What happened to El Chorrillo tells us not to go waving machetes at or talking trash to Uncle Sam. Photo by the US Department of Defense.
The VP’s extraordinary anti-American taunt
Uh huh. In an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE, Vice President and Foreign Minister Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado told Panamanians and the world that what happens with US policy isn’t that important. “The world’s need to sell keeps growing every day. We don’t see how a policy change in any one country, most important as it may be, can have a significant impact on that.”
What the Americans do can’t be significant? Perhaps she doesn’t remember the economic chaos of pre-invasion US sanctions. Perhaps she has never seen any need or desire to mingle with the survivors of those burned to a crisp in El Chorrillo. Perhaps she has never visited the abandoned industrial parks of the US Rust Belt, or paid any attention to what’s happening in Greece.
The VP goes on to dismiss the Panama Papers and something that just speeded up what Panama was doing anyway, ignoring the OECD disapproval, French blacklist and increasing difficulty of Panamanian banks in finding US corresponding bank services.
A Latin American country might well find other busienss partners to minimize the US leverage over it. Honduras tried that and is now ruled by a US-aligned death squad regime. Venezuela’s woes are mostly about a collapse in oil prices and its government’s ham-handed ways of dealing with that, but US hostility has greatly added to the pressure. If China has indeed moved into many Latin American economic spaces that the Americans used to occupy, it’s still insane to literally or figuratively wave any machetes at the United States.
There are policies like the War on Drugs and the handover of Panama’s rice production to US farmers in which our government ought to part ways with the United States. These sorts of things should be done calmly and with due deliberation, not with bravado and dismissal.
One gets the impression that a Varela administration fresh out of ideas is playing a nationalist card. But would the Panamanian people rally behind the economic fantasy that the government is spinning?
Russians and Nazis in the 2016 US elections
Did the Russian government hack the Democratic National Committee’e email server and hand the data over to WikiLeaks? Perhaps. But the top four DNC officials had to resign their posts in the middle of a presidential election year not because Putin insisted that they do so but because of their own gross misconduct, which showed up in the emails but had been complained of well before those leaks.
Is there some law that says that the Nazis’ “Big Lie” technique of endlessly repeating lies until a lot of people believe them to be true is acceptable and anybody who makes the proper association of that with publications and personalities of yesteryear like Der Sturmer and Joseph Goebbels automatically loses the argument for mentioning those who perfected an American advertising technique and applied it to the racist politics of their time and place? The white supremacists say so — but what they say is enemy propaganda to be countered, not obeyed.
The truth is that Hillary Clinton and almost all of the Democratic hierarchy ran an unethical campaign in the primaries, then ran an unbelievably stupid general election campaign. They lost to a reviled candidate and took many good Democrats farther down the ticket to defeat with them. Now is not the time to start the Chelsea Clinton for Congress campaign, for Nancy Pelosi to announce a reorganization plan, nor for the current Democrats Abroad leaders to tell us that they have everything planned through 2020. It wasn’t the Russians. They just need to go. Let the Democratic Party that they tried to reduce to a fundraising list restore itself without them.
Bear in mind…
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber
By their essential nature triumphs can’t be given. They must be taken, and the worse the odds and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. Victories can’t be gifts.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.
Georges Bernanos
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The rain got heavier after this, making photography with this reporter’s camera impractical. However, the march to the Public Ministry proceeded through the tropical cloudburst, the sewers overflowing into the streets all of that.
Marching through the rain against some of our worst nightmares
photos and story by Eric Jackson
An unfortunately small crowd of maybe 200 women, sprinkled with a number of men, marched to protest against the violence that gets visited upon women in Panama. If you consider the death toll, murder is much more often a crime suffered by men. So far this year, there have been 16 homicides of women reported in Panama. When you consider the more general topic of male violence used to control the lives of women, the official statistics understate the problem by far, but so far this year there have been more than 17,000 domestic violence cases filed with Panamanian authorities this year. Even more seriously under-reported are the rape cases.
In the crowd that assembled by the El Carmen Church there were labor unions and feminist groups. Politicians and their parties were notably absent. A couple of young Argentine jugglers were perhaps the most noticeable of the sprinkling of foreigners.
