At least 70 communities, mostly in the Interior, are without water. A June trial has been set for some of the suspects in the Martinelli administration’s Tonosi water project fraud, but the company at the center of it is still allowed to get government contracts. PanCanal lake levels are down and we may see ship draft restrictions before this El Niño has run its course. As Madden Lake is way down, there is already the start of a tug-of-war over water to slake the metro area’s thirst and water to run ships through the canal.
Juan Carlos Varela made ambitious promises of running water in every Panamanian household but so far the movement on that has been in the other direction. A slowing economy does not help. However, the solution to the water problems is not rocket science. The nation’s many water systems need to be connected with one another. Along the dry western littoral of the Gulf of Panama there need to be several desalination plants to extract salt from sea water to make potable water. Some of the more useless or corruptly obtained hydroelectric projects that have already been built might properly be nationalized, at least in part, to provide water for public systems.
But what do we see instead? An inappropriate $13.5 million desalination plant for 160 mostly very wealthy residents of Isla Contadora, with some vague promise that this might keep CBS coming to the island from time to time to record espisodes of its faux reality Survivor shows. It’s a big insult to the many people of much lesser means who haven’t had water coming to their homes for weeks and it’s also an example of development priorities aimed at making contractors rich with needlessly expensive and expensive to run systems.
That’s the big irritant in the daily lives of many Panamanians at this moment. But meanwhile in high places, things are also amiss and drifting toward worse:
Dozens of Varela administration appointees turn out to be naturalized citizens of the United States or other countries who have not had their citizenship rights restored and thus illegally occupy their posts.
There are 19 criminal complaints pending against members of the Supreme Court, most of them against presiding magistrate José Ayú Prado. One of these looks like a fairly flagrant and open-and-shut matter in which as attorney general Ayú Prado allegedly ordered the destruction of evidence. It that’s true he has no business occupying any public post, let along the important one he holds. But the National Assembly’s Credentials Committee has chosen to hold turf battles and play partisan games instead of moving steadily but with all due caution in resolving these cases.
Two months after the high court ordered Ricardo Martinelli’s arrest, the papers have yet to be processed.
The audit of the University of Panama and the “private foundation” through which university assets were diverted is not done and it’s not clear that the comptroller general intends to do a complete audit.
Panamanian shell companies and law firms are shown to have been at the center of some of the biggest international corruption scandals of our times — the Brazilian Petrobras affair and the multifaceted looting of Spain — but our prosecutors seem not to be interested.
A new set of election laws has been proposed, by most indications to favor the bosses of the existing political parties rather than the causes of democracy or honest government.
The country’s two largest political parties, the PRD and Cambio Democratico, are fragmented with disreputable party leaders trying to cling to power and make deals with one another.
People will be marching against corruption with impunity on March 1, with factions that don’t ordinarily speak with one another taking part. Usuallly meek civic groups are now demanding the resignation en masse of the entire Supreme Court.
Is it an acute crisis? Not really. But consider the backdrop of exports and commercial activity down and declining, with unemployment and the national debt up and rising. It’s a deepening malaise from which an acute crisis might pop up at a surprising moment.
Bear in mind…
Among the individuals, as well as among nations, respecting the other people’s rights leads to peace.
Benito Juarez
No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.
Margaret Mead
All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.
Hypatia of Alexandria
~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information
Have you decided who you’re voting for in the Democrats Abroad presidential primary this March? Join our Global Town Hall with the Clinton and Sanders campaigns – and make your choice.
When: February 21st, 12 p.m. – 2 p.m. Washington DC time (Eastern time, same as Panama time)
Where: Webex for Democrats Abroad members ONLY – we’ll send the details after you RSVP
Albright will speak and answer questions via video conference at 12pm EST, followed by Sanders at 2 p.m. EST. There will be a one-hour hour break between speakers. Media wishing to listen in and report on the event should request press credentials here: http://www.democratsabroad.org/press_credentials_global_town_hall.
Who: Senator Bernie Sanders and Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
Getting involved is easy. RSVP here today and we’ll send you login information for the video conference call and a note on how to send in your questions. We’re limited to 500 callers, so RSVP now.
The Global Town Hall is open to Democrats Abroad members free of charge, but we appreciate your support, from small donations on up. Every bit counts to help get out the vote.
Remember, the Democrats Abroad primary is around the corner — visit your country’s web pages and check out your nearest polling center today. And see you on the 21st!
