There never was any real question of what it was about. Ricardo Martinelli wanted to stay in power and he used massive resources stolen from the government to do that via a 2014 proxy campaign with the cardboard cut-out character José Domingo “Mimito” Arias at the top of the ticket and first lady Marta Linares de Martinelli for VP. Photo by the Martinelistas.
“Organized crime” — the prosecutors’ own stall card?
by Eric Jackson
La Prensa reports that the Superior Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has asked a judge to declare an investigation that began against Constructora Internacional del Sur SA and now, among others, involves 2014 Cambio Democratico presidential candidate José Domingo “Mimito” Arias to be a “complex” case of “organized crime.” Acceptance of that designation could create a sea change in the legal status of high profile cases, perhaps including some not yet formally incorporated into this investigation.
It is said that Constructora Internacional del Sur was a shell created by the criminal Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht as a part of an international money laundering chain to conceal illegal payments made to political figures. Already named in the case are Odebrecht, the Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras, executives of both Odebrecht and Petrobras, dignitaries of record of Constructora Internaacional del Sur, and lawyers with the Panamanian law firm Rosas & Rosas who are accused of setting up the scheme.
The probe has developed to involve Brazilian political consultants João Santana and Mônica Moura, husband and wife, who were hired to run the 2014 Ricardo Martinelli proxy re-election campaign, formally the ticket of José Domingo “Mimito” Arias and Marta Linares de Martinelli. Arias is under criminal investigation for receiving illegal foreign campaign contributions by way of Odebrecht paying for the services of Santana and Moura, and for participating in a money laundering scheme by which the provenance of the money used in this transaction was concealed. Arias, a barely known and undistinguished man with an aristocratic surname, denies the charges. After questioning, however, prosecutors are unconvinced of his explanations of how the money for the campaign managers came from a legitimate source.
If the investigation is certified by the courts as a complex organized crime case, then the time limits on the investigation come off. Sop long as the call to bring the case to trial has not yet been made, the ongoing investigation could lead to other defendants being added.
Now incarcerated former president Ricardo Martinelli and his accomplices have been trying to run out the calendar on the many corruption investigations against themselves by interposing many motions for delays. At the moment the Public Ministry has no jurisdiction over Martinelli because he is a member of the Central American Parliament, which gives the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction over him. But if he is extradited from the United States and convicted on warrantless wiretapping charges, the high court would surely remove him from PARLACEN as part of the sentence. Then he would be subject to a Public Ministry probe.
If it’s a complex organized crime case against the full panoply of Odebrecht corruption here, a convicted Martinelli might well be haled into court as a defendant in such a case. But if the courts decline to certify the case against Mimito et al as a complex organized crime matter, then the chances become good that statutes of limitations or time limits on investigations may be run and even the most egregious cases of corruption could be barred from ever coming to trial.
In a sense, Martinelli’s stall tactics are now being called by prosecutors playing a stall card of their own. It’s likely to become the subject of feverish litigation all up and down the Panamanian court system.
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The Cave of the Patriarchs, a building with a contested name in a town with a contested name in a country with a contested name. But it’s a holy place in Palestine.
Abe, Izzy & Bibi
by Uri Avnery
The whole thing could have been a huge practical joke, if it had not been real.
All of Israel was taken in. Left, right and center. All the newspapers and TV networks, without exception.
There it was: UNESCO has declared that the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron is a Palestinian heritage site.
I admit that I was taken in, too. The news was so clear and so simple, its acceptance so uniform, that I too accepted it unthinkingly. True, it was a bit strange, but stranger things happen.
The “Cave of Machpelah” is no cave at all. It is a large building, which the Arabs call al-Haram al-Ibrahim, the Mosque of Ibrahim, in the center of Hebron, the town the Arabs call al-Khalil, the Friend of God (meaning Abraham).