Yes, there were people there because it was the proper show of labor solidarity with oppressed female colleagues, or because it’s an obligatory plank on any really socialist organization’s platform, or because it’s a central demand of the feminist movement. But for so many of us, it was about our worse fears or our most nightmarish memories. It’s not polite for a reporter or anyone else to pry open old wounds of this nature, but this reporter knows a few of the demonstrators’ stories.
A man whose daughter was beaten to death. Women who were raped. Parents, siblings and children of women who were murdered. Men who, at the moment they saw domestic violence visited upon their mothers, also suffered it themselves. These latter cases are of special concern because domestic violence is a pattern of behavior that tends to get passed down from one generation to the next, and when one reviews the history of the violent offenders in Panama’s most hellish prisons, most of them were themselves the victims of domestic violence.
The November 25 date — a horrible time to march through the streets of Panama — was internationally determined, at a 1981 United Nations sponsored conference that declared the day to be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It’s the anniversary of that day in 1961 when Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo had three sisters active in his opposition, Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal, beaten to death and then tried to disguise the deaths as the result of an automobile accident. The crime shocked the Dominican Republic and the world, and most fateful for Trujillo, shocked US President-elect John F. Kennedy, who shortly after taking office set into motion a covert plot that resulted in Trujillo’s assassination. (Looking back, the “regime change” was followed by more instability and misery rather than any particularly noteworthy flowerings of freedom or democracy to the DR.)
Also of concern to many of the protesters is the Varela administration’s proposed regulations implementing and changes to Law 82, which is aimed at preventing violence against women. Minister of Government Milton Henríquez proposed measures against communications media — including the online social media — that publish material said to denigrate women, which met strong resistance from journalists but not from the advertising cartel. The online press was, in Henríquez’s usual insulting way, excluded from the discussion. But meanwhile many feminists and people who work in the legal system say that the regulations would be ineffective both at dealing with domestic violence cases that come before the system and at encouraging victims to take recourse to the law. The government now proposes to eliminate the possibilities of fines for sexism in media. It seems that the marchers are not entirely in agreement about the subject. They dislike degradation in the media and many or most would rather keep the possibility of fines, but some in the crowd also know of how publicity for things like birth control of breast exams has sometimes been labeled as pornographic. There appears to be a greater consensus of dislike for Henríquez.
The martyred Mirabal sisters.
The basic point: “Our bodies say stop the violence.”
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Mercedes Sosa in 1972, before Argentina’s dictatorship and her exile, an ordeal that she survived. Mercedes Sosa en 1972, antes de la dictadura argentina y su exilio, una prueba dura que sobrevivió.
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Read the appeals court’s entire decisionhere. See Mr. Friesner’s later dealings with Canadian securities regulators here. See the credit card business that he tried to set up in his wife’s name in Panama here.
Dutch journalist Okke Ornstein
is under arrest in Panama
Reporter faces 20-month sentence for baseless libel case
by the Dutch Association of Journalists
Dutch journalist Okke Ornstein was detained and arrested upon arriving at Panama’s Tocumen International Airport on Tuesday, November 15. He is facing a 20-month sentence for libel and slander pertaining to articles he posted on his blog about the dubious business activities of a Canadian citizen, Monte Friesner, in Panama.
The substantive aspects of the case show that there is no ground for the criminal prosecution of Ornstein. Friesner, whose lawsuit led to Ornstein’s conviction in Panama, was himself convicted in the United States for similar offenses that Ornstein wrote about on his blog. Friesner was also facing criminal prosecution in Panama, and it is presumed that he has left the country.
The Dutch Association of Journalists (NVJ) condemns the arrest. “A 20-month prison sentence over a series of blog posts is against the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and the freedom of expression, principles that are acknowledged as fundamental rights worldwide,” said Thomas Bruning, Secretary General of NVJ.
On his blog, Ornstein mostly writes stories about corruption and fraud cases. “This prison sentence sends a signal that critical journalism on fraud and corruption is not possible in Panama,” said Bruning. “Ornstein is being punished in a way that does not comply with the principles of a democratic justice system.”