Embajador Feeley con Presidente Varela. Foto por la Presidencia.
Otra raya mas para el tigre
por Kevin Harrington-Shelton
Como bienvenida, para que el nuevo embajador norteamericano interesado en ayudar al presidente Juan Carlos Varela a promover la transparencia y prevenir la corrupción, comprenda las sutilezas de una corrupcion política enquistada en nuestra Corte Suprema, “Crítica” publica hoy cómo, TRAS DIEZ AÑOS, un Pleno descarta de su “Baúl de Pitcher a Catcher” una acusación por extorsión contra el actual Alcalde de Panamá, (otro) José I. Blandón.
Aunque van DOS AÑOS desde que ya no tiene competencia sobre él la Corte — porque el licenciado Blandón ya no es diputado y efectivamente sí correspondía darle traslado al tribunal encargado de procesar alcaldes.
Aunque, si se hubiese trasladado hace dos años como supondría una justicia pronta y cumplida, no habría prescrito esa acción…..
Pero ese no es el meollo del problema.
La baja-calidad de nuestra Justicia nos hace atractivo para que toda suerte de sinvergüenzas internacionales graviten hacia Panamá, para ampararse aquí bajo un sistema estructurado intencionadamente para garantizar impunidad a quienes puedan cebar a los operarios de nuestro derecho. (“Cowl effect”)
Aunque “Crítica” repasa demasiado superficialmente lo medular del problema.
Ejemplo.
Cuando PYCSA Panamá, S.A. interpuso ante el Ministerio Público su denuncia por extorsión contra ambos integrantes del bufete Blandón & Young –sin el conocimiento (ni consentimiento) de su Administrador Judicial– la entonces Procuradora Ana Matilde Gómez optó por NO consultar la “division” de dicha denuncia, que hubiera sido lo legal y lo lógico.
Como resultado, ambos socios fueron a dar a la Corte Suprema juntos. Donde esperaron cómodamente la prescripción del caso.
En la peculiar moral del “de pitcher a catcher” –avalado por el silencio cómplice de todo(a) diputado(a) que no rompa-grupo al respecto– al otrora diputado Blandón sí le “correspondía” esa jurisdicción. Pero, al licenciado Herbert Young, no.
Y éste NO es el UNICO contubernio que aún queda en el Baúl de Pitcher a Catcher en el Palacio de los Ñeques.
El mensaje que todo esto envía a los malhechores (locales ó internacionales) es claro: antes de delinquir, ¡asóciese con un diputado!
Mr. Ambassador: WELCOME TO PANAMA!
~ ~ ~
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web
“In the scheme of democracy, as in the code of Christianity, all men are on a common level of dignity and importance.” Justice Frank Murphy.
Scalia’s replacement and the 2016 elections
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
14th Amendment to the US Constitution, Section 2
American history — including the English and European history as understood by the founders of the American republic — was a subject that Antonin Scalia routinely and pointedly disregarded. With his demise begins a constitutional crisis of sorts, or more properly, an episode that will illustrate and aggravate divisions that have already rent US society. Because the Common Law legal system is mostly based on history as recorded in the precedents of case law, and because the US Senate that must confirm any presidential nomination is bound by its own arcane historical traditions, the demise of a justice who infamously rejected all inquiry into legislative history and intent has already touched off ferocious arguments about history.
Think of what Scalia’s rejection of history meant. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were products of a terrible Civil War fought over the future of the institution of slavery into which most African-Americans had until that time been born — but since these parts of the Constitution did not mention race, Scalia denied that race had anything to do with them or was an issue cognizable by American law. Because he refused to look at the historical abuses of the Plantagenet kings and their henchmen that gave rise to the Magna Carta, which in turn informed the expectations of the American colonists, Scalia essentially held the terms “privileges and immunities” and “due process of law” to be meaningless and went on to opine that torture and the executions of innocent persons are perfectly legal. This stuff about Scalia being a “strict constructionist” is a partisan myth — he had a right-wing agenda and he wasn’t averse to erasing parts of the Constitution to get results in line with that program.
So what does the Constitution say about how people become members of the US Supreme Court? It gives the President the power to appoint, but the Senate the power to approve or reject such appointments. With the present political gridlock, there is a good chance that any Obama nominee would be rejected out of hand. It would not be the first time that a nomination fell victim to a power struggle between the executive and legislative branches, nor would a short-handed high court be unprecedented.