According to the Bible, Abraham, the forefather of the Jews, bought the place from its local owner as a burial plot for his wife, Sarah. When his time came, he was also buried there, as were his son Isaac with his wife Rivka and his grandson, Jacob, with his wife Leah. (His other wife, Rachel, is supposed to be buried on the way to Bethlehem.)
And here comes UNESCO, the anti-Semitic cultural branch of the anti-Semitic UN, and declares that this is a Palestinian holy site!
Is there no limit to Jew-baiting?
A tsunami of emotions surged over Israel. Jews were united in protest. Everybody vented their anger as loudly as possible. Rarely was such unanimity seen here.
If I had stopped to think for a moment, I would have realized that the whole thing was nonsense. UNESCO does not assign places to nations. World Heritage sites are — well — the heritage of the entire world. As a detail, these declarations mention in which country each World Heritage site is located.
The holy church in Nazareth is located in Israel, but it does not “belong” to Israel. The graves of holy Jewish rabbis in Russia or Egypt do not belong to Israel. UNESCO did not say that the Machpelah-al-Haram al-Ibrahim site belongs to the Palestinians. It said that it is located in Palestine.
Why Palestine? Because, according to international law, the town of Hebron is part of Palestine, which was recognized by the UN as a state under occupation. Under Israeli law, too, Hebron is not a part of Israel proper but under military occupation.
I am grateful to an ex-Israeli called Idan Landau who lives in the United States. He took the trouble to read the original text and sent us emails to correct our impression. The moment I read it, I hit myself on the brow. How could I have been so stupid!
The UNESCO resolution is fair and correct. It remarks that the site is holy to the three monotheistic religions, as indeed it is. Because of this, a Jewish fanatic — a settler from America — once murdered dozens of praying Muslims there. Jewish fanatics have settled nearby.
Is the place really holy? That is a silly question. A place is as holy as people believe it to be.
Are Abraham and his progeny really buried there?
Even that is irrelevant. Many people – myself included – believe that the entire first part of the Bible, up to the Assyrian era, is fictitious. That does not make the Bible less wonderful. It is the most beautiful work of literature on earth. At least the (original) Hebrew version.
If one believes that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were real persons, it would still be doubtful that they are buried there. An entire school of archaeologists believes that the burial place is somewhere else in Hebron, not the building now known as the Cave of Machpelah. The graves there are those of Muslim sheikhs.
Be that as it may, millions believe that the Biblical forefathers are buried in the Cave. For them, the place is holy, and it is located in occupied Palestine.
But if you take the Bible so literally, you should also read verse 9 of chapter 25 of Genesis: “And Abraham gave up the ghost and died in a good old age… And his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in the cave of Machpelah.”
When I pointed this out to people who had attended Israeli schools, they were deeply shocked. Because this verse is never mentioned in any Israeli school. It does not exist.
Why? Because Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, as Isaac is the forefather of the Jews. We learned that Sarah, our foremother, who is described in the Bible as a real bitch, induced her obedient spouse, Abraham, to send his concubine Hagar and their son, Ishmael, into the desert, there to die of thirst. But an angel saved them, and they disappeared, though the Bible gives a long list of his progeny.
The revelation that the Bible in fact says the opposite is shocking. So Ishmael did not disappear, but somewhere along the line made his peace with Isaac. The two sons buried their father together.
This changes the story completely. It means that the Bible makes the Arabs, too, rightful heirs of the Cave of Machpelah, side by side with the Jews and the Christians.
I do not believe that Binyamin Netanyahu ever read this verse. He knows only what every Israeli pupil knows. The strict Orthodox line.
This week, at the height of the UNESCO hysteria, Netanyahu did something bizarre: in the middle of a formal cabinet meeting he pulled a kippah from his pocket, put it on and started to read from the Bible (not the aforementioned verse, of course). He looked positively happy. He was showing the bloody Goyim up for what they are: anti-Semites all.
Does Netanyahu really believe (as I think he does) that this part of Biblical legend is history? If so, he has the mind of a 10 year old. If he does not, he is a cheat. In any case, he is a very able demagogue.
