Contratulations to Balbina Herrera, Minister Of Housing, on her smashing victory in the PRD leadership and central executive council elections last night. The final totals aren't in yet but she won huge, getting three times the votes of Perez-Balladares and Navarro. This makes her a pretty good favorite for the presidency in the May 2009 elections and would make her Panama's second woman president and the third center-left woman head of state in South America, along with Michelle Bachillet of Chile and Cristina Fernandez-Kirchner of Argentina.
Panama is a democratic republic with a system mixing features of the United States and the UK. There are party leadership elections but there are primaries as well. Thus, Perez-Balladares and Navarro may still challenge her to represent the PRD in the general election. The last 2009 presidential poll (all-in, regardless of party affiliation) I saw was taken in mid-January and had Herrera on top with 28%, Martinelli (the leading center-right candidate, too early to even assign him a party affiliation because of the fracturing of the right-wing coalition) was in second with 13%. Perez-Balladares (PRD) was mid-pack with 9% and Varela (a stronger and better financed center-right candidate) towards the read with 4%. Given what has happened over the last couple of months, my guess is Herrera will have a very large lead and Varela will have moved way up.
Just to keep things simple, I present the English News Panama translation of La Prensa's news story in this morning's edition.
Balbina elected as new president of the PRD
Written by La Prensa
Monday, 10 March 2008
Ministra de Vivienda Balbina Herrera was elected as the new president of the Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) yesterday.
Herrera retook the presidency after defeating her principal competitor for the party's highest office, ex-president of Panama Ernesto Pérez Balladares. Herrera previously served as president of the PRD from 1999 to 2002.
Mayor of Panama City Juan Carlos Navarro emerged victorious in his bid for the position of first subsecretary of the Comité Ejecutivo Nacional.
Both Pérez Balladares and Navarro aspire to be selected as the PRD's presidential candidate in the 2009 elections for that office.
Martín Torrijos, who, according to Panamanian law, must step down from the office of Presidente de la República next year, was elected secretary general of the PRD for the third consecutive time. Significantly, the candidates supported by Torrijos for other positions within the PRD defeated those from the Pérez Balladares camp.
For example, Asamblea Nacional deputy Elías Castillo was elected first vice president of the party.
The head of the education ministry, Belgis Castro, was elected fourth subsecretary, and Rodrigo Díaz was elected fifth subsecretary.
Pedro Miguel González, who has been indicted in the U.S. for the murder of an American soldier on the eve of ex-president George Bush's 1992 visit to Panama, and who is currently president of the Asamblea Nacional, was elected third subsecretary of the Comité Ejecutivo Nacional.
Please note the last paragraph which I have highlighted in large font and italics. The Economist, some weeks back, highlighted this in its editorial damning the PRD. The article carried the unsourced statement that this business about a U.S. indictment of Assembly Speaker Gonzalez was "troubling" to the Panamanian business community. Oh really? I kind of know most of the main players in that community and I hadn't even heard of any of this. The Panamanian business people I know -- and these would be owners of banks and major developers -- do not care at all about this. They care about whether they hit their nut-flush on the turn and why the waiter's so slow with the cranberry juice and the fruit plates. Besides, when did The Economist become so opposed to countries which have high growth, low inflation, free markets, very low taxes, and an emphasis on civil liberties? WHEN THAT COUNTRY IS AGNOSTIC ON THE "WAR ON TERROR," STUPID.
Speaker Gonzalez was acquitted in a Panamanian court and cannot be extradited. Now, if the United States was willing under George Bush, Sr., to invade Panama and kill 30,000 city dwellers in order to bring their far-right friend, Manuel Noriega, to stand trial on random money-laundering and conspiracy charges, one can only imagine what McCain (who was born in the Canal Zone) has in store for us over this.
Here's some of the trash that'll be picked up by Fox and the rest of the MSM following Herrera's win.