As constitutional crises go, this one is a potential yawner. But maybe it won’t be, as there are other troubling things going on in the USA and among Americans everywhere. Consider the lunacy of the “constitutionalist” occupation of a bird sanctuary in Oregon — a criminal act by those whose external spokeswoman is a Republican member of the Nevada legislature. Consider Donald Trump’s vow to cancel the part of the 14th Amendment that reads “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” If the voters put Trump in a position to do it, he would deport the US-born children of Latin American immigrants whose papers were absent or deemed insufficient and roll back the statutory citizenship rights of those born abroad to American parents.
The next court may have to deal with attempts at radical surgery on the Constitution, but were that the only issue Obama would not have much trouble getting his nominee approved. Litmus tests are in play, but not particularly Donald Trump’s. Nor, we should expect, would be the political hot button issues of guns, gay rights or abortion. The two irreconcilable issues are likely to be institutionalized bribery — the principle of the Citizens United decision — and vote suppression, now on the rise since the Shelby County decision gutted key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Given the demographic and political shifts shown by Barack Obama’s election and re-election and by the strength among young voters shown by Bernie Sanders early in the primary season, vote suppression is an existential need for Republicans. The institutionalized bribery of unlimited campaign spending is an existential need of many members of the political caste in both major parties, but above all of the Republicans. It is also critical to the profit margins of the television networks and to the continued political protection of many a wealthy and now powerful business interest. Obama is unlikely to nominate somebody who can be trusted to keep vote suppression and institutionalized bribery in place, and the Republicans who control the Senate are unlikely to confirm a nominee who would overturn these principles, which would have never become law without the fifth vote of Antonin Scalia on the high court.
Now we are left with a short-handed Supreme Court, which by 4-4 ties would uphold the lower court decisions without setting binding precedents. One heartbeat gone silent has stalled the rightward march of American jurisprudence. The stakes of a 2016 election that had already promised to be a big showdown have suddenly grown. The maneuvering and posturing over Scalia’s replacement is likely to become a central part of the election debate, one that may just by itself put control of Congress in play.
So now we get back to history, with various twists proffered. Is it illegal or improper for a president in the last year of his term to nominate someone to fill a Supreme Court vacancy? No. It has happened several times. Is it illegal or improper for the Senate to block a president’s late term appointment, leaving that spot to be filled by the next president? It’s certainly not illegal and has been done before, but propriety gets into a philosophical discussion about the motives.
The precedent that will be dissected and cast in different lights is Lyndon Johnson’s nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice back in 1968. An alliance of Republicans and segregationist Southern Democrats killed that nomination in a Senate filibuster and the vacancy was left for Richard Nixon to fill. Nixon was elected president about a month after Fortas’s rejection, in an election that shifted US politics sharply to the right for more than a generation. Add to Nixon’s GOP vote total the votes that segregationist George Wallace got as an independent and that’s nearly 57 percent of the vote. Four years later with the power of incumbency behind him Nixon upped the then united right-wing share of the vote to nearly 61 percent, winning in an historic landslide.
The issues and balances in Congress have changed since the 1968 fight over Fortas, but far more strikingly the country and the natures of its main parties have changed. It’s not wartime prosperity for a growing middle class, but endless wartime despair for a shrinking middle class and especially those below. Democrats are split not between civil rights and segregationist wings, but between those who are obedient to corporate orders and those who aren’t. Republicans have an old guard establishment that’s widely repudiated by the party membership and a rumble among hustlers and weird cults to pick up the pieces.
Will a party boss rigging the nominating process to give the Democrats Hillary as a standard bearer be a repeat of the 1968 Hubert Humphrey debacle? Will an insurgent campaign that makes Bernie the nominee be the formula for a Democratic defeat on the order of the one suffered by George McGovern in 1972? Those are things to bear in mind, but the 2016 electorate, the national mood and the American economy are all very different from back then.
