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FRENADESO moves
to create a leftist party
story and file photos by Eric Jackson

From August 14 to 16 the National Front for the Defense of Social and Economic Rights (FRENADESO) held its second congress and decided to sponsor the creation of a leftist electoral party. FRENADESO is a labor/left umbrella group whose largest components are the SUNTRACS construction workers union, the Panamanian Teachers Association (ASOPROF) and the National Student Front (FER-29) student group, and whose most influential leadership comes from the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29), a semi-clandestine communist faction that split with the Moscow-line Partido del Pueblo in the mid-60s.

The Panamanian left is fractious, and while FRENADESO eschewed electoral politics in 2004 a rival smaller labor/left Unity of the Integral Struggle for the People alliance (ULIP) advocated electoral politics but wasn't able to get any political party or candidates on the ballot. Economics professor and former Seguro Social director Juan Jované, one of the leaders of ULIP who broke with FRENADESO over a list of political disagreements including about electoral politics, sought to run for president as an independent and, in a ruling handed down by the Supreme Court just before the election but too late for him to be on the 2004 ballot, overturned the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal's ban on independent presidential candidates. Among ULIP's components are the Veraguas Educators Association (AEVE), the Thought and Transformative Action (PAT) student group, the Partido Alternativa Popular that's trying to get on the ballot, the union with the long and unpronounceable acronym that represents Coca-Cola workers and the Partido del Pueblo.

At the FRENADESO convention's closing the number two SUNTRACS leader, Saúl Méndez said that the group "will explore, in a broad and open manner, without preconditions of any sort, the possibility of building, with other popular forces, unions, democratic and progressive individuals, a political instrument to erupt forcefully into the electoral campaign and fight for control over the government, which has heretofore been exercised by the corrupt parties of the bourgeoisie." Organizations and individuals in ULIP welcomed the declaration.

Uniting the Panamanian left would be a difficult process, given there are groups that adhere to the Marxist-Leninist concept of vanguard party and front group and others that reject this style of organization, that the election laws call for party primaries, and because the old division among those political forces that made their peace with the 21-year dictatorship (for example, the Partido del Pueblo) and those who did not (for example, MLN-29) has never been overcome. Indeed, one of the reasons why FRENADESO avoided electoral politics in the past was expressed in SUNTRACS leader Genaro López's argument that the left did not need a faction fight based on personal political ambitions that would come with electoral politics.

The Electoral Tribunal wears its partisan attitudes quite openly and can be expected to discriminate in many ways against an attempt to mount a leftist election campaign. However, according to the current election rules it takes a little under 60,000 voters to sign up a new political party --- a number roughly equal to the SUNTRACS membership --- and it would seem that with FRENADESO on board the left will be able to easily reach that goal. If one takes the turnout in the 2006 Panama Canal expansion referendum and various polls on various issues as rough guides, it would appear that at present the left would encompass about 10 percent of the Panamanian electorate. The country is at present in a conservative period and the opposition PRD, which is the Panamanian affiliate of the Socialist International but stands for little in the way of socialism, democracy or revolution, commands the support of about one-third of Panama's voters. However, this line-up could change dramatically over the next five years. The conventional wisdom would be that in its first election contest a new leftist party would win some public offices but not control over the national government. With a good enough showing in legislative races, a new party might be in a position to force the convening of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution to replace the current one, which Panama inherited from the dictatorship.