This from an October edition of something called Panama Investor. I had never seen it in print or online before and have no idea what it is. I do know that there is one huge error in the article. Torrijos's approval rating hit a career-low of 51.3% during the construction strike two weeks ago. In October of 2007, he stood at 59.7%. This is very cute stuff and it's why I don't read the English language press here nor do I hang around in the gringo community. Though it will make no sense whatsoever to anyone with a brain, expect to read both that Herrera is both a pro-Chavez and pro-Castro communist and also part of the Noriega right-wing junta. Your reality check: she's was the Mayor of San Miguelito (which is kind of being Mayor Of Chicago), a former PRD head, current PRD government housing minister and now once again PRD leader elect. Her views are strictly in line with the center-left governments of most wealthy nations: strong socially, strong economically, in favor of low taxes. Plus, it's kind of difficult to be pro-Noriega and PRD at the same time. In the USA, to accomplish that one would have to hold the views of Duncan Hunter and Dennis Kucinich at the same time. Text in red and bold.
Woman Leads Polls for Panama Prez
Panama, Oct 1 (Prensa Latina) Panamanian Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, from the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) is now the favorite of the Panamanian population to become the president of Panama in the elections to be held in 2009.
Balbina Herrera, who will be 53 on November 24, is a divorced mother of three, and was at the side of General Omar Torrijos in 1969 when PRD was founded.
Although she has declared she simply wants to be Panama City mayor again, a post she has held three times, as well as that of congresswoman, a PSM Sigma Dos poll released Monday revealed 27 percent of those questioned chose Herrera for president if the elections were held today.
Following Herrera are Ricardo Martinelli (16 percent) and Alberto Vallarino (11 percent), trailed by ex President Guillermo Endara and current Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro (both with 10 percent), former PRD president Ernesto Perez Valladares (9 percent), Juan Carlos Varela (4 percent) and current Panamanian Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro with 2 percent.
The poll also evaluated President Martin Torrijos mandate, and he received 48 percent of acceptance, with 45 percent unhappy with his administration.
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ALI BABA (NORIEGA) AND THE 40 THIEVES (BALBINA WAS ONE OF THE THIEVES)
Panamanians sometimes say: "When they arrested Noriega they took Ali Baba, but they left the 40 thieves." Indeed, a list of names of who's in charge of Panama today, even when far from complete, reads like a who's who of the dictatorship days:
First, the commission that drafted the penal code reforms is dominated by members who've played an active role in the military regime.
Wilfredo Saenz, for example, was a criminal magistrate on the Superior Tribunal. Ana Belfon was one of Noriega's most loyal and fanatic prosecutors. Jerry Wilson was a magistrate of the Supreme Court during the heyday of Noriega's drug trafficking. José Acevedo was another criminal judge, while lawyer Silvio Guerra is still defending Noriega's torturers in the few cases that have been prosecuted.
In the government, next to president Martin Torrijos himself, we find Minister of Public Works Benjamin Colamarco, who was the founding father of the infamous "dignity battalions," Noriega's goon squad. His wife, Marta Amado Trevia, is the sister of Noriega's former mistress Vicky Amado and used to be head of the Banco Hipotecario Nacional. She now presides over the Postal Service.
Another member of Noriega's goon squad was Balbina Herrera, now Minister of Housing. Jorge Ritter, best described as a party ideologist of Noriegismo, is now an influential presidential advisor. Juan Bosco Bernal, a former minister under Noriega, is now an ambassador.
Dilio Arcia, a Supreme Court magistrate during the Noriega days, is today vice-minister of the presidency. Ex-Colonel Diaz Herrera, member of the small group surrounding Noriega, now represents Panama as its ambassador in Peru. Daniel Delgado Diamante, formerly in charge of the army's Puma division and involved in several multi-million dollar corruption schemes, today heads the Customs Service.
When the Torrijos government appointed one of Noriega's daughters to a diplomatic position in the Dominican Republic, protests were heard in Panama. She later resigned.