The Latin phrase about legal history that we are likely to hear bandied about in coming months is stare decisis — the Common Law predisposition to follow history and leave settled legal precedents alone. When Teddy Roosevelt curbed the abuses of the Gilded Age and broke up the Robber Barons’ trusts, Americans heard protests about the damage that did to the policy of stare decisis. When Franklin D. Roosevelt moved to end a Great Depression that resurgent corporate power had visited upon the land, he had to do battle with a Supreme Court that time and again cited stare decisis in favor of corporate privileges. When the Supreme Court under Earl Warren’s leadership moved to end Jim Crow segregation, the Koch brothers’ dad was one of the far right activists crying stare decisis and advocating Warren’s impeachment for a series of civil rights decisions that overturned previous case law. Of course it becomes rather difficult to do business if the law becomes arbitrary and uncertain, but in US law the power of precedent has been overcome time and again to meet basic national needs or to correct glaring injustices.
Let the games begin, let the litmus tests be applied, but do your own history homework.
Bear in mind…
You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.
Irish proverb
True poverty does not come from God.
Jewish proverb
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.
Greek proverb
~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information
The old attitude of not caring so long as things get done no longer makes any sense at all, as corruption has fed basic dysfunctions ranging from inability to keep water flowing to our homes to inability to properly manage the Panama Canal. Photo of repair work deemed acceptable by the ACP.
March First: Citizens March
by Miguel Antonio Bernal
I will march You will march We will march They will march
The corruption which by acts and omissions reigns over the three branches of government is ever more repudiated. The Supreme Court magistrates, the ministers and the legislators, by their conduct, are serving to awaken different sectors of the population, which repudiate the corrupt ones.
A Citizens March for Justice and Dignity from the El Carmen Church to Plaza Porras held on January 29 of last year surpassed the expectations of both those who supported the initiative and those who, blinded by their envy and myopia, opposed it.
Another Citizens March has been called for March 1 at 4 in the afternoon, this time from Plaza Porras to the Legislative Palace, to reaffirm the citizens’ rejection of impunity and to demand that the corrupt ones be thrown in jail, and now the resignation of the Supreme Court magistrates. Behind the national symbols as always, each with their own signs and slogans, everyone is invited to participate in a civil and peaceful but determined manner.
We have to strengthen the bonds of our united civic will to demand justice and to repudiate this “nothing will happen here” apathy.
Panama and Panamanians require a new commitment by everyone concerned to the process of citizen participation. We need it in order to build and mend the social fabric connecting the institutions of public administration and a citzenry that participates. For this purpose, free access to information, transparency and accountability are just as important as the judicial independence that’s missing.
Let’s all go to the march and all demand due and exemplary punishment for those directly and indirectly responsible for the looting of the public coffers, and those who have committed grave human rights violations. Now’s the time to get out of this pit in which we have been sunk for these recent years, due to Martinelli’s authoritarianism but also to the vagaries and mediocrities of successive governments.
~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information
Catching morning shade while watching the heavy traffic going the other way.
Not your usual travel story
story and photos by Eric Jackson
So often, “travel journalism” is about adventure possibilities for those with more money than culture. It explores the little-known rather than the familiar. All of that stuff has its place in the world. (For those of you interested in quality rather than novelty, for a standard against which to judge other work in the genre, there is no better substitute than to take the time to read the 1869 founding classic of American travel journalism, Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad.) But this is a tale about how this writer, like so many other Panamanians, travels all the time, but on one of those sort of predictable yet always different special days, a Carnival Saturday. A big differerence here was that the day’s excursion was for the most part in the opposite direction from most people’s travel for the day.
For a political party that operates in Panama, of whatever nationality, Carnival Saturday is a horrible time to meet. It’s that way for a Panamanian political party, it’s that way for any of the several parties from other Latin American countries that maintain branches here, it’s that way for Democrats Abroad Panama, the local chapter of that oldest of US major parties, the Democratic Party. This Panagringo dual citizen is an independent on the left side of the spectrum as a Panamanian, and a member of the board of directors of our country chapter of Democrats Abroad (DA) when wearing the American political hat. In order to encourage more participation from the Interior, DA now holds its board meetings online via WebX as well as in the flesh. But in THIS board member’s corner of the Inner Boonies — at the foot of the foothills that rise to the bigger hills atop which the Outer Boonies begin — men who work elsewhere during the week and a few folks with cottages in the Interior escape here from the city, such that on a weekend, especially a holiday weekend, more people are getting onto the Internet via Carlos Slim’s tower and the wireless online connection becomes unbearably slow. As in, take the two bus rides, the Metro ride and walk through Obarrio to get to this meeting at the Courtyard Marriott alongside the MultiPlaza Mall.
