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The political maneuvering after Changuinola

In Changuinola, President Martinelli's cops killed at least two people, wounded many others and arrested many more. However, the cops took a few licks themselves, a bank that allowed the police to use its roof to fire down on protesters was torched and Martinelli's reputation with the Panamanian people went into a nosedive. The anti-labor provisions of the unpopular Law 30 may be a dead letter for three months or so, but the things that prompted the protests --- an attempt to destroy the labor movement by effectively preventing unions from collecting dues or going on strike, an attempt to gut what remains of Panama's environmental protections, and impunity for abuses committed by cops while on the job --- are central to the president's program and are unlikely to be abandoned in any legislative or negotiation process that Martinelli controls.

As this story was written, the legislative committee hearings on the suspension of Law 30 had run their course but the "final" version had not been enacted. In debates it appeared that there were members of the president's coalition, Panameñistas in particular, ready to repeal the law in its entirety. However, the version submitted by the president and approved by the committee would only suspend the Labor Code changes, and not the impunity for police officers or the exemption of development projects deemed in the "social interest" from the requirement of an environmental impact study. In that sense the promise that the government made to end the confrontation in Changuinola, the suspension of the labor, environmental and police provisions, has already been broken.

The deletions that Martinelli and his supporters have made from the government's pledge are major bones of contention with the environmentalist movement and civil liberties advocates, but most of all they are infuriating to indigenous people who stand to be displaced from their lands, generally with riot police conducting the evictions. It's far from a side issue --- what happened in Bocas is not just a matter of a banana strike that was badly handled and turned violent, but also of people from Ngobe and Naso communities above Changuinola coming down from the hills to join in the protests.


The vital Naso and Ngobe issues are land and water rights, but the pervasive racism against indigenous people that has long flowed out of the government and economic elites in Panama City hardens and embitters the property dispute. Reneging on the pledges made to end the fighting in Changuinola less than a week after they were made only aggravates the situation.

So, too, do a number of other governmental actions:

• Acting attorney general Giuseppe Bonissi went to Changuinola and pleaded with people who had been hurt to get medical attention, and promised to investigate the situation. But then it turned out that there isn't going to be a prosecutorial investigation of police actions, but the list of people who have been called in for questioning as the first step in being charged with riot offenses fairly closely matches the list of those most seriously injured by police. At least 155 protesters, almost all of them indigenous, have been called in to give depositions for use against themselves in criminal proceedings.



• Asserting a traditional white land baron's prerogative, President Martinelli sent his social secretary, Dayra Fábrega, over to Panama City's inexpensive Hotel Doral, where a number of people from Changuinola whose injured family members are in hospitals in the capital are staying, to kick the indigenous people out. No law was cited because the president's action flagrantly violates anti-discrimination provisions of Panama's constitution. On a second visit to the hotel, Fábrega found reporters, lawyers and human rights observers on the premises and backed down, saying that the president's "get out of town" order was all a misunderstanding.



• Martinelli announced that people in the Naso communities would get land titles --- but not the communities' collective title to the land they have held communally for many generations, but for smaller, individual titles that can be alienated from the community. That is, he announced that the Naso way of life would be abolished and more Naso land would be taken by outsiders.



• The Electoral Tribunal --- not under Martinelli's control but also not sympathetic to indigenous people --- announced that it was changing dates and procedures for elections in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca. That is, that white judges and lesser-ranking outsiders would take control over the political processes in the supposedly autonomous indigenous commonwealth, thus inherently undermining self-rule.



• A steady stream of insults flowed out of the Martinelli political entourage. For example, Cambio Democratico legislator Mario Miller said that the indigenous protesters were maleantes hired by sinister outsiders to come in from Costa Rica and elsewhere in Bocas del Toro to cause trouble and embarrass Martinelli. He offered no proof. The Martinelli camp threw out lots of allegations that the protesters were drunk or under the influence of drugs, again without offering any proof.



• Martinelli appointed a committee to investigate the disturbances that was heavily laden with political activists from his camp but included a Catholic parish priest from Bocas.