But he is not alone. Far from it. The President of Israel, a very nice gentleman, reiterated Netanyahu’s accusations against UNESCO. So did the speaker of the Knesset, an immigrant from the Soviet Union.
It took about four days for some Israeli commentators to cite the true text of the UNESCO resolution. They did not apologize, of course, but at least they started to quote the actual text. Shyly and quietly some other commentators joined them. Most of their colleagues did not.
Special mention is due to Carmel Shama Hacohen, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO. He is not known as a pillar of wisdom. Indeed, he was only sent to UNESCO in order to allow a protégé of the foreign minister to take over his place in the Knesset.
During the UNESCO meeting, Shama-Hacohen — (his real name was just Shama, but that sounds too Arab, so he added the very Jewish Hacohen) — got very excited. He started a shouting match with the Palestinian ambassador, rushed to the dais and shouted at the chairman, too.
William Shakespeare might have called all this “much ado about nothing,” except for two points.
One is that it shows how easy it is to send all of (Jewish) Israel — all without exception! — into a holy rage. Politicians and commentators from left and right, east and west, religious and secular, unite into one raging mass, even when the pretext is false.
Such an eruption can have very serious consequences. It disables all inner brakes.
The other aspect is even more dangerous.
At the height of the tsunami, it suddenly hit me that everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely. And then I realized why.
For hundreds of years, Jews in Europe were persecuted, deported, tortured and killed. It was a part of reality. They were used to it. Anti-Semitism of all kinds, including the murderous one, was a part of reality. The sadism of the goyim was met with the masochism of the Jews.
(As I have suggested in the past, this is a part of Western Christian culture, emanating from the crucifixion story in the New Testament.
It does not exist as such in Islam, since the prophet admonished his believers to protect the two other “peoples of the book” — Jews and Christians.)
Since World War II and the Holocaust, the old vicious European anti-Semitism has disappeared, or gone underground. But Jews have not got used to that. They are sure that it is lurking somewhere, that it can return any minute. When it does, or when it seems to, Jews are apt to feel “I told you so!”
In Israel, this is even more complex. Zionism hoped to rid Jews of their “exilic” complexes. To turn us into a normal people, “a people like other peoples.”
It seems that this has not been quite successful. Or that the success is receding under the stewardship of Netanyahu and his ilk.
This episode has made many Jews happy. They say to themselves: “We were right! All the Goyim are anti-Semites!”
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In 2014 Senator Tammy Duckworth, who came back from service as a helicopter pilot in Iraq missing parts of her legs and partly disabled in one arm, set a a precedent. Then serving in the US House of Representatives, she was the first member of that body to give birth to a child while in office. Photo by the US Department of Agriculture.
What Democrats are saying
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President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud agree on US support for the Saudi royal family’s Sunni jihad. White House photo by Shealah Craighead.
What Republicans are saying
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Ricardo Martinelli’s current residence, the Miami Federal Detention Center. For an overview of the US and international law and procedures that apply to his case, click here. Photo by the US Bureau of Prisons.
Martinelli’s alternatives
by Marco A. Gandásegui, hijo
It’s a month since the incarceration of President Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) in Miami. Martinelli is not alone in his cell at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. Along with him are the consciences of the Panamanian rulers of the last 25 years. The difference between the former president and his counterparts is a question of degree. Martinelli, according to his friends, celebrated with great fanfare the day he announced that he was a “billionaire.”
Martinelli is in detention awaiting the order of an extradition trial requested by the Panamanian authorities. Documents were presented to the US government that involved Martinelli in tapping the telephones of his political opponents while he was ruling.
If the judge rules that Martinelli must return to Panama to face justice, his expulsion is not automatic. The US president and his secretary of state have the last word. If they consider that it is not convenient — for reasons of “national security” — then they can dismiss the verdict of justice and Martinelli stays in the United States. There has been an extradition agreement between the two countries since 1904.