This being Carnival Saturday, the trip began early, allowing for a couple of hours more than usual. “The usual” would allow time for a bit of brunch at the terminal, a relaxed stroll from the Obarrio side of the Via Argentina Metro station and an early arrival. Longer than usual might entail the added expense of a cab, but that route and those calculations would be altered by the Cinta Costera’s closure for the city’s festivities.
Was it a matter of getting up in the morning and showering? Of of course not. There hasn’t been water coming to the houses in this neighborhood since New Year’s weekend, the representante is in hiding and they’ve even taken down the flags at the corregiduria and the junta comunal. Ah, but people are adaptive creatures and like everyone else I take a half-calabash, fill it from the water barrel I keep in the shower stall, and wash myself that way. (Sooner or later I expect the crisis to ease, but well after it’s over I do intend to remember this the next time that Panamanians go to the polls.)
Washed, dressed, the animals fed early, it’s a quarter mile walk on unpaved streets to the bus stop. On the way to the caseta there’s a young adult iguana sunning himself in the middle of the road. The main hazard to him is not the traffic, but ending up on someone’s dinner table. He ran off and lost himself in the sticks as I approached.
There wasn’t much of a wait at the caseta. A busito headed toward Penonome came by almost immediately. On many days I woud take that ride out to the Pan-American Highway, pay my 40¢ and get a bus coming from a point to the west and headed into the city. But this was a holiday weekend and at such times buses are likely to pass by without picking up passengers. (That phenomenon is worse going into town on any Sunday or on the last day of a holiday weekend, as the buses actually tend to be full going in that direction, but at busy times when most people are going the other way a lot of times the drivers are eager to get into the city in a hurry so won’t stop to pick up passengers for that reason.) In any event, I chose to get the next busito, which followed the Penonome van in a matter of just a couple of minutes, into Anton. There, if nothing else works, one can get on an Anton to Panama bus for sure. Better to pay 75¢ for the ride into town.
So, hardly any wait at the local caseta? I was treated to the driver’s excellent taste in cumbia music, got into Anton sooner than expected and might have taken the opportunity to do breakfast. But who knows what delays might await on a Carnival Saturday? I got off at the town’s first bus stop, just before the bomba, just after an acute corner at which the Anton to Panama buses turn onto the highway. One such turned the corner promptly — and kept on going. Did the driver not care to deal with a passenger who would get the senior citizens’ discount — $3.20 instead of $4.60? He didn’t stop for me to ask or argue.
By now the westbound traffic further into the Interior was picking up and here along the eastbound lane a Transito policewoman took advantage of the long shadow from the gas station sign to monitor the traffic going the other way in a more comfortable spot. Part of a public safety crew of some 28,000 people mobilized for Carnival, she was doing a job that didn’t look at all exciting. I don’t imagine that she wanted any breaks from the drudgery that would entail her intervention at a scene of broken vehicles, bones and so on.
Soon there came a big red bus from Aguadulce, which stopped for me. It was mostly empty, so I went toward the back to an unoccupied pair of seats, stuck my wireless modem stick into my mini-laptop and checked the email, then the latest headlines. Riding the bus into the city, there is a stretch more or less between a bit west of Rio Hato and approaching Coronado where the reception for all sorts of mobile devices ranges from spotty to horrible. If the next seat is occupied, it also becomes a bit awkward to use a laptop on the bus. More stops were made for more passengers, never enough to fill the seat next to me, but when we hit the dead zone I logged off, switched off and put my computer back into my bag.
A bag? There are extraordinary circumstances, but generally the Panamanian thing to do, whatever your gender persuasion, is to carry a bag. For men the most popular thing is a cheap Asian-made synthetic fiber knapsack. But hippies are supposed to be different, and those who care for Panama, who although kind of poor themselves are nevertheless committed to lending a hand to the poorest of the poor, who are pragmatic and also making a cultural statement will carry a chacara, one of the hand woven bags of various sizes that come from the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca. On this trip I carried a medium-large one, with other bags inside it — a water-resistant and concealing from maleantes book bag for the computer and camera, plus an even larger chacara for some possible grocery shopping on the way back.
The bus continued to fill and traffic went smoothly, until the approach to Coronado. There the westbound traffic began to get bumper to bumper, an insane rich driver attempted to argue with Transito cops to be allowed to turn directly into Coronado from the westbound lane, and even eastbound traffic began to get congested. Uh oh.