According to Ornstein’s lawyer Channa Samkalden, who is involved from The Netherlands, Ornstein did not get due process and did not receive proper legal aid during the criminal proceedings in Panama.
NVJ is working with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Embassy in Panama to free Ornstein as soon as possible — and to ensure that he has access to adequate legal representation.
Additionally, the Dutch journalist association is turning to Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bert Koenders, to raise the troubling issues in Ornstein’s case at the highest levels in Panama. Ornstein is a working journalist of Dutch nationality who currently lives in Panama. He manages the websites www.ornstein.org and www.bananamarepublic.com. The former is about his general journalistic work, while the latter focuses specifically on Panama and more broadly Latin America. On the Bananama Republic blog, Ornstein provocatively discusses background stories and news, particularly in the areas of corruption, fraud and politics.
In 2015, Dutch public-service broadcaster NTR nominated a radio documentary about refugees by Ornstein for the Tegel-prijs in The Netherlands. His in-depth radio investigation “Barro Blanco,” about a hydroelectric dam in Panama that was funded by a Dutch bank and prompted questions in the Dutch Parliament about environmental and social consequences, was nominated for the prestigious Prix-Europa in 2013. Most recently, Ornstein has worked for Dutch public broadcasters and Al-Jazeera.
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Soon to have a soul brother in the White House? It’s hard to say what will change in US relations with Israel. Obama generally said that he opposed what Avigdor Lieberman stood for, but never withheld any financial or political support for it. But right after Trump’s election the Israeli government took the opportunity to “legalize” all of the informal seizures of Arab-owned land on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem to build segregated Jews-only housing projects.
The President-elect
by Uri Avnery
The first shock has passed. President-elect Donald Trump. I am gradually getting used to the sound of these words.
We are entering an era of complete uncertainty. We Israelis and the entire world. From shoe-shine boy to head of state.
Nobody knows.
But first we must say goodbye to Barack Obama.
Frankly, I like the guy. There is something noble about him. Upright. Honest. Idealistic.
When the cameras showed him this week sitting together with Donald Trump, the contrast could not have been greater. Obama is the anti-Trump. Trump is the anti-Obama.
And yet….
Yet in all the eight long years of his presidency, President Obama has done nothing, nothing at all, for peace in our region.
In these eight years, the Israeli ulra-right has flourished. Settlements in the occupied territories have multiplied and grown larger. After every new settlement expansion, the State Department has dutifully condemned it. And then given Binyamin Netanyahu another few billions. And the latest gift was the biggest ever.
When he came into office, Obama made some very beautiful speeches in Cairo and Jerusalem. Many exquisite words. And they were just that: mere words.
Some people believe that now, when Obama is free of all obligations, he will use his last two months in power to atone for his sins and do something meaningful for Israeli-Palestinian peace. I doubt it.
(Years ago, at some European congress, I accused the Spanish Diplomat Miguel Moratinos of doing nothing for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In his aggressive reply, he accused me of sheer impertinence. Why should anyone do anything for the Israeli peace forces, if these forces themselves do nothing to achieve peace?)
Have we heard the last of the Obama family? I am not sure. Somehow I have the idea that after four or eight years we will see another Obama running for president: Michelle Obama, the wildly and rightly popular first lady, who has all the qualities needed: She is black. She is a woman. She is highly intelligent. She has a sterling character. (Unless in the New America, these are all negative qualities.)
There was some comfort in the election results. Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump. She lost in the electoral college.
To a foreigner, this institution looks as obsolete as a dinosaur. It may have had its uses when the United States of America (in the plural) were really a federation of diverse and different local entities.
These days are long past. We now used the term “United States” in the singular. The US does. The US thinks. The US votes.
What is the profound difference between a voter in Arizona and a voter in Montana? Why should the vote of a citizen in Oregon weight more that the vote of a citizen in New York or California?
The electoral college is undemocratic. It should have been done away with a long time ago. But political institutions die slowly, if at all. Somebody always profits from them. This time it is Trump.
A similar antiquated system is the appointing of Supreme Court judges.
