Another Look at Panama’s New Mayor
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Dear Panama E-Letter Subscribers:
Another Look at Panama’s New MayorBy Matt Atlee In my last column I wrote about Panama City’s new mayor, Bosco Vallarino, and the controversies that have befallen him since he took over the job in mid-July. A friend wrote me last week and told me that I had been too hard on the new mayor, that what he was doing was no worse no better than most politicians. It was just that the new mayor was new to politics – he had built his career in publicity, not politics wrote my friend. He deserved a chance before people heaped criticism on him. And after all it was fun to read about how crazy the new mayor was from afar – my friend is Panamanian but is studying in the U.S. northeast. Most people agree the new mayor is a little crazy. After President Martinelli criticized the mayor for not collecting trash in certain sectors of the city by walking past huge piles of trash and pointing at them, the mayor decided he needed to show people he was serious about being mayor. So the day after the trash criticism, the mayor appeared in one of the large national newspapers, holding a large mosquito smoker (identical to a leaf blower) bent over with a surgeon’s mask covering his face, and smoking some weeds that were growing below a concrete wall. He was dressed in black with a black polo shirt. My Panamanian friends loved the photo: to show me just how much they loved it they leaned over, cocked their arm and shoulder and made the buzzing sound that a mosquito smoker makes. And then they snapped their fingers together, hit their thigh and laughed. The mayor was working his kind of magic. It’s a good sign in Panamanian politics if the people joke about you rather than swear your name and look the other way. Maybe the new mayor will be good for the city. I’m not sure he’ll be good for the city but he might be good for the country. His brand of mirth might be just what is needed in Panama over the next few anxious years with the Canal expansion and increase in crime. I was sorry to see the mayor’s deputy leave; she made a real impression on me. Her name is Roxana Méndez. She was actually the mayor for a few weeks because it was thought that Bosco Vallarino might have dual citizenship which would disqualify him to be mayor. He had to wait until he was legally cleared to become mayor. So briefly, Roxanna Mendez was given the credentials to be mayor while Vallarino waited. She has decided to leave because of differences with the new mayor. In the end, the new mayor’s immediate political fortunes are tied to how well he pulls off his flagship project, the Vía Navideña (Christmas Way); if he can pull off the Vía Navideña, then he might regain lost confidence in his leadership. The projected budget for the Vía Navideña is somewhere between $600,000 to $1 million dollars. It better be good. What is most interesting to me about Panamanian politics right now is not the mayor, but how the bureaucracy has changed. Who are the new bureaucrats, and what party are they associated with? I interact a lot with Panamanian bureaucrats, but the current batch are unlike any other I’ve seen because of their youth. Martinelli did mobilize a lot of young, first-time voters to his campaign. Have some of them taken jobs in the government? I ask who they are because this year a big candidate – Ricardo Martinelli – won the presidency with a small party. He, of course, did create alliances with other political parties to win the presidency, but which party is populating the bureaucracies? Normally, the winning party fills bureaucratic jobs with the party faithful, but I’m not sure that’s what has happened. Most people say the institutions of government are very slow right now and not at all consistent: is that because one party won the election, but another is running the institutions of government? To be fair to the bureaucrats they’ve only been in power for a few months so things might change. But how will Martinelli handle the bureaucracies: I imagine a successful businessman like Martinelli won’t have the patience or desire to understand and move the bureaucrats to action and this in the end might slowdown his agenda. Speaking of Ricardo Martinelli, he is in Portugal this week to attend the Ibero- American Summit in the coastal town of Estoril. The Summit brings together the heads of state of Spain, Portugal and Latin American. The King of Spain always attends as well. The topics at the Summit will be poverty, inequality and malnutrition. This will be the 18th annual Summit since they began in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1991. The annual Summits were originally proposed by the Spanish as a way of reigniting political and economic relations with Latin America after the U.S. moved out of the region at the end of the Cold War. The Summit was held in Panama in 2000. Commercial real estate development in Panama continues to grow according to a report released by the Panamanian Ministry of Economy and Finance. The report which was released last week shows that revenue for building permits in commercial real estate for this year were valued at $1.395 billion; that’s an increase of $2 million over last year. There has been a drop in residential construction permits, but commercial real estate is still growing. The Panamanian National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP) has put a proposal forward that would increase the Panamanian minimum wage by 15%. The current minimum wage is $325 a month; workers would like to see a 100% increase, while the government has proposed a 30% increase. The cost of the basic diet in Panama – rice, beans, meat – has gone up over the last few years to $270 a month so the minimum wage has to be increased. President Martinelli made an increase in the minimum wage a central part of his campaign platform, so look for the government’s proposal to win out in the end. Again, Martinelli wants to build a strong base among the working class.
Panama’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MICI) would like to attract $1 billion in foreign investment next year. The campaign for increased investment will be led by a new division within MICI that will help investors to find the information they need in order to analyze whether or not they want to invest in Panama. The government is most interested in attracting foreign capital to the Panama Pacific Special Economic Area located on the old Howard Air Force Base. The government wants to set up a platform for investors who come to Panama and want quick access to information essential for investment. Panama’s Penitentiary System is planning to use ship containers as a way of dealing with overcrowding in Panama’s prisons. Director of the Penitentiary System, Diomedes Kaa, thinks containers would be a good way of providing safe, portable cell space to prisons that are already badly overcrowded. The containers will have an open end with cell bars and the rest of the container will be enclosed. The containers will meet safety standards for heat and sanitation, said Kaa. Kaa has said that the long term solution for overcrowding and escapes in Panama’s prisons is to build another Coiba – to create another prison island. Hearing that another gold or copper mine might be opening in Panama is never a good sign, so environmentalists were upset when they heard that the Panamanian government plans to ok a mine at Cerro Colorado located on the Ngäbe Buglé reserve in Chriqui Province. The Cerro Colorado mine, said to contain one of the largest deposits of copper in the world, has been a topic in Panama since the late 1970s when all kinds of international investors tried to get a hand into the development of the mine. Nothing ever happened and the idea of building a mine at Cerro Colorado died out in the early 1980s. International speculator, Doug Casey, who was one of the investors interested in the mine in the late 1970s, told me that because the mine was on indigenous land, it was impossible to go forward with the project. If the project goes forward it should bring together an odd mix of international investors, environmentalists, indigenous leaders, politicians and speculators – mines have a funny way of bringing diverse people into contact with one another. Written By Matt Atlee Panama 101 – E-Book – $69
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The Panamanian government announced last week that it will pay $25,000 to current owners of “Diablo Rojos” as compensation for the modernization of the Panamanian transportation system. The government wants to replace the old U.S. school buses with modern buses that will be run by companies that participate in public bids. The government would like to see all “Diablo Rojos” off the streets by 2011. The new transportation system will be run by one large company and will be called Metrobus; the government argues this will give the city a more modern and reliable transportation system rather than the ad hoc one that now exists. (Someone smart should be collecting the last few “Diablo Rojos” and creating a museum to their honor).