The price of democracy: with an eye to the north - presidential elections in Panama

Commonweal, May 6, 1994 by Karl Bermann

Miriam is twenty-nine and a single mother. She works six nights a week at the reception desk of a modest hotel. An aunt takes care of her four-year-old daughter while she is at work. Miriam's earnings of 94 cents an hour put her monthly income a little above the legal minimum of $150, and in this sense she is lucky because 30 percent of Panama's work force have no jobs at all. Nevertheless, she'd like to find another job, even if it paid less, one that would leave her weekends free and where she wouldn't have to sit so many hours on the high, broken stool that hurts her back. But because of Panama's deep economic crisis she sees no hope of finding other work in the near future, and for that reason she seriously considers not voting in Panama's May 8 presidential election.

All seven presidential candidates have promised to create jobs, but Miriam doesn't believe them, except perhaps Ruben Blades, the internationally known salsa singer and movie star. The polls show Blades contesting second place with two other candidates, each with the support of about 14 percent of the electorate. Miriam doesn't think Blades can win, but if she does go to the polls on election day it will be to cast a protest vote for him.

In Panama's last election, in 1989, she voted for Guillermo Endara, the current president, because she wanted to rid the country of Manuel Noriega and his military dictatorship. Noriega canceled the election before all the votes were counted, but the U.S. declared Endara the winner anyway and installed him in office after invading the country in Operation Just Cause. Now Miriam says she regrets voting for Endara, because economic and social conditions have only gotten worse under his administration. Besides the lack of jobs, she worries about crime and drugs, which everyone here seems to agree are out of control. Apart from the question of money laundering and drug-related corruption, "leakage" of drugs from the north-bound drug pipeline has now become a serious problem, which was not the case under Noriega. A hit of crack can reportedly be had on the street for as little as 25 cents.

It is perhaps a double irony, then, that the man who is currently leading the polls with 35 percent--more than twice the support of his nearest rival--is Ernesto Perez Balladares, the candidate of the Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD. The PRD was the party of Manuel Noriega, who is now serving time in a U.S. federal penitentiary on drug trafficking charges--the result of the bloodiest and most expensive drug bust in history. But the PRD was also the party of one-time populist strongman General Omar Torrijos, who was killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1981. Torrijos is a mythic figure in Panama, and Perez Balladares, whose slogan is "the people to power," has done everything he can to wrap himself in the Torrijos mantle.

That Perez Balladares is a skillful politician is not in doubt. A big man--his nickname, "Toro," means "bull" in Spanish--he looks like a Panamanian Bill Clinton without the Clinton coiffure. He is also an economist, trained at Notre Dame and the Wharton School. But while Toro himself seems fairly clean--he held government posts until 1984 when he had a falling out with Noriega and spent a few months in exile in Spain--many Panamanians fear the PRD is riddled with Noriega holdovers.

Miriam numbers herself among the skeptics. She thinks Noriega killed Torrijos, perhaps with the help of the CIA, which kept Noriega on its payroll for many years before his falling out with the Reagan administration. On the other hand she considers Torrijos the best leader Panama ever had. Where she comes from, in Chiriqui Province, her father used to work on a banana plantation of the Chiriqui Land Company, a subsidiary of United Fruit. She remembers that when the banana workers went on strike Torrijos intervened on their behalf. She also remembers that he built schools and improved health care. She herself received a government grant that enabled her to attend high school. Unlike many of the people she knows, however, she doesn't think Toro and the PRD will bring back the good old days.

Despite Perez Balladares's populist slogans, his TV commercials are slick and fuzzy. All the candidates, in fact, sound as if they're being coached by Madison Avenue. All are long on concern about Panama's problems, but short on specific proposals as to how to solve them. All attack Endara for earnestly paying off foreign lenders while ignoring poverty, unemployment, crime, and the country's crumbling health and educational systems. That includes the two candidates from Endara's own fractured coalition--Mireya Moscoso de Gruber of Endara's Arnulfista party and Ruben Dario Carles of an amalgam party called "Change '94." All the candidates say that while the foreign debt must be paid they would try to get better terms from foreign lenders. All, with more or less enthusiasm, say they'd ask to renegotiate the Carter-Torrijos Treaty so the U.S. could keep its bases here, which it is now scheduled to vacate by the year 2000. (The Pentagon, which spends about 300 million a year in Panama in connection with the bases, says it doesn't want to keep them.)