The Supreme Court has immense power, cutting deep into the private life of every US citizen. Enough to mention abortions and same-sex marriages. It also influences international relations and much more.
Yet the power to appoint new judges rests solely in the hands of the president. A new president changes the composition of the court, and lo and behold, the entire legal and political situation changes.
In Israel, the very opposite prevails. Years ago, new judges were practically appointed by the old judges, “a friend brings a friend,” as popular humor had it.
Later this system was changed a bit — Supreme Court judges are now chosen by a committee of nine, three of which are sitting judges, two others are politicians from the Knesset (one each from the government coalition and from the opposition), two are government ministers and two represent the bar association.
Five of the members of the committee must be women. One of the judges on the committee is an Arab, appointed by seniority.
But the decisive point of the law is that any appointment must be made by a majority of seven members –- seven of nine. This means in practice that the three sitting judges on the committee have a veto power on any appointment. So have the politicians. A judge can only be appointed by compromise.
Until now, this system has worked very well. No complaints have been registered. But the new Minister of Justice, a rabid ultra-nationalist woman, wants to change the system: no more majority of seven, but a simple majority of five. This would give decisive power to the right-wing politicians and abolish the power of the three judges to block political appointments.
This proposal has aroused very strong opposition, and the debate is still going on.
How to describe the incoming president, less than two weeks after his election?
The first word that springs to mind is: erratic.
We saw this during the election campaign. He would say two contradictory things in the same breath. Say something and deny it. Flatter one section of the voters and then their enemies.
OK, OK some people would say. So what. A candidate will say anything to get elected.
True, but this particular candidate overdid it. He presented a very nasty personality, devoid of civility, propagating hatred of blacks, Hispanics, and gays, denigrating women, not rejecting outright anti-Semites and neo-Nazis.
But it worked, right? It got him where he wanted to be, didn’t it? It does not compel him to go on in the same vein, now that he has reached his goal. So, forget it.
Some people are now dreaming of a completely new Trump, a person who abandons all his old slogans and declaration and turns out to be a sensible politician, using his proven talent for deal-making in order to achieve the things necessary to make America great again.
As a candidate he did the things necessary to get elected. Once in office he will do the things necessary to govern.
Other people pour cold water on these hopes. Trump is Trump, they say. He will be as nasty a president as he was a nasty candidate. A far-right hate-monger. His every step will be dictated by his ugly world of ideas. Look, his first major appointment was of a rabid anti-Semite as his closest advisor.
WELL, I don’t know. Nobody does. I tend to believe that he himself does not either.
I think that we are in for four years of uncertainty. Faced with a problem he knows nothing about, he will act according to his mood of the moment. He will take advice from nobody, and nobody will know in advance what will be his decision. I feel fairly certain about this.
Some of his decisions may be very good. Some may be very bad. Some intelligent. Some idiotic.
As I said: erratic.
The world will have to live with this. It will be highly risky. It may turn out right. It may also lead to catastrophe.
People have compared Trump to Adolf Hitler. But the comparison is quite erroneous.
Apart from their German-Austrian descent, they have nothing in common. Hitler was no billionaire. He was a real man from the people –- an unemployed nobody, who lived for some time in a public shelter.
Hitler did have a Weltanschauung, a fixed world-view. He was a fanatic. When he came to power, people deceived themselves into believing that he would soon give up his demagogic, rabble-rousing ideas. He did not. Until the day of his suicide, Hitler did not change his ideology one iota. Tens of millions of victims, including the millions of Jews, testify to that.
Trump is no Hitler. He is no Mussolini. Nor even a Franco. He is a Trump.
And that may be bad enough. Maybe.
So do up your safety belt and hold on tight for the roller-coaster ride.
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King Christian X of Denmark, who stayed in his country and retained his title during the German occupation. There is a legend that he wore a yellow star in solidarity with Danish Jews, which is is not actually true. What is true is that under the king’s moral leadership and with the assistance of police officers, fishing boat owners and Danes from all walks of life, when the Nazis came to round up Denmark’s 7,000 or so Jews nobody would turn them in and most were able to flee to neutral and unoccupied Sweden. Only about 500 Danish Jews were caught and sent to concentration camps.