Shortly thereafter, another daughter of Noriega was hired, this time serving the diplomatic mission in Singapore.
Posted by: Expat October 02, 2007 at 09:45 AM
Thanks for the post expat
Posted by: Jack K October 03, 2007 at 09:40 PM
Prensa Latina, the Cuban Communist Party's wire service, botched this one in an important respect.
Balbina Herrera has never been mayor of Panama City. During the dictatorship she served as mayor of San Miguelito.
That this horseshit is also full of errors and inconsistencies won't bother the MSM or McCain at all. It might not bother Obama or Clinton either but that's a whole other story.
Instead, I'll present some thoughts by THE BLACK SNOB http://blacksnob.blogspot.com/ on how she sees American foreign policy. This was inspired by my having misunderstood one line she had written about Hugo Chavez and having subsequently upbraided her slightly about not knowing the region. I was wrong. She's knows everything. THE BLACK SNOB'S words in bold green:
kelso: I don't have any actual beef with Chavez. I just know that people are constantly bitching about the man in the US and about how we're the most powerful country in the world, yet the US response to him is consistently anemic and pathetic.
Many people easily get buffaloed by our government, confusing "enemies" and "people we'll actually go to war with." If you listened to George and the gang, you'd think that Chavez was just some socialist nut job, but all of the US actions says he isn't. Because if he was some rank criminal and we could get away with it we would have pulled one of our classic jack moves by now. Like when we invaded Panama just to get one man.
It's the same with our Cuba policy. Or, hell, we've had a complicated-to-fucked up relationship with everyone south of us since the Monroe Doctrine. I don't think there isn't a government or a country that we haven't tried to manipulate to our own gain in some fashion.
Columbia is just tragic and another example of who the US picks as friends often has nothing to do with our "founding principles" and everything to do with money and strategic power/alliances.
We like who ever is going to let us steal with little recourse. We will let that dictator live a lush life off of our looting and oppress his own people. That's why Iraq was infinitely saddening. Us fighting to free a people we helped imprison.
I know that you prefer Hillary. I have always admired the balls of both Clintons. I'm always half offended, half amazed.
My issue with Republican/Neocon foreign policy makes no fucking sense. We fight and punish all these tiny countries and turn into a paper tiger on Putin, Chavez, Kim Jong Il, et al. We do nothing to them (because we can't afford a third more messed up war where we'd get our asses handed to us.)
But Iraq/Afghanistan? Let's blow it back to the stone age just for shits and giggles?
I do not understand our countries approach on Cuba at all, unless this is the ultimate act of face saving. We've been obsessed with co-opting Cuba for decades, since the Spanish-American War. I've always assumed that we meant for it to be another colony, another Hawaii, Guam or Puerto Rico. And when that didn't happen, when Cubans insisted time and time again on running their own country, that after Batista fled and Castro came to power it was like we were some jilted lover.
How could you leave us for them? The USSR? Of all people! The nerve. Well, fuck you forever, Cuba!
I mean, other countries have burned us and we've made (financially-based) amends. Vietnam is one. China is another.
I get that the former upper class and middle class of Cuba was all kinds of pissed when Castro took the country in a communist direction, but since when did we base our entire foreign policies on an angry minority community? Nobody cares about how us Chinese, black, Africans, Haitians, Dominicans and Mexicans feel about our respective countries of origin.
Unless your main passions are Cuba or Israel, no one in our government cares. We won't take women facing genital mutilation because we claim their not suffering from political persecution and don't face "imminent harm."
But if you can make it to US soil and you're Cuban you can stay forever. What the hell? Haitians, royally screwed on their half of the island are denied into our country because America can only take, like, two Haitians a year. Or whatever excuse they give.
But the Cubans are that special? And you can't tell me that it's a "strategic" location. The USSR fell in the late 80s/early 90s. And I believe the Kremlin stopped cutting Fidel checks even before then.