• Purportedly to calm the crisis, Martinelli revived the Torrijos administration's "Concertación" process of "dialogue" among carefully selected presidential representatives from various sectors of society. To head this process he appointed the mining executive Mario Jaramillo, who works for Geotech, one of Richard Fifer's companies in the environmental scofflaw Petaquilla gold mine project. The Ngobe in particular take this as a sign that there will be no serious talks that might deter the strip mining of Cerro Colorado in the heart of the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, which is almost universally opposed by the people in that area and along the streams and rivers that originate on that copper-rich mountain.

The opposition PRD has showed some signs of revival during the crisis. However, with key figures from both the Pérez Balladares and Torrijos administrations facing criminal prosecution on a variety of scandals and opportunist elected officials and patronage-seeking activists switching over to Martinelli's Cambio Democratico hundreds at a time, it's the party "out crowd" --- former Panama City mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, former legislator Laurentino Cortizo and relative unknowns in the party's current National Assembly caucus --- that are most prominent in opposing Law 30.

Organized labor? That accounts for maybe 10 percent of those who work for someone else, but about 40 percent of working Panamanians are in the self-employed informal sector. Moreover, although feuding moderate and militant unions are now cooperating more than they have in years, there is still a deep divide and on a day to day basis they mostly don't work together.

The left? That might represent 10 percent or so of the adult population but the same divisions that are in the labor movement are there. The biggest division goes back decades, between those who opposed the military dictatorship and those who supported it.

The environmentalists? Like the "civil society" groups in general, this fragmented movement has not shown much political muscle since the waning days of the Moscoso administration, when it blocked a proposed road through Volcan Baru National Park.

The doctors, lawyers and other professionals? They've largely turned against Martinelli, the lawyers are filing suits against Law 30 and criminal charges against Martinelli administration officials for what happened in Changuinola left and right, many public sector doctors will walk out or just not work except for emergencies in any symbolic strike and the opinions of professionals will carry weight among many less-educated Panamanians, but the rule of law is weak in this country and the rich get private health care, so Martinelli is disposed to ignore these people.

What Martinelli will find more difficult to ignore is a sharp drop in public support. Different pollsters have different methods and there has been some political and business manipulation with which questions get asked and which results get published. However, a comparative poll of public support for presidents in the region taken by CID/Gallup before the events in Changuinola showed Martinelli's popularity in steep decline, while a Dichter & Neira poll taken as the protests in Bocas del Toro were unfolding also showed dropping presidential popularity and large majorities for the propositions that the country is on the wrong track and that if given the opportunity again people would not vote to make Martinelli their president.

The Presidencia still has a large advertising budget to manipulate public opinion, but the perception that his public standing is diminished is affecting his hold on his Panameñista coalition partners and the ways that he is treated by the mainstream media. It has not so far meant a breakup of the ruling alliance or fundamental changes in editorial perspectives, but it has meant a greater willingness by politicians in allied parties to criticize the president and his policies. These things are going to matter in the polls because the president has been engaged in undisguised conflicts of interest for his own personal financial benefit --- things like overpriced food purchases by the Ministry of Social Development from his own Ricamar food packaging company --- and the taboos against discussion of and reporting on these sorts of things is breaking down.

The Law 30 controversy and the decline in presidential standing come in the wake of Martinelli's failure to garner Panameñista support for his idea of holding annual plebiscites about various subjects chosen by himself. The coalition partners are wary of a constitutional change that would allow for Martinelli's re-election, and beyond that they don't seem eager to give the president greater power to determine the subjects of public discourse and are absolutely terrified of the public being able to do so by initiative or referendum petition. The underlying problem in the alliance is that although Martinelli has pledged that the coalition will go united into the 2014 elections with a Panameñista as its standard bearer, many Panameñistas don't trust him to keep this promise and the party as a whole is not going to put him in a position to break it.

Thus Panama has a weakened president, but with nobody now strong enough to override his vast authority.

Images of a presidency: racing to fill empty spaces and grab commanding positions

Part of Ricardo Martinelli's political strategy has been to strengthen his hold on the news media. He has attempted to do this by various means, most of all by the selective use of a large government advertising fund and by control over access to the government to deny it to journalists who oppose him.