A civil rights leader for our times
The days when African-American and Jewish leaders marched together for civil rights came and went. One of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League, was founded in 1913 after the Ku Klux Klan lynching of a Jewish businessman in Atlanta. It’s now an international organization, with a small presence in Panama. The ADL mainly defends Jews against defamation, discrimination and violence but also speaks out against all sorts of bigotry and racism.
Both Jews and Gentiles can and do argue about the ADL’s stands with respect to the human rights policies of Israel. However, we should recall that back in 1985 when Palstinian-American activists Alex Odeh was killed in a bombing of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Los Angeles, the ADL was one of the first non-Arab organizations in the United States to call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice — something that has yet to happen.
Now, to the cheers of racists and bigots, including some who are Jewish, Donald Trump calls for a registry of all Muslims in the USA. But Jonathan Greenblatt, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, stood up before a meeting called to fight anti-Semitism and said: “I pledge to you right here and now, because I care about the fight against anti-Semitism, that if one day in these United States, if one day Muslim-Americans will be forced to register their identities, then that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a Muslim.”
A USA that is in dark times that will get darker needs civil rights leaders to avoid such a registry and many other threatened affronts to human dignity and equality. Greenblatt advises well on which way Americans of good will, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, ought to go in the face of injustice. Let us hope that if such a registry is created by the Trump administration, there will be a long line of Americans at the US Embassy here, demanding inclusion on that list.
Panama’s own constitutional gun issues
Did President Varela get rid of a minister who repeated US gun sellers’ false advertising and tried to make it Panamanian government policy? Good for him. Here the constitution says that weapons of war may not be privately possessed and that citizens’ and foreign residents’ rights to keep other sorts of firearms are subject to regulation by law. The US Second Amendment does not apply here.
But Panama’s constitution also, but a 1994 amendment, says that we have no army and that our national defense is to call civilians up to a militia commanded by the National Police in times of emergency. The constitution provides that Panamanians must take up arms in case of war, and allows no exceptions for religious or other sorts of pacifists.
The reality is that our National Frontier Service (SENAFRONT), our National Aeronaval Service (SENAN) and parts of our National Police have become de facto military forces under the tutelage of US forces whose presence here is protected under secret agreements and rarely acknowledged. Whether we want to openly have a military again is a proper subject to debate when drafting a new constitution. With Donald Trump coming to power in the USA, whether we want to continue this military relationship with the United States or look instead to our Latin American neighbors for training and expertise is something to look into regardless of any constitutional considerations.
But what if we keep the presently prescribed scheme, and try to make it something more than a dead letter? That will, as a practical matter, require every citizen to acquire military skills. Pacifists who will not make war ought to have the other skills needed to be called up as paramedics, firefighters or so on in the event of a national emergency. The ordinary Panamanian adult would need to have undergone basic military training and know how to fire, clean, disassemble and assemble an assault rifle. Warfare would have to be studied in the schools.
There are good reasons for a nation that’s not very warlike to reject the requirements of a working militia system and instead rely on a small military caste. There are also good reasons not to have a military force, and even better ones not to be subject to a foreign army. Panama has suffered too much under men in uniform, both foreign and domestic. Surely there is no perfect answer, but there can be no acceptable one without addressing some realities that are omitted in the present constitution’s passages about arms.
Bear in mind…
We have only the people’s hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people’s hearts, what can we use to sustain the country?
Empress Dowager Cixi
The people have made their decision — the bastards!
Dick Tuck
Property-owners are the most energetic flag-waggers and patriots in every country, but only so long as they enjoy their possessions: to safeguard those they desert God, King and Country in a twinkling.
C.L.R. James
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Panama’s main Evangelical organization, the Alianza Evangelica de Panama, which has marched against gay marriage in the past and puts out messages like this, promises vigils and protests over this court case. The Evangelicals are a minority in this mostly Catholic country. The Catholic Church also opposes same-sex marriages but is also a bit more wary about being seen as grossly intolerant than the Evangelicals who published this graphic are.
