The price of democracy
Bermann, Karl
scrap dealers. He made it to the top through brains and hard work, not a political pedigree and door-opening contacts. Still, winning an election may prove easier than governing. Mexico's...
...First, economic progress expands the size of the middle class, which--in turn--serves as a powerful advocate for civil liberties and democratic choice...
...All the candidates, in fact, sound as if they're being coached by Madison Avenue...
...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...
...He slashed the inflation rate from 159.2 percent (1987) to 8 percent last year, privatized hundreds of state-owned "white elephant" firms, and moved the federal government from a 20-percent deficit to a surplus...
...A hit of crack can reportedly be had on the street for as little as 25 cents...
...Freddy, too, voted for Endara in 1989, because he thought it the best way to end the economic crisis brought on by the U.S...
...Freddy is still paying for Operation Just Cause, which in theory made the current elections possible...
...It cost $7,100...
...None of the politicians, Freddy says, represents the people...
...Noriega canceled the election before all the votes were counted, but the U.S...
...The polls show Blades contesting second place with two other candidates, each with the support of about 14 percent of the electorate...
...Fourth, market-oriented policies stimulate decentralization, which curbs the government's ability to manipulate economic resources as a tool of political control...
...The important thing, they say, straight-faced, is to institutionalize the democratic process...
...Bombs, rockets, and shells exploded all around them...
...Miraculously, they all escaped physical injury...
...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...
...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...
...To his credit, he defied strident nationalists, who regard Uncle Sam as an imperialist satan, to forge a free-trade agreement with the United States and Canada that links Mexico's once-cocooned economy to global markets...
...That inclues the two candidates from Endara' s own fractured coalition--Mireya Moscoso de Gruber of Endara' s Arnulfista party and Rubrn Darfo Caries of an amalgam party called "Change '94...
...A stocky man in his late forties, he plays the bass in a jazz ensemble when he isn't driving his taxi...
...An aunt takes care of her four-year-old daughter while she is at work...
...federal penitentiary on drug trafficking charges--the result of the bloodiest and most expensive drug bust in history...
...Fifth, such policies also undermine the clout of heavy-handed labor chieftains, tong accustomed to sweetheart contracts with the public and private sectors...
...GEORGE GRAYSON George Grayson is the Class of 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary...
...Commonweal 6 May 1994:7...
...Finally, liberalization diminishes opportunities for under-the-table pay-offs or mordidas, as market mechanisms replace discretion exercised by sticky-fingered bureaucrats...
...He knows from experience how expensive things can get when it doesn't...
...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...
...6:6 May 1994 REPORT FROM PANAMA THE PRICE OF DEMOCRACY WITH AN EYE TO THE NORTH iriam is twenty-nine and a single mother...
...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...
...Still, Freddy says, he doesn't hate the United States, even as he shows me the letter from Captain Kevin K. LaChance of the U.S...
...She remembers that when the banana workers went on strike Torrijos intervened on their behalf...
...His old taxi was parked nearby outside the PDF headquarters, a principal target of the assault...
...They're only out to enrich themselves and the upper classes...
...The Pentagon, which spends about $300 million a year in Panama in connection with the bases, says it doesn't want to keep them...
...Now Miriam says she regrets voting for Endara, because economic and social conditions have only gotten worse under his administration...
...Because, regardless of which candidate the Panamanian people choose, when election day is passed the embassy will still be pushing free trade, which seems to have replaced the drug war as Washington' s obsession in Latin America...
...She also remembers that he built schools and improved health care...
...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...
...Apart from the question of money laundering and drugrelated corruption, "leakage" of drugs from the north-bound drug pipeline has now become a serious problem, which was not the case under Noriega...
...When you have to transact business with the government, he says, they always want to see your voter card...
...Embassy say they aren't worried about the possibility of a PRD victory, even though it might be interpreted as a repudiation of Operation Just Cause...
...Auto insurance in Panama doesn't cover U.S...
...Army's Southern Command denying his claim for damages...
...Besides the lack of jobs, she worries about crime and drugs, which everyone here seems to agree are out of control...
...could keep its bases here, which it is now scheduled to vacate by the year 2000...
...declared Endara the winner anyway and installed him in office after invading the country in Operation Just Cause...
...It can be argued that economic modernization paves the way for political liberalization...
...In many ways, however, Salinas was coloring by the numbers in economic matters--that is, he sedulously adhered to an orthodox blueprint for reforming a hugely statist and inefficient economy...
...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...
...He made it to the top through brains and hard work, not a political pedigree and door-opening contacts...
...along with principal and interest payments, he had to pay $600 a year for the insurance the finance company required...
...All the candidates say that while the foreign debt must be paid they would try to get better terms from foreign lenders...
...On the other hand she considers Torrijos the best leader Panama ever had...
...All attack Endara for earnestly paying off foreign lenders while ignoring poverty, unemployment, crime, and the country's crumbling health and educational systems...
