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Ricardo Martinelli may have had a 73.3 percent job approval rating the last time that the pollsters checked, but that was before a month without potable water for many in the metro area, before one side of the approach to the Centennial Bridge went sliding away and the inevitable traffic jams followed, and above all before WikiLeaks. We shall see what the pollsters say the damage is, but he's hurting.

After having denied it all of last year, we see that the president is on bad terms with Washington --- and that's with fewer than 10 percent of the Martinelli-era US Embassy cables having been published. Well before the respectable middle class civil society groups started saying such things, the former American ambassador noted that "Martinelli seems prepared to dispense with legal procedure," panned his "bullying style" and concluded that he's "naive and dangerous."

Dr. Mauro Zúñiga Araúz, a retired physician and first among equals among the surviving leaders of the Civilista opposition to the 21-year military dictatorship, characterized an incident with the president in this fashion in his newspaper column:

A few weeks ago he arrived at the airport in Albrook in a private plane from Argentina and when the Customs people approached him they found His Excellency in an inebriated state and using his customary foul language...

Over the holidays Martinelli's subservient and corrupt acting attorney general Giuseppe Bonissi was forced to resign after the DEA complained of suspected drug smugglers being released from prison, the prosecutor who did it said that releasing the men was the condition for her being hired, and it was Bonissi who hired her. This, about a year after the former US ambassador complained that Martinelli threatened to throw the US Drug Enforcement Administration out of Panama if they wouldn't help him spy on political opponents.

There are at least 90 more WikiLeaks shoes to drop on Martinelli, he and members of his party are doing things that annoy their coalition partners, and he would have to win a referendum to get the constitutional changes he wants. His friends' purchase of EPASA, the corporate parent of La Critica and El Panama America, still leaves most of the nation's newspapers and the leading television channels under the direction of people who neither trust nor very much like Martinelli. Yes, the ruling party has a presence on radio and online, but its critics dominate those media.

Thus Agustín Sellhorn, husband of and alternate for legislator Marilyn Vallarino, proposed Bill 105, which would add a Section 439-A to the Penal Code. It's a would-be new gag law to criminalize offending, insulting or vilifying the president or any other elected official.

Call Panama City's idiot mayor that, and one might go to jail for it. Write about one of the president's appointments to a diplomatic post in all of its particulars and you might be stripped of your rights as a citizen. Express an opinion about the legislature in keeping with what the polls indicate most Panamanians think about it, and you could be in big trouble. More scandals are coming, and the president's party doesn't want people talking or writing about them.

To that effect Sellhorn, the man who proposed the law that criminalizes blocking the streets to the extent that if fully and literally enforced it would ban all parades, introduced a new gag law, one that would overturn the 2007 legislation that took away the right of presidents and other top government officials to file criminal defamation charges against their critics. (One who libels or slanders the president, however, is still vulnerable to a civil suit after the 2007 reform.) Seconding Sellhorn's motion was fellow Cambio Democratico member José Muñoz, who happens to be president of the National Assembly.

So specifically whom does Cambio Democratico want thrown in jail? In addition to Dr. Zúñiga, Sellhorn and other ruling party members mentioned La Prensa columnist Paco Gómez Nadal, a Spaniard whom the government is trying to have expelled from the country. Gómez is a man of the left, but Zúñiga is an independent political moderate whose only hardcore stands are against corruption and for the democratic liberties over which he fought Noriega.

Would this proposal silence Martinelli's critics, so that Washington politicians who might consider the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement will only hear nice things about Panama's president? Actually, it wouldn't. There may be fewer critics as the chilling effect of the gag law's proposal sets in, and if the thing passes others will surely take refuge in silence, while some others might be forcibly silenced. However, only politicians who get all of their information from Fox News would believe that a silent Panama is voluntarily so --- were Martinelli able to silence his foes.

This gets us to the practical matter about enforcing the proposed gag law. Would it really stop the flow of derogatory information about the government? Manuel Antonio Noriega thought he could do that back in the 80s, and to enforce his will he sent in his goons to shut down opposition media and drove many of his critics into exile. However, he failed to confiscate all fax machines and didn't have enough spies to listen in on all conversations. Nowadays there are email, Facebook and independent websites, as well as the communications media that Noriega couldn't shut down.

We can look at Cuba's controlled press, or the information controls in Chile during the Pinochet years, or many other totalitarian examples, to see how well a severe crackdown on public discourse serves a regime. Usually, not very well, for not very long.

And meanwhile, Martinelli is starting to take a beating both at home and abroad because of this proposal. Gonzalo Marroquín, a Guatemalan newspaper editor and the new president of the Inter-American Press Association, spoke to El Siglo and had this take on the situation:

The Inter-American Press Association is very concerned about the attitude of many Latin American governments that approve or promote laws that restrict the freedom of the press and now it seems that Panama may join the list of these intolerant and authoritarian governments that are seeking to control and limit the flow of information.

All Panamanian journalists' organizations and most Panamanian news media have forthrightly condemned the proposed new gag law. One by one, most of civil society's organizations have joined in opposition. The first to criticize the law was the labor/left FRENADESO umbrella group, which on its website accused Martinelli of attempting to "totally restrict civil rights and Panamanians' fundamental guarantees." In a communique the Colegio Nacional de Periodistas opined that "these types of proposals are a setback, only applied by dictatorial systems."

There are authoritarian minds in all of Panama's political parties. Were the fate of Bill 105 to rest just on individual deputies conducting mental wrestling matches between their consciences and their perceived interests, it would stand an excellent chance of passage. However, this debate is turning into a contest that could determine the future of President Martinelli's alliance. The PRD caucus in the legislature, despite the party's historic ties to the dictatorship, is going to vote against the proposal. The single Partido Popular deputy is opposed to it. Luis Eduardo Quirós, the coordinator of the Panameñista legislative caucus, says his party is studying the matter.

Although the issue may come up again, the Panameñistas in the National Assembly, though allied with Martinelli's party, have twice scuttled proposals that aimed or apparently aimed to allow Martinelli to run for re-election. Martinelli has been raiding other parties, using various threats and enticements to get deputies to leave their parties and join Cambio Democratico. Both the opposition PRD and the ruling alliance partner Panameñistas have been victims of this strategy. It appears that the president is about eight votes short of an absolute majority in the Assembly --- even though in the 2009 elections his party ended up with the third-largest caucus of deputies --- and while there are rumors of a half-dozen new defections to come, the president's political standing appears to be on a downward curve. If amassing absolute power is his goal, this could be the time when Martinelli must go for broke or else watch his political capital dwindle for the rest of his administration.

The debate over Bill 105 may not only be about freedom of the press, but about the survival of Martinelli's coalition. If the record so far is any guide, it's likely that Martinelli approved this proposal without first counting the votes. Vice President Varela, already under pressure from rank-and-file elements of his own party, may not have the option of supporting Martinelli on this issue and remaining the leader of the Panameñista Party. Thus we may see a complicated power struggle that could be more decisive than it is elegant.

Also in this section:
Re-election again divides Martinelli's coalition
New form to carry in your car at all times when driving in Panama
Scandals entangle Martinelli administration
Devastation in the Darien
Nation, Panamanians abroad unite for disaster relief
Unlikely civil society alliance blasts Martinelli's abuses, but the president remains popular
US-Panama relations correct, but cold
Boehner's Panama connection
Cocle residents may breathe a bit easier --- eventually
Unusually heavy rain disrupts many lives
Wikileaks and Latin America
Casco Viejo land grabs