Politics prevail over justice. How likely is it that President Trump would decide to ignore a court decision contrary to Martinelli’s interests? Not much chance.
Martinelli is the epitome of Panamanian society in the 21st century. Without doubt, it is a society that should radically change. After the American military invasion of 1989, the defeat of the national project created the conditions for an oligarchy to seize the state apparatuses. Under the mantle of the “Washington Consensus” and with the guidance of the US Embassy, the government machinery at the service of its enrichment. The oligarchs privatized the most profitable public enterprises, eliminated jobs and reduced wages, increased subsidies for the rich, and abandoned the education system, health services, and public safety.
In 2000, the Panamanian government assumed the administration of the Panama Canal. This has been a source of previously unimaginable income. At this juncture, Martinelli proved his political fate in the government allying himself with the Panameñista Party, having previously served in a Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) administration. The experience served to found his own party — Democratic Change (CD) — and to launch his candidacy in 2004, which was unsuccessful. Like the other oligarchic parties, its only objective was to arrive at the political power to assault the public coffers.
In 2009 Martinelli returned to throw his hat in the ring. With the open intervention of the US Embassy, he had better luck. His alliance with the Panameñistas gave him the victory. With growth rates of the Gross Domestic Product on the average of about eight percent a year, the Martinelli team put its hands to work. It appears that there was no governmental initiative that was not turned into a business.
To neutralize the political opposition, from the Presidential Palace he asked the US Embassy to tap the phones of his enemies. The requests were documented in electronic cables that WikiLeaks published, along with other materials that exposed the American Embassy’s interference.
Now his fate depends on the decision of a judge in Miami? Is there sufficient evidence to order his handover to Panamanian authorities?
Justice is not “blind” in the USA. There are many political interests, including economic ones, that are in play. The American prosecutors have gathered evidence that associates Martinelli with crimes that can be prosecuted in the United States. If Washington is interested in using Martinelli as a piece for some political move, they can accuse him and bring him to trial in that country. The longer the decision by the South Florida federal judge to extradite him is delayed, the more time US prosecutors have to file a case against the former Panamanian president.
Martinelli has a political card that he might play as the result of his incarceration in the United States. The supermarket magnate has announced that he will try to come back to Panama to run for mayor of the capital city in 2019. That candidacy would serve as a trampoline for his to compete in the 2024 elections for president of the republic.
His adventure in Florida can be used to present himself as a victim of low blows suffered in the USA and shock the voters with his version of the injustices he saw in the “entrails of the monster,” so that he could win.
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We conclude instead that the need to enforce our Nation’s treaty obligations, as well as the preservation of our leadership role in the proper administration of justice, require that we follow the general rule and Order the Defendant detained while the extradition process is completed.
Edwin G. Torres
United States Magistrate Judge
The readers should know that precedent plays a much larger role in the Anglo-American Common Law systems of justice than it does in the Civil Code systems that derive from Roman Law via the Napoleonic Code. US law, with some exceptions in Louisiana and the US colony of Puerto Rico, is of the Common Law tradition, deriving from a legal system developed case by case in an England with no written constitution as such. Panamanian law, of the Civil Code lineage, takes little heed of previous cases and instead concentrates on the letter of written laws, informed by certain maxims and rules of interpretation.
Extradition, that’s a matter of international law, in the case of one Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal an intersection of Common Law and Civil Code jurisdictions, governed above all by written treaties but also by the customary law of nations. One of the important customary values of international law and relations is reciprocity.
Can we talk of reciprocity between the United States and a nation with a population barely one percent the size of its own? Can we talk about reciprocity between a country whose military forces operate on Panamanian soil and seas, and in our air space, with notwithstanding agreements formally mutual there is no such Panamanian presence in the United States? Is any such discussion relevant given a narcissistic rich kid bully who is clueless to the world of diplomacy occupying the White House?