...He lives in Hampton, Virginia...
...He has just completed a book on the North American Free Trade Agreement...
...Officials of the U.S...
...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...
...Now he feels "defrauded" by Endara, who he says made many promises but kept none...
...trade embargo against Noriega...
...Only by enhancing the legitimacy of the PRI-dominated system can Mexico, now in the throes of rapid change, minimize the inevitable domestic turmoil that frightens off investors and impedes the sustained growth required to vault the nation from the third to the first world...
...The PRD was the party of Manuel Noriega, who is now serving time in a U.S...
...Mexico's next leader will face problems more daunting than those confronting Salinas when he took the presidential oath in December 1988...
...He tells about it as he poses for a picture beside his "new" taxi--a 1988 Toyota Corolla...
...Second, experience in making economic decisions generates demands for greater choice in the political marketplace...
...Unlike many of the people she knows, however, she doesn't think Toro and the PRD will bring back the good old days...
...on December 19, 1989, when the U.S...
...He had to get another cab, and soon, or face losing his taxi license...
...troops, through loudspeakers, ordered Freddy, his family, and the other surviving residents of his building to come out with their hands up, he found his cab destroyed...
...The challenge for Zedillo will be to marginalize gradually the old guard, while broadening access to the political process for elements of the business community, professionals, women, young people, shantytown dwellers, and small farmers to whom the current regime represents repression, rigged elections, and corruption...
...Freddy, his wife, and their two teen-age sons were inside their seventh-story apartment at 11:30 P.M...
...At the same time, he must convince dirt-poor Chiapan peasants and other "have-nots" that their country's foreign-educated mandarins care about their plight, as Salinas attempted to do through Solidarity...
...All are long on concern about Panama' s problems, but short on specific proposals as to how to solve them...
...Who will Freddy vote for...
...Even though Freddy has little faith in the candidates, he says he probably will vote on May 8. There is no requirement to vote in Panama, but Freddy takes his voter identification card from his wallet to show me where it was punched for previous elections...
...He also belongs to an evangelical Christian church--an unusual combination...
...KARL BERMANN Karl Bermann writes frequently on Central America and the Caribbean Basin...
...Third, free-tradeinspired contacts with democratic trading partners in North America and Europe would diminish authoritarianism in Mexico, just as Spain and Portugal's entry into the European Community fostered democracy in those erstwhile dictatorships...
...He finally paid off that loan last December, four years after Just Cause, but only because he took out a second loan for $2,000 that he'll be paying off, at $60 a month, for the next five years...
...He is also an economist, trained at Notre Dame and the Wharton School...
...He thinks Caries is personally honest, but more important, he thinks Panama has to have a president who can get along with the United States...
...One shell blew away a section of wall in the apartment directly under theirs...
...Miriam numbers herself among the skeptics...
...Salinas deserves enormous credit for his unswerving commitment to economic change...
...That includes a reduction in Panama's tariff barriers and a relaxation in the labor code inherited from the Torrijos years...
...Despite Prrez Balladares's populist slogans, his TV commercials are slick and fuzzy...
...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...
...All, with more or less enthusiasm, say they'd ask to renegotiate the Carter-Torrijos Treaty so the U.S...
...A big man--his nickname, "Toro," means "bull" in Spanish-he looks like a Panamanian Bill Clinton without the Clinton coiffure...
...invasions, and Freddy was left without a livelihood or resources...
...There is no legal authority to compensate you for your loss," the letter says in both English and Spanish...
...He and his family, he says, went practically without food and clothes to make the $100 payment every fifteen days...
...All seven presidential candidates have promised to create jobs, but Miriam doesn't believe them, except perhaps Rubrn Blades, the internationally known salsa singer and movie star...
...He fears things might go badly for him if it isn't punched for this election, too...
...That P6rez Balladares is a skillful politician is not in doubt...
...attack began...
...Ultimately, he got a loan to buy the Toyota second-hand from a car rental company...
...She works six nights a week at the reception desk of a modest hotel...
...Like Miriam, Freddy is skeptical about the election...
...But at 7:30 the next morning, when heavily armed U.S...
...After all, that was George Bush's thing...
...No similar prescription exists for the twin challenges that face his successor: Implementing widespread NAFTA-impelled changes in the economy and legal system, while opening up Mexico's authoritarian political system...
...Unable to escape, he and his family spent the night in terror, certain they were going to die...
...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 Prrez Balladares, the candidate of the Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD...
...She herself received a government grant that enabled her to attend high school...
...Probably Rubrn Dario Caries, the candidate he considers to be closest to the U.S...
...Torrijos is a mythic figure in Panama, and Commonweal Prrez Balladares, whose slogan is "the people to power," has done everything he can to wrap himself in the Torrijos mantle...
Vol. 121 • May 1994 • No. 9