Then it became "Cuba is a state sponsor of terror" and I was just through. If we didn't stop developing our business interests with China after their treatment of Tibet and the massacre in Tienanmen Square, we should be selling Cuba food and letting people visit their relatives.
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of our relationships (the older ones) changing. There are some areas where I see some chance for new attitudes, but there will be so much pressure to keep up the status quo I wonder what good will get done.
I seriously hope we could let up on our obsession with everyone the south of us. I wish we would really reassess those relationship and stop punishing people just because they chose a style of government different from ours. I can't believe we're still even having the socialism-communism-democracy fight considering every American I know claims we won that argument. So how are these countries threats? And wouldn't we have an easier time nudging them to "liberty" if we had better relationships with them, trade or otherwise?
Economics and information were the things that eventually did the USSR in no matter what the Republicans say. I know they get into their Reagan worship, but I seriously think the only one who should get credit is our GDP. I still remember an interview Yeltsin gave Leslie Stall of "60 Minutes" where he went into a rage when she criticized Russian's economy and he bitched her out about how his own mother has to go outside of Russia for her medical treatment. Later Stall pointed out that Yeltsin was stupafied on his first visit to the US and he saw the grocery stores, the oppulence and how while we were getting fat eating Twinkies his country was being starved to death in a effort to hasten our ascension and their destruction. Yeltsin said we destroyed his country.
I'm not going to argue with him there.
But now I've gone off topic.
Our foreign policy makes no sense. It's based on long-standing beefs, superstition, conjecture and manipulation. Who we love and who we hate often depends on how you look at things. And we almost never consider the consequences when we try to remake more vulnerable parts of the world in our "image."
I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure how Obama will handle foreign policy. No one can do worse than Bush (one only hopes). So I think he would be a plus based on that alone. But then so would McCain, and I don't like him very much.
I'd hope that Obama would take a fresh look at some of our long term fuck-ups and come away with a new perspective, like, stop wasting energy fighting Chavez and meddling in South America. Why do we even care? There's no bipolarity in the world anymore. The fall of USSR put almost everyone back on equal footing. We have the greatest Army in the world and we've been bogged down by so-called "dead-enders" for five years now. Our European friends no longer feel a bunch of pressure to cosign on things they don't agree with (Iraq, for one). They no longer require our protection because the Reds aren't coming.
Hell, that was the only reason anyone listened to us at all. We were the protectors of the free world. Well, I don't think we're in the "protection" business in anything more than a mafioso sense where you either pay us (in oil) to protect you or we invade you and make your life a living hell. I always joke with my parents that this administration wasn't a Democracy, it was a "Thugocracy." Steal and bully with a heaping of incompetence. It was like the country was being run by Chicago's Gangster Disciples.
Although I've listened to Obama's foreign policy, I'm still not quite sure which side he would come down on. You kind of have to take both Democrats with a grain of salt. They can't say anything too loudly that could raise the cackles of the extremists who think the answer to everything is killing somebody. I mean, say "trade with Cuba" too loudly and you've got Florida up in your ass. Mention altering relationships with repeat political, environmental and human rights offenders, and someone will bemoan how we really, really need to keep paying Egypt and Jordan to not invade Israel.
They have the largest military in the Middle East that we paid for. Why are we paying people? And it's no secret that if Israel got in trouble that we wouldn't ride in with the calvary (unless we have another war going on). So no one who doesn't want to get Iraq'ed is going to invade.
So, I'm hoping Obama is going to avoid being buffaloed by hardliners who think our policies in the Americas, Eastern Europe, Asia and the Middle East make sense.
Steve King of Iowa is a simplistic dumb ass. Typical of every closed-minded troglodyte who has backed our disastrous bomb "first, ask questions later" policies.
