A
brief excursion through the dictatorship's constitution and the fate of Omar Torrijos's deal
The
structures that Martinelli and his predecessors have broken
by
Eric Jackson
"I
don't vote for the party, I vote for the person." I used to hear
that in the States a lot more than I do here, but I have
heard it here. The problem, of course, is that "the person"
that the voter perceives is more often than not an artificial persona,
and when the reality of the situation is recognized it's usually
unfortunate and usually too late for the next several years. But then
Panamanian voters will feel betrayed as usual and take it out on
incumbents. The quinquennial voters' revenge is a strong trend that
President Martinelli and his followers will try to overcome, but I
doubt that they will be able to do so by anything but the most
fraudulent means. I also don't think that he can win any sort of
constitutional referendum, even if he can muster the votes to rig the
election laws. Time will tell.
Meanwhile,
the structural changes in Panamanian government continue. The basic
deal that General Omar Torrijos offered to those civilian politicians
willing to play ball with him has been asphyxiating under several
administrations, but now it has been definitively strangled.
In
1968, a week and a half into a new government's tenure, the second
string officers in the Guardia Nacional, then Panama's combined army
and police force, took control of the government, exiled the
president, dissolved the legislature and banned the political
parties. A few months later Omar Torrijos turned on his partner atop
the junta, Boris Martínez,
and exiled him to Miami. With the help of a man Torrijos described as
"my gangster," one Manuel Antonio Noriega, Torrijos fended
off a coup attempt by junior officers and consolidated his power. By
the ordinary cycles of the previous dysfunctional democracy, there
should have been elections in 1972. Instead, Torrijos imposed a
"constitution" by which he declared himself the maximum
leader of the revolution, and an arcane process by which he more or
less appointed civilian representantes for each corregimiento. In
1978, with a need to put on a pretense of democracy for the Americans
in order to get the Panama Canal Treaties ratified, his lapdog
representantes amended the constitution into much the format that we
have today, although there were more dictatorship amendments in 1983
and several post-dictatorship amendments.
All
presidents were military puppets until the dictatorship fell in the
1989 US invasion. Most were appointed, but in 1984 Nicolas Ardito
Barletta was imposed by way of election fraud, later to be deposed at
General Noriega's whim.
With
respect to the majority of civilian politicians, the deal was this:
Representantes
(city council members, one from each corregimiento) and legislators
would have no substantial legislative power;
On
the municipal level, the representantes would have powers
circumscribed most of all by the national government's control of
local financing and national government entities' control of
maintaining urban infrastructures, collecting the garbage,
regulating buses and taxis and the other normal things that cities
in most of the rest of the world do;
In
the national legislature, deputies would have powers circumscribed
most of all by a limited ability to propose legislation and an only
theoretical power to investigate and oversee the executive power ---
which remained in the hands of the military until December of 1989
--- and more formally by what is now Article 163, section 2 of the
constitution, which bars the assembly from interfering in matters
which are the exclusive provinces of other branches of the
government;
In
exchange for the lack of ordinary legislative powers, the deputies
and representantes got certain limited executive powers, most
notably through the corregimientos' juntal comunal structures and
the legislators' circuit funds, money to distribute more or less as
they saw fit among their constituents --- the standard practice
being that politicians opposed to the national government's
executive of the moment would get a pittance, but something, while
those who supported the administration would get a lot more; and
Opposition
parties were protected from the dictators', and later the
presidents', manipulations by way of the parties' power to revoke
the mandate of a representante or deputy who sided against the
party.
It
was a sleazy little deal, which relatively honest politicians might
use to fix the Little League field or provide ambulance service in
their constituencies, and which the usual sort of grasping social
climber who went for such offices might spend on a luxury car in
which to tool around town. Some good projects owed their existence to
the legislators' and representantes' discretionary funds, but the
abuses became something of a national joke.
Starting
with Ernesto Pérez Balladares and accelerating under Mireya Moscoso
and Martín Torrijos, political patronage was centralized through
first cutbacks and then the elimination of deputies' and
representantes' discretionary funds. Now Ricardo Martinelli is going
several steps beyond by eliminating some of the few remaining
independent municipal revenue sources (sign fees, for example) and by
blocking all manner of national spending in legislative circuits and
corregimientos represented by opposition politicians who refuse to
defect to his Cambio Democratico party.
Since
the Moscoso administration, the corrupt magistrates of the Electoral
Tribunal have interposed delays that have effectively prevented
political parties from removing defectors to other parties, and
flagrant crooks who got caught in the act, from their public offices.
Martinelli has jammed through legislation that's probably
unconstitutional --- but he controls the courts. It sets up
impossible procedures for a party to revoke a legislator's or city
council member's mandate. Mainly through blackmail, Martinelli has
coerced many legislators, mayors and city council members to defect
to his party.
Should
anybody sympathize with anyone in all of this? If a slippery
opportunist who ran for an office that she or he knew had few powers
but some nice perks gets compelled to switch parties, should anyone
feel bad about it?
Don't
pay undue attention to personas, and don't believe in the discredited
parties. But do understand the structure of what is going on: a deal
that the dictatorship offered to civilians to give itself a window
dressing opposition that made ineffective speeches in the legislature
and cut ribbons on community projects has been abrogated, and it's
being replaced with an arrangement even more totalitarian than the
dictatorship's.
By cutting off possibilities for citizen
participation in public affairs and democratic avenues toward change,
Martinelli may be rigging things to prolong his or his party's stay
in power. However, far more effectively than promoting that desired
goal of his, he's putting a pressure cooker lid on a shoddy Super 99
pan of simmering discontent, setting the country up for some sort of
explosion.
So
do we want a return to General Torrijos's deal? Should we demand the
restoration of circuit funds and the representantes' public spending
powers? Is it a good idea to restore the disciplinary authority of
the political parties?
Actually,
we should put all that stuff behind us. The dictatorship made a
cynical deal, and an ever more corrupt series of civilian governments
has revoked it. Now the citizens must find a way to revoke
Martinelli's structural changes to the government and hold him
accountable for what he has done. But to do that there will need to
be a new constitution, a clean sweep of all branches of government,
and a transformed political culture. Those are all dangerous things,
but we are being left with ever less choice. Continuing as we have
been is not really a viable option.
