Small but broadly based protest against expanded presidential power

Balbina Herrera, who orchestrated violence against Civilistas in Noriega times, attends a rally called by an old Civilista leader

Small but broadly based protest against expanded presidential power
by Eric Jackson

People are not rioting in the streets or turning out in their thousands to oppose President Martienelli's bid to add control over the supposedly independent Public Ministry to his de facto political powers. Those who turned out in Parque Porras on February 3 to protest against the president's move to revive a post that had been abolished it the 2004 constitutional changes were mostly lawyers, politicians, professionals and human rights activists, and there were fewer than 200 of them.

But look again, and consider some of those who were there:

Protest organizer Aurelio Barría, one of the founders of the Cruzada Civilista that challenged the dictatorship in the late 1980s and a Martinelli supporter in last year's elections;
Balbina Herrera, the PRD candidate whom Martinelli defeated in last year's elections, and who infamously as the Noriega-era mayor of San Miguelito declared "a Civilista seen, a Civilista dead;"
The last person who held the post of alternate Attorney General (Procuradora suplente) that Martinelli seeks to revive by a one-man constitutional amendment, Mercedes Araúz de Grimaldo, now a corporate lawyer at Morgan & Morgan;
Most of the main leaders of the Partido Popular (former Christian Democratic Party);
Many of the leading lights in the organizations grouped under Bobby Eisenmann's libertarian reformist Fundacion Libertad;
A boom truck from the hip hop radio station La Fabulosa, which played the old Civilista anthem Habla Pueblo, Habla;
Ousted (at least temporarily) Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez's husband and other members of her family;
Former PRD Minister of Government and Justice Olga Gólcher;
Former Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) chief Jaime Abad, who is a member of Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party; and
A delegation of feminists who are offended not only by the presidential power grab but by Martinelli's attempt to designate Giuseppe Bonissi as Gómez's replacement, given an old domestic violence case against Bonissi that they say leaves questions about his commitment to oppose violence against women.

The rally started about an hour after its advertised starting time and lasted about 45 minutes. It consisted of the singing of the national anthem at the start and the finish and a single speech, by Barría, although many comments by many of the other participants to the television stations that were covering the protest.

Aurelio Barría

Barría noted the political differences among the protester and denied that anybody was trying to begrudge Martinelli the power to govern. "We ought to reflect, and tell president that this is not the road he should take," he told the crowd.

As the rally was ending, a police helicopter flew low overhead. That seemed to emphasize the opinion expressed by some of the conservatives in the crowd, who likened Martinelli to a right-wing mirror image of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez.

Balbina Herrera, decked out in Civilista white

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