US Air Force building the air base in Meteti, Darien in 2010.

Is SENAFRONT there to defend Panama’s sovereignty?

It’s a story told often enough, in many different versions. The DEA agent, a US civil servant with a middle class standard of living that would seem fabulous to the Latin America cop, sits down to meet with one of the latter and notices the Rolex watch and expensive jewelry. The agent quickly realizes that she’s in the presence of the enemy.

Who knows what happened, how it happened or why? The Pentagon has insisted that the commander of SENAFRONT, the National Frontier Service that is both Panama’s border patrol and our de facto army, Commissioner Erick Estrada, be removed. President Varela is apparently going along with it. La Estrella reports that it’s about Estrada’s opposition to a string of US military electronic sensors in the Meteti area. All very classified, in a country where the US military bases were supposed to have been gone nearly 20 years ago.

Does a top Panamanian law enforcement officer have to be a crook to resist this country becoming, like back in 1904, a US military protectorate? Will there be more purges in the National Police when it is discovered that there are cops who don’t like Panama being used as a staging point for US military operations against Venezuela?

And what about a Panamanian diplomat or law enforcement official who has the occasion to sit down to meet with Donald Trump. Will SHE quickly realize that she’s in the presence of the enemy?

Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss. ‘Mr. Trump, you’re no Pittsburgh Phil.’

Dr. Warren, The Donald and Pittsburgh Phil

Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss (1909-1941) was Murder Incorporated’s most prolific and gifted hit man. He was never tried for the great majority of his crimes – he is said to have killed more than 100 people – but finally the State of New York got him on just enough, and executed him in the electric chair at Sing Sing.

When the cops nabbed him and pulled him before the court, he didn’t get all weepy and repentant and rediscover the Jewish faith of his ancestors. He didn’t deny that he had ever killed anyone. He pleaded insanity and acted up for the reporters and all others assembled. He probably was mentally ill, but he knew what his profession was and he knew that society considered it wrong. The jury didn’t buy it but Pittsburgh Phil kept up the act right up to the switch being thrown.

Donald Trump has surely heard that story. A New Yorker, The Donald has done business with mobsters all through his business career, starting with New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia notables from La Cosa Nostra, to money laundering for Russian gangsters starting in the 1980s, to a collection of former Soviet, Colombian, Brazilian and Panamanian underworld figures with his ill-fated project here.

Does he know that money laundering for mobsters is wrong? Does he know that calling foreign powers in to meddle in American elections is wrong? Perhaps The Donald is so self-centered that other people’s opinions mean nothing to him – but he has lied, and he has instructed others to lie, so there is at least an intellectual understanding about society’s official view. Even if, deep down inside, he believes that the universe revolves around himself so any other standard is beside the point.

Trump has been in rare, raving, threatening form of late. Revelations that he told off to US intelligence people who gave him bad news with an “I don’t care — I believe Putin” rejoinder is just gravy. People he once appointed are now dirty rats, treasonous and so on. He threatens the folks at Saturday Night Live with retribution. He threatens to overturn the constitutional arrangement in which the US House of Representatives holds the purse strings, seeking to declare a “state of emergency” in which he misappropriates these powers.

Dr. Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, presidential hopeful and noteworthy economist, suggests that in light of the president’s erratic behavior, the cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment and declare him medically incapacitated. That would be the end of Trump’s presidency and the start of Pence’s reign of religious fanaticism. It might be a quick and elegant solution, a wise and prudent idea from she who would be president.

But do we really want to let The Donald beat the rap on insanity?

Bear in mind…

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Enough of this corruption

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The Panamanian government, given present-day power brokers’ lack of will, does nothing – in reality – to diminish or eradicate the corruption that has become entrenched in each and every sphere of this country.

Within this degenerative process, the scourge of corruption ever more the consumes highest public officials and the top managers of private enterprise. Uncontrolled, it permeates all social sectors, creating explosive situations of exclusion and injustice.

The lack of means for citizen participation, on the other hand, contributes to the absence and ineffectiveness of control mechanisms needed to contain the local Odebrechts and their accessories within the machinery, such as the Comptroller’s and the Attorney General’s offices.

Electoral populism is fully and busily engaged. It’s a fraudulent tournament of corny tricks promoted by the three electoral magistrates and co-sponsored by their buddies in the courts and the legislature. Any desire to empower the citizenry to participate in national events through the full exercise of our rights is totally repudiated by misnamed “political class.”

Whatever civic preventive action through inspections, observers or demands for accountability in the face of multiple cases of corruption is not contemplated by any of the candidates. This warns us that “change so that nothing changes” has hijacked the process.

Day by day, we live in a “democracy” that has been hijacked by a few, for a few, and to the detriment of the great majority that’s reduced to being spectators rather than actors.

The participation of citizens in different spaces is urgent. To do this, organizing ourselves around a constituent process will allow us to better defend the public interest and strengthen civic action. “No to reelection,” for example, goes hand in hand with no more corruption.

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The ACP board of directors. They are short-handed due to a resignation — which was NOT one of the four members who have been named in criminal investigations or unflattering audit reports. ACP Photo.

The qualifications for ACP board members

by Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo

The Panama Canal continues to be the centerpiece of any analysis of Panamanian reality. As a result of a negotiation – really an imposition — made at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States built the waterway that connects the two largest oceans on the planet. From 1914 to 1999, the canal was administered by the United States, based on the global geopolitical interests of that northern country. In 1999 the waterway, and all of the infrastructure that accompanied it, was transferred to the Panamanian government once the Torrijos-Carter Canal Treaty signed in 1977 was fulfilled.