Before the 2009 election Martinelli bought a minority stake in the TVN television network, but control of that company is firmly in the hands of the Motta family and all attempts to turn its news department's editorial policy from the Mottas' traditional pro-PRD alignment toward Martinelli's purposes have failed. The other major television broadcaster, the MEDCOM company that owns the RPC and Telemetro networks as well as the Cable Onda cable system, is firmly in the hands of PRD supporters. That has left Martinelli and his supporters to buy the small RCM news channel from the PRD's Noel Riande and to inherit control of the SERTV public channel as one of the spoils of winning the presidency.

Among the daily newspapers, La Prensa is run by an oligarchic alliance in which the PRD has a say and business and professional sectors that are uneasy with Martinelli for various reasons have most of the rest of the say. La Estrella and El Siglo are run by former Christian Democrats who prize their independence, and happen to be Arabs who are not impressed by photos of Martinelli's presidential guards shooting at targets that are pictures of Arabs. El Panama America and La Critica are owned by the heirs of Harmodio Arias and on an ideological basis have the most conservative editorial slants of the nation's dailies. Leave it to Martinelli to make clumsy efforts to deport a Spaniard who works for La Prensa and to arrest and humiliate a photojournalist for El Panama America.

How badly is Martinelli's press strategy going? So badly that his press spokeswoman, Judy Meana, is quitting.

Martinelli doesn't know or care what the Chinese-language media say about him, and in any case can count on their traditional deference to authority. In the English-language media, Martinelli's only support was from a website that promotes the fraud artists who infest the English-speaking community and serves as a forum for threats to shoot Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, whom the president has invited to visit here. The rest range from the politely skeptical to the actively hostile. Thus Martinelli or one of his supporters has created a new and anonymous "unfiltered" English-language news website, very much akin to the ephemeral VIP Panama of the Torrijos administration. But that's destined to be a throwaway, so look for Martinelli to have limited ability to shape his image to observers in Washington.

Against that, there is a strengthening of Panamanian leftist voices on the Internet. FRENADESO Noticias is more active, the militant AEVE Veraguas teachers' union now has its own Internet video show and there is a flowering of artistry and journalism among the younger people in the ULIP labor/left alliance. One example of the latter is a satirical video ad, aimed at the Martinelli administration and domestic air carrier Air Panama. It went locally viral before Air Panama prevailed upon YouTube to remove it on the basis of supposed copyright violations.

When Martín Torrijos's political honeymoon was over, his standing in the opinion polls took a major hit over Seguro Social changes. His personal approval ratings improved and he went on to score some noteworthy political triumphs, but he never regained the space for political maneuvering that he had held. If you compare President Martinelli's immediate post-honeymoon standing with that of his predecessor, however, you will notice that Torrijos had many assets that Martinelli does not, the most important of these being the unanimous support of television news signals.

More immediately, Martinelli goes into a public relations war over how the events in Changuinola should be interpreted. The government's version is about highly organized and heavily armed labor goons and indigenous militants, well masked against tear gas and identification, trashing, looting and burning local businesses and attacking the police. A photograph of one protester brandishing a cheap small-caliber pistol, a cop who had suffered a minor bullet wound, three cops who were held hostage by protesters and fire damage to the Banco General in Changuinola are the exhibits for the government's case. But a La Prensa journalist having been shot by police, many photographs of a confrontation fought by protesters armed with stones and police armed with shotguns, videos of police indiscriminately tear gassing residential areas, and many eyewitness claims that the burning of the Banco General happened because the police were atop that building shooting at protesters are the evidence for the counterpoint to the official narrative. The dozens of patients with birdshot wounds to their eyes speak to the proposition that something extraordinary happened in Changuinola. However mainstream media run by people closer in social position to President Martinelli than to banana workers and indigenous villagers in Bocas del Toro lend their credulity to the "savages running wild and the police having to protect themselves against them" version of events.

The different counts of deaths and injuries --- the government claiming only two deaths, protesters and Changuinola residents saying four or more --- are part of the controversy. Martinelli controls the Public Ministry and thus the medical examiners, so the official record is that the infant who died when her family's home was tear gassed and the man who died after taking a dose of gas succumbed to natural causes rather than government action.

The battle over history is being waged for the minds of Panamanians. Although there may be objective truths demonstrable by the forensic sciences, the subjective results that will differ among various social classes of Panamanians will surely affect the president's political fortunes.

Trump card? Martinelli poses with his Israeli-trained presidential guards. Photo by the Presidencia