Supreme Court to hear constitutional challenge to same-sex marriage ban
by Eric Jackson
Polls would suggest that most Panamanians don’t want to hear it, but the Supreme Court has agreed that it will. In October Panamanian lawyer Enrique Jelenszky and British businessman John Winstanley, represented by the expensive law firm Morgan & Morgan, challenged the constitutionality of Article 26 of Panama’s Family Code, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Panama’s constitution states some lofty principles that tend to get defined into meaninglessness. Arguably the challenged part of our family law violates Article 19 of the Constitution because it entails prohibited privileges, immunities and discrimination on grounds of sex and social class; or violates Article 26 guarantees of the inviolability of the home. But Article 35 of the Constitution, while providing for religious freedom, also demands “respect for Christian morals” and acknowledges Catholicism as the majority religion.
Jelenszky and Winstanly have lived together for 17 years and about eight years ago they registered a civil union under British law at the UK Embassy here. Since then the United Kingdom has provided that such unions are or can be marriages. In September they tried to record their marriage in the Panamanian Registro Civil, were turned away, and then filed their legal challenge.
The Alianza Evangelica de Panama accuses the couple of intending to destroy Panamanian families and says that they will be holding protests. The Asociacion de Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panama (AMNP), the nation’s main organization that advocates for the civil rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons, is rallying behind Jelenszky and Winstanley. “We will fight until everyone is equal before the law,” AHMNP leader Ricardo Beteta Bond declared on his Facebook page.
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Panama and the United States have had a difficult relationship for more than a century and a half. To an increasing extent the Isthmus of Panama was turned into a fundamental piece in the expansion plans of North American capitalists. The construction of the trans-isthmian railroad (1850-1855) and the Panama Canal (1904-1914) were strategic in the consolidation of an empire that extended over a continent and into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Later Panama was turned into an enormous military base for the US wars against Japan (1941-1945) and later, Korea and Vietnam (1951-1975). The bases of the old Canal Zone also served to intervene in and invade all of the countries of Latin America, turning it into the US “back yard.”
Over the course of more than 175 years Panama has done battle with dozens of governments and their executives. The cousins Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, the Bushes (father and son), Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan are some of the best remembered, for good and bad. Presidents of the United States have masterminded invasions, coups d’etat, assassination conspiracies and mockeries of the Panamanian people.
The US president-elect, Donald Trump, appears on the horizon as a novel and unpredictable political phenomenon. For the financial world the businessman is a question mark — his rhetoric against the misnamed “free trade” has shaken stock markets on all continents. President Juan Carlos Varela, answering a question about Trump’s election, failed to come up with a coherent answer. The Panamanian government still has no policy to deal with the next White House tenant.
Washington has had a very clear policy about Panama since the 1989 invasion. How to collate this US position on Panama with Trump’s ideas? It is a question whose answer we will come to know, as they begin to square (if they fit) the foreign policy objectives of the new administration.
US foreign policy has had three objectives in Panama since the 1989 invasion. First, to assure that traffic through the canal is not interrupted. Second, for Panama to serve as a launching pad for its militaristic policy on the regional level. At the same time this is useful in its “War on Drugs” policy. Finally, for Panama to develop along the neo-liberal guidelines of “the Washington Consensus” that were specified in the free trade treaty that was signed by both countries. Politically, the United States has delegated the responsibility to govern the country to a small Panamanian elite. That elite has done very poorly, speculating with the extraordinary income that running the Panama Canal generates, running up a growing debt and destabilizing the political regime with a growing corruption that’s a product of militarization. In 20 years they have ruined agriculture and industry, destroyed the health and education systems and allowed the system of representative government to fall into the hands of an insatiable mafia.
President-elect Donald Trump has no personal interests in Panama, only his name on one of the hotel towers that adorn’s the capital’s skyline. Five years ago Trump did opine about the Panama Canal and the way that the 1977 negotiations that allowed its turnover to the Panamanian government turned out.