Since 2000, the canal has been managed by the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), a public company whose sole shareholder is the Panamanian people. Canal revenues are almost entirely the product of tolls paid by more than 14,000 ships — of all sizes — that pass through their locks annually. In 2018 it had revenues that exceeded $3 billion. Nearly half went directly to the coffers of the Panamanian Treasury to be incorporated into the national budget.

Despite this enormous wealth that the treasury gets every year, little is known about how the canal is managed. The ACP is about to get its third administrator. It has a board of directors made up of 11 members. The board appoints the administrator. Of the members of the board, nine are appointed by the President of the Republic for a period of 10 years. Another is the Minister of Canal Affairs. There is also a deputy elected by the National Assembly. The board of directors should be accountable to the sole shareholder of the sanal: the Panamanian people. Every year in the National Assembly – which according to the Constitution represents the people — the president of the board of directors of the ACP delivers a check that leaves everyone astonished by the huge sum that it represents.

But who are the members of the board of directors? Are they prepared to fulfill their obligations? Are they at the service of the country or do they have other agendas?

It is up to the current president — Juan Carlos Varela — to appoint three new board members before he hands over his office to his successor on July 1, 2019. Like the last four presidents, everything indicates that he will select them under pressure from powerful economic interests. The members of the board of directors handle billions of dollars from canal revenues and related activities. Most do not have much knowledge about the waterway. Some do not know it at all. Many come to the ACP with another agenda.

What are the qualification that the members of the board of directors should have?

Let’s make a list of six basic areas with which the chosen one should be familiar. If she or he meets the six qualities mentioned below, that makes an excellent candidate for the position of director. If five traits are found, that’s very good. Those who can handle four are good or acceptable. Those who only have three or less they are unacceptable.

• The first quality is that to know the details of world maritime trade. This incudes the projections of world production and maritime technologies. It includes knowing the importance of commercial routes.
• The second quality is to have knowledge the security of the 9,000 ACP employees. Not just workplace safety, but their levels of education, health, pay scales and prospects for the future
• Third, a director should know the details of how that complex structure that is the canal is maintained.
• Fourth is a good knowledge of the watersheds that feed the canal the water that ships need to travel from one ocean to the other. In addition, urban growth and its impact on the waterway.
• Fifth, knowledge of how to guarantee expeditious access to financial resources so as to be ever more autonomous.
• Finally, the director should have a working knowledge of geopolitics and of the interests of the great powers, in order to maintain the neutrality of the canal and the country in a conflictive world.

Obviously, the board of directors should have naval engineers, environmentalists, economists and financiers, labor lawyers, international relations specialists and sociologists to be in a position to supervise the entire operation of the canal. At present, these are conspicuous by their absence. President Varela can fill that void. He can choose new directors from among his school friends or his fellow party members, as Panamanian presidents usually do. Provided that they master at least four or more of the qualities mentioned above.

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In reality, a Panameñista campaign ad. But because it’s posted on the president’s Twitter feed instead of on billboards, the Electoral Tribunal will see it otherwise.

At long last, it comes to this

President Varela took farms and homes from people and gave them to the subsidiary of US-owned Dole. The people evicted were offered irrisory compensation, nothing all close to replacement value.

Ancient petroglyphs considered holy to many of the Ngäbe people were flooded over and destroyed, as a gift to Honduran hustlers, European investors and a rabiblanco law firm who got a dam concession with a fraudulent environmental impact  statement. Varela said that foreign interests trump those of Panamanians.

Panamanian neutrality as our main defense of the Panama Canal? Varela takes orders from the Pentagon, takes sides with the most atrocious human rights abusers in the Middle East and has given an excuse to a wide variety of fanatics in many places to see Panama as an enemy power. So of course his administration ends with the overt return of US forces to the isthmus.

Look and listen carefully to the candidates. Is there someone who will lead Panama back toward independence?

This raucous, squabbling party will have a crowded 2020 presidential primary field. That’s not a bad thing. Those who are busy trying to “clear the field” by defaming candidates do neither America nor the Democratic Party any service.

The “killer” Bs…

Enough of the dangerous fiend imagery.

There is all the time in the world for things to change but polls suggest that the GOP base is sticking with Donald Trump and that any of the many candidates of possible candidates for the 2020 Democratic nomination would beat Trump. Alarmist stuff about how the Democrats die if they go to the left, or go to the right, or try someone new, or get stuck on someone old – that’s just nonsense.

Are there foreign voices in the crowd? Perhaps, but surely this is mainly homespun by operatives and pundits, or wannabe operative or pundits, looking for advantage in what will be a large crowd of candidates.

Speculation about the so-far undeclared ones is more interesting than the vilification of those already announced. Will Biden run? Will Beto jump in? Will Bernie take the plunge?

Could be that we get these three men in the race, in a year when Democrats are looking for a woman. Could be that anyone with any sort of record in public life gets it cherry picked for that one obscure datum that can bludgeon a campaign to death. Perhaps….

If any or all of these guys decide to run for president, they should be welcomed and respectfully heard. If anyone runs a “Stop B…” or stop anybody else campaign, the purveyors of that are the ones who ought to be outed and stopped. This time Democrats should get to vote for whom they want without threat or stigma.

The mortal threat to Democrats this time around is the possibility of would-be power brokers rigging or appearing to rig the primaries. That could leave people whose votes the eventual Democratic nominee needs unenthusiastic about voting in the fall.

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