Turns out that this was one of several stretches where one of the eastbound lanes was lent to westbound traffic, but that soon ended and by Gorgona we were moving right along again.
Time to pull out the computer again? Nope. NOW that passengers who boarded at Coronado had largely filled the bus, we were provided with an onboard distraction. No, not the usual. The salsa – bolero – bachata music mix was turned down and a man stood up in the aisle to preach.
Oh NO! Romeo Santos interrupted for THIS? My mind wandered to the ghosts of sermons past.
I wasn’t there to catch Siddhartha Gautama’s sermon under the banyan tree. But once in Miami, 11 presidential election cycles ago, I was one of a band of long-haired protesters hanging out and smoking dope in a mango tree when an evangelist they called Holy Joe descended upon us:
The answer doesn’t lie within, through yoga and cult meditation. The answer lies not in public disturbances or the maze of politics. The answer is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
(From a few branches above: “I just took a hit of acid!”)
Some of you are not ready to meet The Lord, but He is patient, He is patient, the Lord of Salvation….
(“I just took another one….”)
And some of you are MISERABLE!
(The chorus: “Jesus loves me, this I know. He makes marijuana grow.”)
This bus preacher, however, was not collecting money for some youth program, nor citing chapter and verse, nor salvation from the eternal grave. This guy was talking about a better life rather than eternal life, not through the miracles of religion but through licuados and vegetable juices. He was advertising a line of blenders and juicers, and handing out free recipe pamphlets with information in case someone wanted to buy one of the appliances. Hallelujah! I had been spared a guilt trip, or a fear trip, on the way to my meeting!
Up the hill onto Campana, then down into Capira and Chorrera, the eastbound traffic occasionally clogged and then unclogged but we never lost much time. Once we hit the Autopista it was smooth driving all the way into. But looking at the lanes going the other way, THEY were clogged and occasionally unclogged, and losing substantial time.
Into the city in just under two and a half hours — excellent time. Time to grab some pastelitos de pollo and a carton of milk at the bakery on the near end of the terminal, to sit down and eat, and to see my email and Facebook activity before heading up the escalator, across the pedestrian bridge and down the escalator, through the turnstiles and and then down the escalator to the trains. I got to the platform just as a train was waiting and got in the first car, which had hardly any seats. Some instinctively rude teenagers took those, but quickly relinquished them to some mothers carrying babies and some folks older than I am.
A few minutes later I emerged on the Obarrio side of the Via Argentina exit. From there, I went on foot to Via Brasil. Living in the Interior now, every time I go into the city things have opened, closed, moved, been torn down or been built since last I walked that way. The overall impression was of a slight economic downturn, more things closed than opened, the new things a bit downscale from what was before, but only a few places — most notably a hotel — abandoned. The Via Brasil road expansion had not appreciably made pedestrian access to MultiPlaza more difficult.
EARLY to my meeting! And after that, a ride back to the terminal kindly offered and accepted.
So, a tactical decision of importance to the wonder dog and the attack cat, and about how convenient it would be for me to hole up in the village for the rest of the long weekend. Do I want to get dog food, cat food and coffee at Mr. Martinelli’s store adjacent to the terminal, or roll the dice about whether I would make it back to Anton in time to both do a bit of shopping and get a bus back to the village. The difference about getting home would be between a 75¢ bus fare and a $5 cab fare — but it could be worse, because late enough at night when the cabs no longer operate in Anton there is the option of taking the Penonome bus, getting off at the entrada and walking about an hour or so to get home from the Pan-American Highway.
I chose not to patronize criminals. If the truth is to be told, a higher moral imperative was to get something fresh and perishable in Anton, while I would not want to buy meat in the city and take it home uncooled on a several hour ride into the Interior.
The terminal was not as hellish as I expected it to be, but I still ended up in a line that was three Coaster bus loads long. People were patient and polite. There were no vendors or hustlers trying to work the crowds, nor were there any wise guys trying to cut into the lines. Did the police presence in the boarding area have anything to do with those things? Perhaps.
The bus I finally boarded — in the shotgun seat, the passenger place with the best view and probably the most dangerous spot on a Toyota Coaster — pulled out of the terminal at 4:24.