Although Mr. Trump may be offended at the suggestion that it may be so, there are adults on the scene, in the other branches of government and in the bureaucracy of his own, who matter in the American scheme of things. Judges — even those with surnames like Torres — make decisions that matter, frequently without regard to what presidents may wish them to do. In any case, as the US State Department approved the move toward extraditing Martinelli to Panama, it would probably be erroneous to presume that Trump doesn’t want to rid the United States of the former Panamanian president. As much as reciprocity appears not to have any role in the motives of Mr. Trump’s personal behavior, he probably has his other reasons in the extradition case at hand.
For Judge Edwin G. Torres, the federal magistrate presiding over Martinelli’s extradition trial in a Miami courtroom, it should matter. Reciprocity is both a form of precedent and principle of international law. To the Republic of Panama, notwithstanding the rampant suppression, ignorance and falsification of our history, reciprocity is a basic requirement of national dignity.
The precedent is that US courts don’t care how a defendant is brought before them. US authorities have kidnapped people, in plain violation of the laws of other countries, to snatch drug defendants from their foreign refuges and bring them before US courts. US authorities have used perjury before foreign courts to get people extradited to the United States. Not the court’s concern has always been the response to defendants brought in by such and similar means.
At the moment there is speculation that, as arguably in the case of Noriega’s extradition from France, Judge Torres may condition a Martinelli extradition on a stipulation that there would be no trial for our former president save on the wiretapping charges on which the extradition request is premised. But that uncontested extradition from France was had under Franco-Panamanian treaties and customs. Noriega’s transfer back to here included a controversial and later moot agreement that the former strongman would serve an outstanding sentence and face then-outstanding charges, but not face trial for other crimes.
For Martinelli, if such conditions were imposed and respected, it could mean no trial on the illegal pardon not only for cops shooting innocent people but also for them planting false evidence on their victims. No further investigation of the computer crimes of which the list of 150 “most hated” people whose phone calls and email were monitored and whose cell phones were turned into room bugs were only a part. No trial for all of the overpriced public contracts with kickbacks. No Odebrecht cases. No further investigation of the Vernon Ramos disappearance if evidence points to the involvement of one of its principal beneficiaries, Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal. None of that. None of the other cases pending before the high court, none of the cases which ought to be brought. Or so the speculation goes.
But Manuel Antonio Noriega was brought to the United States from Panama in clear violation of the Panamanian constitution, which bars the extradition of citizens to other countries. We can argue about whether that’s a good law, but there it is, and there it long has been.
The reciprocity, and customary practices, which matter in this case are the standards that US courts have applied to Panamanians brought before them by irregular means. In those cases there have been no limits other than facts, US laws and American public policies on the matters for which the defendants might be investigated or tried. Panama never received any assurances.
Were Judge Torres to take a wise long view at US relations with the rest of the world, he would turn down any suggestion that Martinelli’s extradition should bar investigation or prosecution for any of his many other serious crimes. For him to favor Martinelli with any such extraterritorial court-imposed limitation would violate the bedrock US principle of equal justice under the law.
But what if the court in Miami does extradite Martinelli with such restrictions on his further prosecution? Then Panama should assert reciprocity. Under that principle it should not matter how Martinelli comes into custody here — once he is in custody here, he is subject to full Panamanian jurisdiction in all cases in which it can be reasonably shown that he probably violated Panamanian laws. “But it’s illegal — under the US court ruling…” would merit the reciprocal response that such objections are not the court’s concern.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story confused Federal Magistrate Edwin G. Torres, a Bolivian-born judge in Miami, with Judge Edwin Torres, a New York judge of Puerto Rican ancestry and author of “Carlito’s Way.”
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One of many “Temer Out!” demonstrations, this one in São Paulo. Photo by Rovena Rosa via Wikimedia.
The political strength of hope
by Leonardo Boff
We live in times of great social unrest. There has been a kind of earthquake, provoked not by nature, but by politics.