Oh, and sanctions don't work. But not in the way the Republicans have pitched. They don't work as they don't cause people to rise up and reject their governments. It only makes it easier for leaders to close ranks, squash dissent and make the people living in the country hate you. It's collective punishment and it's just wrong. It makes me sick when the Israelis punish every citizen of Gaza because they're in the middle of a 60 year old beef over a post-WWII land grab. I think people forget that for hundreds of years Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived in the Middle East without this particular level of drama. That the bulk of the angst is over the push to have Israel declared an independent country when the land belonged to Jordan and Israeli and an entire group of people was already living on it.
But no one in the US seems to know this or the history, considering that after WWII Truman was under tremendous pressure not to recognize Israel out of the unforeseen consequences that everyone in the Middle East are still living with today.
After, Israel couldn't do what American settlers did. In the US we just murdered the Native Americans when we took their land. There simply aren't enough Israelis to pull off that severe of a jack move.
But I ramble. So I'm going to stop now.
AND HER FOLLOW-UP:
kelso: I'm just glad that rant made sense. I wrote "Israeli" where "Egypt" was supposed to be. It was so long that I totally skipped on giving it a second read.
The only things I can accredit my foreign policy beliefs are to my parents' pragmatism; my empathy for anyone who has a legitimate gripe against the US since as a black American I know what it's like, historically, metaphorically and literally to be under the thumb of our hegemony; and my love of politics, history and current events, American or otherwise.
And I'll even entertain the views I don't agree with. It's always good to know why people feel the way they feel, even if it isn't justified.
And while arrogance has existed in every world power since Rome, there just seems to be something sui generis about the hubris that exists in my country. Usually countries are wrapped up in either militarism, nationalism or religion. We have all three, plus capitalism and racism. We're such a mix of extremes, all under our tent of selective "tolerance."
How could any one country operate on the same Roman decadence that raised the hackles of pious few who would later take Rome's place and become the predominant religion in our tolerant empire? How can you have the strictest of Christians in a capitalist environment that caters to the vainest and most seductive of indulgences? It's such an oxymoron. And to have all those church folk, capitalists and hedonists, wrapped in our nationalist war machine telling the rest of the world that we know what's good for you.
I love my country, but I also know that historically my country hasn't loved me. I also know that the US is batshit insane.
The odd mix of Libertarians, Puritans and heretics, combined with the founding fathers' vision of a country where all white landowning males should have the right to manifest their own destinies, set forth this unique place where since movements were not suppressed, they flourished wildly, so wildly in fact that they forgot the rules that allowed them to grow in the first place and those same groups are now working feverishly to usher in America's own bastardized version of the papacy/caliphate to rule us and help usher in the apocalypse vis-a-vis irresponsible Middle East policies.
It's magically nutty.
You can post the exchange if you like. It's good have a nice challenging foreign policy discussion. I don't profess to be any sort of expert. Like most journalists I'm able to skate by with vast amounts of knowledge on random things, but I never know enough about anything to truly be an expert.
As for Michael Rapport, I've always had issues with him. I can't remember when I eventually became through with him. I know that it was before FOX's sitcom "The War at Home," but I do remember catching that show a few times and wanting to stab myself in the ears and eyes. (Maybe it was "Cop Land?" Or some Spike Lee film he was in perhaps?) He's so grating. And I know he thinks he's edgy, but he mostly sounds like a jack ass. And not in a funny way.
I also don't like Jay Mohr. They're two different comics but in my brain they're working out of the same field, one's just grosser than the other.
[prop note: this in my sympathy revocation of Rapaport's SHTETL PASS]
Most people in the states really don't grasp the complexity of the Middle Eastern conflicts, especially the Israelis and the Palestinians. We Americans live in this protective bubble. Most of us never leave the lower 48, let alone go outside the continent. We tend to believe whatever our government says about the rest of the world. So when our government shifted from a passively supportive Israel stance to a full-on savior of the Promised Land with Gold Star member level privileges, most citizens felt we'd really signed on for a noble cause.But the relationships is so strange. There are a lot (and I mean a lot) of small countries who have a rough time with their neighboring countries or with waring classes. We don't spending billions on those countries or pay off their enemies. Even Kosovo, recently freeing itself, as much as they love us the most the US has promised Kosovo is that we will recognize their independence. We didn't volunteer we'll save your ass if the Serbs decide to take their land back by force, or that we'll work to keep the Kremlin from interfering.