On the ride back, there were no delays until just after La Espiga in La Chorrera. The clock hit 5 p.m. at about that point. Then it went slowly, occasionally bumper to bumper, for the rest of the way. There was a heavy police presence in many places, particularly in Capira. But up on Cerro Campana — traditionally the most dangerous part of the highway — not a cop to be seen and the traffic was flowing rather smoothly. Once over the hill, it was congested again, most severely in Coronado. The clock hit 6 p.m. just past Gorgona. Somewhere around Santa Clara the traffic began to move more steadily again. The clock hit 7 p.m. just before the town of Rio Hato. It was 7:20 when we got to Anton. Nearly three hours, and the bus driver’s eclectic musical tastes were excellent all the way.
Holiday beer sales! Of course the Centro Comercial was open, and as I went in the driver of the busito out to where I was going told me that if I was just getting a few things he’d wait for me. Chorizos, pellejo, cans of fish, a bag of cat food, a bag of coffee and I was at the checkout counter, then on the bus and on my way. No need to be on the roads with the maniac drivers anymore this holiday weekend.
I don’t think that the tourism authority will subsidize this sort of travel writing. But getting from point A to point B and back is both an adventure and a set of skills. The experiences and acquired wisdom vary a great deal according to social class. This was the tale of how a working man goes about it. You don’t fully appreciate Panama without learning the joys and subtleties of how most people get around the place.
on the way back…
The lines at the bus terminal.Go ahead. Make our day. Behave yourself.Heading west out of Chorrera.Gloved for soccer balls or inattentive drivers.Pulling out from the culecos in Capira.Are your papers in order?Into the twilight…Under the light of another gas station sign, this time in Rio Hato.
~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information
Back in December, all of the public safety organizations — the various divisions of the National Police, the firefighters, the SINAPROC disaster relief agency, the food safety inspectors — coordinated their plans for Carnival safety. Photo by the Bomberos.
17 die in Carnival mishaps
Every year residential areas — especially in the Panama City and San Miguelito metro area but not only there — empty out as people head for Carnival celebrations, beaches and mountain resorts for the long Carnival weekend. People tend to die, with alcohol often playing a role, in traffic accidents, drownings or violence amidst the crowds of revelers. This year nobody was killed in Carnival scene violence but the overall death toll went up to 17, as compared to 13 in 2015. This year 13 died on the roads and four drowned.
The police changed their traffic deployments from previous years, but aggressive drivers caught on and changed the venues of their obnoxious behavior accordingly. The carnage began early on the evening of Carnival Friday when a driver tried to get ahead of the crush at El Espino in La Chorrera and a rollover accident left one dead and four injured. The initial exodus from the city was perhaps heavier than previous years because there were announced water outages in the metro area on Carnival Saturday and because the capital’s celebrations have been scaled down from the days when Ricardo Martinelli and Salo Shamah used them to skim money from the government by way of lavishly funded Carnivals in which parts of the supposed big paychecks for international artists were siphoned off. By anecdotal evidence the city was quieter and more deserted than usual, but that made the early rush to the Interior heavier. By Saturday morning’s news reports six people had died. The Transito cops made a few readjustments but by the end of the six-day break (counting Carnival Friday, which is officially not a holiday but on which a lot of people take off early from work, and Ash Wednesday, the morning of which is an official half-day off) there were 13 traffic fatalities, two more than in 2015.
The extreme El Niño year has the nation’s rivers running low, which generally makes them less dangerous. However, the dry season winds were exceptionally heavy, making ocean waters choppier and blowing out to sea on the Pacific Side. SINAPROC ordered beaches closed for swimming and bathing on Carnival Saturday, but not everybody respected the red flags and Panama’s coastlines are too extensive for a government presence on every beach. Despite the precautions four people drowned, double last year’s unusually low death toll from that cause.
~ ~ ~
The announcements below are interactive. Click on them for more information
Bill Clinton with the Martinellis. Photo by the Panamanian Presidencia.
Friends of Bill and Hillary make TI’s short list of the world’s worst sticky fingers
Experience in high places
Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli — now being harbored by the United States in self-imposed exile in Miami — and current Dominican Senator Félix Bautista have made Transparency International’s short list of those at the center of the world’s nine worst corruption scandals. Martinelli notoriously hangs with Clintons, while Bautista, who owns construction companies, pleads that his tainted contracts with the Haitian regime that Hillary defended as Secretary of State were vetted by none other than Bill Clinton himself.
Where Panama may be heading
