithstanding any claim of civil service protection probably not have jobs to which they can return. Recall that Bosco Vallarino accused Navarro of keeping "botellas" --- phantom employees --- on the city payroll, but the new administration has not identified a single one of these.

In Colon, the outgoing PRD administration left the coffers bare and the city bank account overdrawn. Incoming Mayor Dámaso García ordered mass layoffs --- some of which affected people who had worked for the city for nearly 30 years --- and this set off a July 16 strike and occupation of the city's public market by some 300 city workers. García complained that the city payroll included a lot of gangsters along with the legitimate employees, but the following day President Martinelli instructed the mayor, through Colon provincial governor Pedro Ríos, to reinstate the workers.

So what is Martinelli up to? Maybe his pledge not to run the government on a political patronage basis ought to be taken at face value. His initial appointments were to posts that are for the most part inherently political and were doled out mainly to his supporters. However, some PRD people have been appointed to Martinelli administration posts and meanwhile a junior partner in the president's coalition, the MOLIRENA party, is complaining that its members haven't got what they think is a fair share of government jobs.

If Martinelli shatters the PRD political patronage structure with civil service reforms but doesn't divide up the positions left to fill among the parties of his coalition, that could lead to a 2014 election in which both the PRD and the Panameñistas are has-been machines. Before that, it would probably lead to fissures in his alliance. Meanwhile, the president's own Cambio Democratico party is more of an ad hoc gathering of the old political class's castoffs united around the personality of Ricardo Martinelli than a mass-based machine like the Arnulfistas and Torrijistas have had in their better days.

Thus look for this rumble over civil service status to set in motion certain dynamics that may long outlast the Martinelli's term in office.

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