There was a coup d’état by the moneyed class, their privileges threatened by the beneficiaries of the social policies of the governments of the Labor Party, PT, (from the Portuguese, Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT), that lifted them to places from which they had been excluded before. To that end, they used the parliament, as the military had done in 1964. The removal of President Dilma Rousseff, democratically elected, served the ends of these economic elites (0.05% of the population, according to the Institute of Applied Economic Research, IPEA, (from the Portuguese, Instituto de Pesquisa e Economia Aplicada), allowing them control of the apparatus of the state, thus guaranteeing their historic-social status based on privilege and dirty business. Having made corruption seem natural, they had no scruples about amending the constitution and introducing reforms that eliminated workers’ rights, and profoundly modified Social Security benefits.
Corruption, first detected by the intelligence branches of the United States, and passed on to our judicial system, enabled the installation of a judicial process called Lava Jato. There an unimaginable scheme of corruption was detected, involving large enterprises, both of the state and private enterprises, their funds and other organs, under the logic of inheritance. The corruption identified was of such a magnitude that it scandalized the world. It caused the bankruptcy of states of the federation, such as, for example, Rio de Janeiro.
Many, including myself, have not received our salaries as university professors, retired or not, since December, 2016.
The result is a political, judicial and institutional disaster. It would be deceitful to say that the institutions are functioning. Every institution is contaminated by corruption. Justice is shamefully biased, especially Justice Sergio Moro and much of the Public Ministry, backed by a reactionary press with no commitment to the truth. This “justice” openly carries on a furious and contemptible persecution against former President Inacio Lula and his political party, the Labor Party, PT, the largest in the country. They want to destroy his unquestionable leadership, defame his biography and in any way possible, keep him from becoming a candidate. They push his prosecution, grounded more on political convictions that actual evidence, in order to impede his candidacy, which is preferred by the majority.
The consequence is a painful lack of hope. But it is important to retake the politically transforming character of hope. Ernst Bloch, the great philosopher of hope, talks of the hope-principle, which is more than the common virtue of hope. It is the impulse that lives within us, that always moves us, that projects dreams and utopias, and from failure, finds reasons for resistance and struggle.
From Saint Augustine, perhaps the greatest Christian genius, a great inventor of phrases, comes this sentence: hope has two beloved daughters: Indignation and Courage; Indignation teaches us to reject things as they are, and Courage inspires us to change them.
At this moment we first must evoke the daughter Indignation: facing what the Temer government is criminally perpetrating against the people, the indigenous, the small farmers, women, the workers and the elderly — taking away their rights and lowering millions of Brazilians from poverty into abject misery. Not even national sovereignty is safe, because the Temer government is allowing the sale of national lands to foreigners.
If the government offends the people, the people has the right to invoke daughter-Indignation, not giving the government peace, but demanding in the streets and squares that it be removed, because it is already being accused of criminal corruption and is the result of a coup, and for that reason, lacks legitimacy.
Daughter Courage is seen in the movement for change, even though the confrontations could be dangerous. Courage keeps our spirits high, sustains us in the struggle and can lead us to victory. It is important to follow the advice of Don Quixote: “Do not accept defeat if the last battle has not yet been fought.”
A fact that we must always keep in mind is that reality is not only what is visible, like something we can reach out and touch. What is real is more than the things that we can see. The real carries within itself hidden potentialities and possibilities that can be brought out and become new facts.
One of these possibilities is that of invoking the first article of the constitution that says: “All power comes from the people.” Government and politicians are only delegates of the people. When they betray the people, they no longer represent the general interest, but the interests of the enterprises that finance their elections. The people has the right to remove them from power quickly, through direct elections.
“Temer out and direct elections now” is not a slogan just of groups, but of great multitudes. Daughter Courage must demand this option as our right, the only one that will guarantee authority and credibility to a government capable of leading us out of the present crisis.
The two daughters of hope could make their own this phrase of Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter I discovered there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Leonardo Boff is a Brazilian theologian and philosopher, and a member of the Earthcharter Commission.
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Yanibel takes the helm. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.