In a 2011 business visit to Panama City, Trump said that “Panama is doing very well with the canal, there are so many workers, there is so much employment — to think that the United States stupidly gave up the canal in exchange for nothing.” Trump does no more than to insistently repeat what President Reagan said after the Torrijos-Carter treaties were signed in 1977 until the day he died. A Panamanian government minister predicted (with great skill) in 2011 that what Trump intended with his statements was to launch his candidacy for the presidency of his country. Incidentally, the city council declared him persona non grata for those remarks.
Following the logic of his campaign, Trump could ask Panama to contribute part of its income, based on canal tolls, to the “War on Drugs” (increasing arms purchases from the United States, building more air and naval bases with US materials and training more repressive forces at the still-existing School of the Americas. He could also demand that Panama eliminate its few remaining tariffs so as to inundate its market with imported farm products, definitively destroying Panamanian agriculture.
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Varela’s damage control collapses before an international outcry
by Eric Jackson
The complaint that leaks from the Mossack Fonseca law firm are unfairly called “The Panama Papers” by a president whose right-hand man was Ramón Fonseca has failed to change international rhetoric. The Public Ministry’s vow to get the bottom of it that turned out to be a bungled investigation of who leaked the documents with no inquiry at all into the criminal activities indicated in the papers themselves made the attorney general a global laughingstock. The appointment of a high profile commission and then the imposition of restrictions that drove its two most prominent members to quit made it worse.
Now come the secondary scandals — 85 tax fraud investigations in Canada, 415 tax fraud investigations in India, 22 tax fraud investigations in the UK and the arrests of three British bankers who laundered their insider trading proceeds through a Mossack Fonseca shell game. The president of Argentina under investigation for undeclared holdings discovered through the Panama Papers. The Russian economy minister under arrest. The Pakistani prime minister on trial for his political life before his country’s supreme court.
Most likely Panama Papers revelations about the family fortune of the British prime minister at the time contributed to the narrow “Leave” victory in the Brexit referendum. Two Icelandic prime ministers were run out of public life in disgrace due to the revelations. Spain’s minister of industry fell, and a subsequent attempt to kick him upstairs to the World Bank was withdrawn in amidst a chorus of great indignation. In other places like Malta, the former Soviet Georgia and China, governments have survived the embarrassment of high-ranking officials or former leaders, but there are likely to be consequences down the road in their much different political systems. Were the Americans barely mentioned? Mossack Fonseca files may have mentioned few US political leaders, but among the handful of oligarchs were friends of Bill and Hillary and friends of The Donald.
It’s not just the Panama Papers now, either. In late September there was a lead of 1.3 million confidential files from the Bahamian corporate registry and these documents are just beginning to have an effect similar to that of the Mossack Fonseca documents. Two officers of Odebrecht Panama have just turned states evidence in Brazil’s massive corruption scandal and the company’s jailed former CEO tells of bribes paid and evidence concealed in Panama. Even if politicians here have passed a law to officially ignore the findings of courts in other countries, it’s likely that Panamanian votes won’t be so understanding.
The OECD has branded Panama’s moves in the wake of the Panama Papers release as unsatisfactory. The European Parliament is talking about a public beneficial ownership registry for all corporations and measures against jurisdictions that don’t have such a thing.
This is the context in which the two experts who resigned from Varela’s Panama Papers commission — Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and anti-corruption scholar Mark Pieth — have released their “minority report” ahead of Varela’s official one, the latter which may or may not be put on the public record. Stiglitz and Pieth are calling for stern measures against tax havens and money laundering centers, akin to those used against countries and institutions that handle the financial transactions of those terrorists whom the United States and the European Union don’t like.
These sorts of sanctions have already begun on a small scale — Panamanian banks now have a hard time finding US banks that are willing to have corresponding bank relationships and it’s making check clearance more difficult and might make ATM machine transactions problematic. The Varela administration is considering the placement of a branch of the Banco Nacional de Panama in New York to be the US corresponding bank for this country’s private banks — if the Americans allow that to be done.
Figure that Donald Trump has business interests in Panama and that the Republicans have been talking about repealing FATCA and other measures against money laundering. But also figure that within both major US political parties there are conflicts over this, and that whatever the politicians might say, the financial system may not be willing to assume the growing risks of doing business with Panama.
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