Editorials: Martinelli challenged by sleaze; and Responding to climate change

Given that somebody else's sleazy behavior has disrupted his remarkable political honeymoon...

Now we shall see how extraordinary a leader Ricardo Martinelli really is

It's true. Under our system of government, the president doesn't --- or shouldn't --- put anybody in jail. The exceptions that we have seen in the years since the dictatorship's end have all been disasters. Whether it was Toro making a media show of having a Panamanian consul arrested --- on charges that didn't stick --- or Mireya's jailing of a man who warned a Kuna village of an impending attack by vicious Colombian paramilitary assassins who invaded Panama, presidents playing sheriff have been bad actors.

But now Alejandro Posse, head of the Agricultural Development Bank (BDA), gave away a farm that belonged to the Panama Institute for Agricultural Research (IDIAP) to a fellow member of the Panameñista Party. Posse was promptly fired, and now Vice President Juan Carlos Varela and the Panameñista caucus in the National Assembly have come to Posse's defense. The case has meanwhile been referred to the anti-corruption secretary --- the president's cousin --- for an investigation that could theoretically lead to criminal charges.

It's a major test for the new administration. Ricardo Martinelli built his Cambio Democratico party largely with castoffs from the other parties in the political class, many of whom had questionable records in public life. What Posse was caught doing was absolutely typical of Panama's political class. We had five years of land grabs by the Torrijos entourage, preceded by five years of land grabs by the Moscoso entourage, preceded by privatizations and the granting of concessions in which Pérez Balladares and his inner circle took cuts of the action. So now will the Martinelli administration start down this same road?

It appears that it hasn't. It shouldn't. Throwing people off of the public payroll for apparent betrayals of the public trust is not interference with prosecutors or magistrates, it's a prudent and necessary administrative practice. Proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is what a criminal court rightly demands for a conviction, but the mere appearance of impropriety by political appointees is proper cause for the president to remove them.

And if the Panameñistas really want to pick a fight about this? That would be a crucial early test of Martinelli's leadership.

This affair might also become an early test of the powers and pretensions of the Anti-Corruption Secretariat, because there are ill-defined boundaries among it, the prosecutors and the courts. The institution may end up being made irrelevant by other branches of government that are seeking to protect their jurisdictional turf. Especially when one considers the summary proof rule that still exists in many public corruption cases, it could well turn out with the courts holding that an anti-corruption czar's investigation of any given situation prevents any prosecution of those found in that investigation to have engaged in public corruption. (The summary proof rule, you may recall, holds that to investigate a public official for corruption one must attach to the complaint full proof that a crime was committed and that the official in question committed it. If any investigation is begun without this, then no further legal actions may proceed. But of course, if someone attaches summary proof to the complaint that almost always means that some sort of investigation took place to compile that required proof.)

The breakdown of the current ruling coalition over the corruption issue, or the courts' invocation of pseudo-legal sophistries in order to continue the reign of impunity for the most brazen betrayals of the public trust, would bring on a constitutional crisis that would make or break Martinelli as a leader. Let us hope that the same old people who want to play the same old games will be afraid to put the president to that test.

Climate change

In only a few weeks, diplomats and world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to consider what to do about climate change, part of which is certainly driven by the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere by human activity and part of which is part of our planet's natural cycles.

Can those meetings produce an agreement to "save us" from climate change? That's unlikely. It ought to be possible, however, to get an agreement that limits the added damage of a process that's already underway and will not likely be reversed in the lifetime of anyone reading these words. Any adequate agreement will necessarily be the death sentence for the internal combustion engine, the coal-fired power plant and inefficient electric power grids and appliances. That's a problem because all of these things have powerful economic interests attached, and some of these special interests are promoting a culture of denial. Reckless politicians in many places, but particularly in the United States, are playing anti-scientific, anti-intellectual, greed-based and fear-based cards in hope of short-term electoral gain.

We need to reduce mankind's carbon footprint, and not by accounting tricks like carbon emission trading but in across-the-planet changes in the ways we do things. But knowing that this will not be enough to avoid problems, we also need to make arrangements to adapt to a changed climate. The meeting in Copenhagen will not answer all questions, but if it's a success it will set an international framework within which the individual nations can begin to fashion workable solutions.

Here in Panama it's easy to see that we will lose some of our coastlines to the rising oceans, with predictable resulting problems for urban infrastructures and socially explosive population displacements. The canal will need less fresh water per ship transit, but will eventually get seasonal competition from unfrozen Arctic routes. Notwithstanding any self-serving denials, these things are readily apparent.

But we really don't have very clear ideas about what will happen to our rainfall, what will happen to our pelagic and coastal fisheries or which disease vectors will move where. Climate change will drive mass migrations in many regions of the world, and as The Crossroads of the World it's predictable that these issues will sail into our waters. Adaptation is going to require the best efforts of our best minds, changes in our popular culture, vast improvements in our education and carefully revised laws and economic assumptions.

Panama is just a little country. This is all the more reason why we need to raise our profile in the world debate on climate change. As a nation we have to have our wits about us in order to have any say at all about our fate.

Bear in mind...

Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind --- even if your voice shakes.

Maggie Kuhn

One cannot deny that in former times man's life had been one of toil and hardship. It is correct to say, therefore, that modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man's life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail. But civilization can serve man both for good as well as for evil purposes. Experience shows that it has invariably brought great dividends to those who use it for good purposes while it has always brought incalculable harm and damnation to those who use it for evil purposes. To make our wills obedient to good influences and to avoid evil, therefore, is to show the greatest wisdom. In order to follow this aim one must be guided by religion. Progress without religion is just like a life surrounded by unknown perils and can be compared to a body without a soul. All human inventions, from the most primitive tool to the modern atom, can help man greatly in his peaceful endeavors. But if they are put to evil purposes they have the capacity to wipe out the human race from the surface of the earth. It is only when the human mind is guided by religion and morality that man can acquire the necessary vision to put all his ingenuous inventions and contrivances to really useful and beneficial purposes.

Rastafari

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Glenda Jackson

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