Falling dominoes
Consider what the selection of Yanibel Ábrego as president of the National Assembly has done to the three main political parties.
President Varela’s Panameñista Party has this historical jinx anyway — after five years in office the voters here tend to conclude that it’s long enough at the trough and time to go with another batch of politicians. Ábrego notoriously has enriched herself by acquiring public lands and nominal prices while in public office. Now, when corruption is the main issue about which politicians can have any real say — garden variety crime and the cost of living are higher on voters’ minds but political posturing greatly exceeds what anyone can really do about these things — Mr. Varela’s party has taken a pro-corruption stand.
The fragmented PRD is moving toward disciplinary action against those deputies who defied the party line and went with Ábrego. This nastiness may help get the party in order for elections coming in less than two years, but probably not. They are fighting over authority personalities and political patronage plums, rather than taking stands for anything in particular. It’s a malady like the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council, Tony Blair’s New Labour and splits like those that affect most of the member parties of the Socialist International, to which the PRD also belongs. Might there be a charismatic leader who arises, picks up the shards of General Torrijos’s party and leads a movement that takes the presidential palace in 2019? Perhaps. But that candidate would have to be seen as coming from out of the blue, not from out of the apparatus.
Ricardo Martinelli’s Cambio Democratico party is disintegrating, even if one of its dissident members now runs the National Assembly. Look for CD to be replaced by a constellation of minor parties in the 2019 elections, whatever Ricardo Martinelli’s legal fate might be. None of those seeking the party’s presidential nomination have the credibility to register more than single digits at the polls.
We fast approach the time for independents and new forces to make their moves. Were a well known person to declare at the last moment and get elected president, she or he would have a very difficult time governing. The way around such a crisis, the convening of a constituent assembly to write a new constitution, would be all the more difficult without a movement capable of winning the elections for delegates and presenting the nation with a coherent framework on which to rebuild our broken political system.
The Chamber of Commerce agenda
Panama’s Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (the CCIAP) held some joint meetings with the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) and members of the diplomatic corps. They heard from a Guatemalan television anchor who has a political science degree, and felt inspired to issue a declaration.
The new battle cry of oligarchs everywhere is against “populism.” They tell us that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the same thing as Marine Le Pen and Nicolás Maduro. They hold up governments like those of France and Guatemala, and institutions like Goldman Sachs and the World Bank, as the examples to emulate. Arguments do get ridiculous when the purpose is to defend the untenable.
Ricardo Martinelli was one of the more recent of a long string of failures in which men from the world of business conned voters into electing them to run the government like a business. It’s always a fraud. That pitch always means to run government for the benefit of a few specific businesses.
The anti-populists are against the government giving gifts. By this they don’t mean politicians handing out bags of groceries or other valuables in exchange for votes. What they oppose are properly funded public education, a sound public health care system, a solid public pension system and a social safety net.
They are for “judicial security” that freezes existing privileges into place, a privatized economy and an end to government regulation of businesses. Otherwise, they warn us, there will be chaos on the streets like in Venezuela.
Should we take this as a threat? Probably not in the sense of a serious offer of violence. As a set of public policies that could lead to a social explosion, perhaps. Mainly it’s a whiny infantile wish list from a sector of society that has had its way most of the time and has had little to show for it.
Let us not, however, look at Panamanian business as a monolith. CONEP represents bigger companies, usually those that do business with and are dependent upon the government. The CCIAP represents a much broader section of the private sector, but generally owners rather than managers. The great majority of business owners, the huge informal micro-enterprise sector, is excluded and treated with disdain. Those who manage many of the businesses that are in the CCIAP or CONEP tend to have different perspectives. A poorly educated and inefficient work force, generalized corruption seeping into their companies, seething social resentments that can be ignited into costly business disruptions — if you inherited some company that has cornered some tiny part of the market you may not care but if you manage a company that has to compete in the world these are vital concerns.