I guess that's all we initially promised Israel, back when no one would sell them weaponry and the French didn't bother to mask their disdain. But we apparently decided to get all doped up on the brain crack and start throwing elbows for Israel. Maybe we were just tired of their multiple wars with Jordan and Egypt screwing with our cheap oil cycles. I dunno. See? This is one of my history gaps.
Like I know that the Arabs officially became pissed with us when they learned the Israelis had the bomb and we knew about it, even though both us and Israel denied the whole thing. But I know that was huge since we were actively fighting to keep anyone in the Middle East from getting nukes. But I don't know what kicked of the billions of dollars for all.
Money. Is there nothing it can't make worse?
But remember reading back in the late 1990s about Israelis who were questioning their Palestinian policies because the number of suicide bombings had ticked up again and Clinton was rushing to get a peace deal finished before he left office. Some people seemed to be uncomfortable about the endless violence and the murmurs among some of doing something that sounded curiously a lot like "the Final Solution" for Palestinians.
Most argued that it just seemed anti-Jewish to be fighting all the time, practicing collective punishment and living under siege so often. Because, color me crazy, living in a country where everyone surrounding you hates you doesn't sound like that great of a picnic either. Both sides are prisoners to their histories and ideologies.
I got in an argument with one man once who kept trying to ram home the notion that few Arab countries have been interested in helping the Palestinians and that these nations were manipulating the Palestinian cause to their benefit. I agreed with that, but I didn't agree with how he kept flinging around that the land, technically, wasn't owned by the Palestinians and that there was no country called 'Palestine,' therefore Israel is right to exist.
The fallacy in that logic is that:
A) The land STILL belonged to someone
B) People were STILL displaced
C) The Palestinians STILL have a legitimate gripe even if suicide bombers and crudely made rockets are very imprecise ways to go about it
They decided to go the Northern Ireland route and less the Indian route when it comes to voicing your discontent.
But you can't have a discussion with anyone who comes to the table believing their side is completely innocent and the other is immoral and soulless. Especially when you've been trading atrocities.
Some are guiltier than others, but it irritates me when people are very vociferous in the defense of the Israeli use of collective punishment versus their condemnation of Muslim extremist's view that we citizens of the west are "fair game" because we elect the governments who dole out their oft wrongheaded foreign policies. Typically in a war zone the enemy like the press. In Iraq all journalist, western or otherwise, are targets.
But people can't see the differences (or similarities) between our treatment of Cuba, Russia's treatment of Chechnya, the Israelis treatment of Palestinians and al-Qaeda targeting Washington, DC and the twin towers.
You can quibble about what's justified and what isn't, but punishing everyone for the crimes of a few or targeting innocent civilians does not endear you to anyone but extremists.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I hope everyone enjoyed that as much as I did. I hope to be cross-posting more of her stuff. In case anyone's worried that something has radically changed in my life, please don't worry. I certainly am able to be civil with Obama supporters, after all, so long as I know that they have a good chance of out-arguing me -- on knowledge and rhetorical flourishes. A good chance, though. Not a certainty.
A final note. This is really going to irk Bush, but guess what? Chavez has reestablished diplomatic ties with Colombia. Fingers crossed for no 3rd front in "War On Terror." I'm guessing the video showing Colombian soldiers assassinating "Reyes" and no screams of "fakery" from Uribe was enough. Well, no 3rd front until McCain. And fingers crossed, no McCain.
Kelso's Nuts love you
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