If by populism its critics mean demagoguery, they may have a point. Beware the politician who promises something for nothing, or something to be paid for by some sector in society that is widely despised. But after all these years, those selling the promise that globalization on corporate terms means prosperity for more than a tiny sliver of society are perhaps the worst demagogues of all.
Bear in mind…
Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.
Carl Sagan
Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don’t want it.
Duke Ellington
Evil is obvious only in retrospect.
Gloria Steinem
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Dr. Tedros Adhanom, in his message to the G20: Health emergencies represent some of the greatest risks to the global economy and security. Photo by the World Health Organization.
The costs and risks of health emergencies
by World Health Organization Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
It’s really a great privilege for me to be with you today to discuss the critical health threats facing our world today. And I thank you, Chancellor Merkel for your leadership in putting health on the G20 agenda and for the successful emergency simulation exercise which we have seen with health ministers in Berlin in May.
I think the exercise, as has been said, highlighted two major things among others: number one is that pandemics of infectious diseases and other threats to health, such as anti-microbial resistance, transcend borders and national interests, so vulnerability for one is vulnerability for all of us. And viruses actually do not know or do not respect borders.
And the second thing from the exercise that we found out is that we are not well prepared. That we are very often reactive rather than proactive. Therefore we require a strong global response — that we need to remain connected in our inter-connected world.
The reason we ask you to support global health is because we want to support you, you the leaders, to achieve your goals. Because pandemics, health emergencies and weak health systems not only cost lives but represent some of the greatest risks to the global economy and security that we face today.
And we know what happened as has been said with Spanish flu in 1918: more than 50 million people died.
And the SARS outbreak cost the world economy around $60 billion in US dollars.
We have seen bird flu, MERS, Zika. Now. Cholera, Yellow Fever are back in force. WHO detects around 3,000 signals a month but the world actually knows very few of them.
We do not know where the next global pandemic will occur, we don’t know when it will occur, but it will be costly in lives and dollars. With airline travel (three billion travelers every year) global spread of any new pathogen would occur in hours. As well as untold human suffering, the economic losses would be measured in trillions, including the losses of tourism, trade, consumer confidence and also including political problems and challenges. There will be two epidemics — one caused by the virus, and the other one caused by fear.
During the Ebola outbreak of 2014 in West Africa, WHO and the global community had to confront a tough reality that had left the world unprepared-what Jim Kim, the President of the World Bank calls the cycle of panic and neglect. At the height of outbreaks, we are galvanized but we quickly lose focus. Our world cannot afford this vicious cycle to continue.
The Ebola outbreak has also taught us another lesson. Our global system is only as strong as its weakest link. We must address the root causes of this problem: the lack of access of the most vulnerable people to health care, especially primary health care.
Universal health coverage and health security are the two sides of the same coin. This year, 400 million people — that is one out of 17 — mostly poor people, women and children, around the world remain without access to health care. Strong health systems will not only be our best defense but will also be critical for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals.
So we propose four ways forward which we actually all know.
Number one is sustainably financing the global health security system to prevent, detect and respond to emerging threats, whether natural or man-made. Ensuring a guaranteed level of contingency financing for outbreaks and emergencies would be a great start.
And the second is mapping all the capacities we have can help us to move forward, mapping all capacities in countries and use them in a coordinated manner, based on their comparative advantage to strengthen preparedness.
And the third recommendation is to support the goal of Universal Health Coverage in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. This is the strategic solution actually, to prevent epidemics and provide quality care to our people by strengthening health systems of countries, especially in the most fragile and vulnerable parts of our world.
And number four, prioritize research and development of new medical counter-measures through the Research and Development Blueprint of the World Health Organization. WHO strongly supports the German proposal to establish the Global Collaboration Hub on Antimicrobial resistance research and development.
Delivering on these priorities will cost money but only a fraction of what remaining unprepared will cost.
WHO is prepared to fully play its leadership role. And together we need to take the responsibility of making the world a healthier and safer place. It’s possible and it’s in our hands.
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