PANAMA'S ARNULFISTA PARTY: ELECTORAL SHELLACKING

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 PANAMA 002641 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/21/2014 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PM POLITICS FOREIGN POLICY SUBJECT: PANAMA'S ARNULFISTA PARTY: ELECTORAL SHELLACKING SPURS CALLS FOR REFORM REF: A. PANAMA 1047 ¶B. PANAMA 1963 Classified By: Charge Christopher J. McMullen for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d) SUMMARY: ELECTORAL DEFEAT = REFORM DEMANDS -------------- ¶1. (C) Up-and-coming Arnulfista Party (PA) leaders will not wait for Party President Mireya Moscoso to complete her term in January 2006 before trying to rebuild the party, ideally minus her. After the PA's meager third-place finish (16.4% of popular vote) in Panama's May 2004 presidential election and woeful showing of only 16 of 78 legislative seats, Moscoso opponents are calling for her head. She probably will not survive the party's January 2005 national convention. Numerous corruption scandals during Mireya Moscoso's 1999-2004 presidency violated the letter and spirit of her campaign promises to clean up Panamanian politics, and led the Party's coalition to disastrous defeat at the polls. Meanwhile, Moscoso's iron-fisted control of the party bred many enemies. Among the Young Turks, Juan Carlos Varela has been her most vocal opponent. Brothers Francisco and Marco Ameglio are also pushing for reform. Legislator Jose Isabel Blandon and PA Secretary General Carlos Raul Piad have approached the situation more delicately, but also with an eye toward reform. The reformers, who claim to have broad support within the party, call for making PA bodies and procedures more democratic and transparent by removing Mireya Moscoso as PA President and renaming the PA as "Partido Panamenista." They differ on which measure to prioritize and how to time reforms. Embassy expects major changes in PA leadership and structure at its January 16, 2005 convention. END SUMMARY. PUSHING AND ACCELERATING REFORM -------------- ¶2. (C) Second-term legislator Jose Isabel Blandon Figueroa claims credit for including a constitutional clause last July requiring Panama's political parties to have "democratic structures" in the reform package now before the Legislative Assembly, but he is not pushing hard for Moscoso's ouster. Blandon wants the Arnulfista Party to hold mandatory primaries for all elected positions and internal elections for party leadership positions. Blandon privately told POL specialist in August that he believes PA Board elections should come sometime after PA bylaws are reformed during the January 2005 national convention. Blandon told EmbOffs at a September lunch with other Arnulfista legislators that Moscoso would step down from her PA Board position prior to January 2006 only if asked by the PA national convention delegates. On this issue, Blandon appears to be leaving his options open. ¶3. (C) Businessman Juan Carlos Varela's lobbying efforts at all levels of the party hierarchy make him the most vocal advocate for removing the current PA Board of Directors (including Moscoso) well before January 2006. In fact, the Varelas' faction wants Moscoso out by January 2005. Varela has proposed that reforms to PA bylaws be implemented as early as November 28. He recently confided to POL Counselor that "big changes would happen soon." On 10/20, La Prensa reported that Legislator Jose Luis Varela (Juan Carlos' brother) claimed that 70% of Arnulfista convention delegates were prepared to accept the resignation of the entire PA Board on November 28. On 10/26, Marco Ameglio presented to PA Secretary General Carlos Raul Piad a petition signed by 380 of 598 convention delegates (64%, much more than the legal minimum of 30% established in the Electoral Code) to hold the PA national convention on November 28 instead of January 16. Ameglio brothers Marco and Francisco (both ex-legislators) share the Varelas' desire to remove top party leadership quickly, but the two camps' allegiance to one another may well end there. (COMMENT: The Ameglios presented their petition with Jose Luis Varela, among others; however, given Marco's well-known desire to run for President, he is likely to lunge hard into the resulting power vacuum, ready to fight the Varelas for the 2009 presidential nomination if Moscoso resigns. END COMMENT.) COMMENT: WHAT'S IN A NAME? -------------- ¶4. (C) Changing the name of the Arnulfista Party would allow several well-known outcasts to rejoin the party leadership as well as rejuvenate the PA's group identity. Between 1999 and 2004, the PA expelled several strong leaders, including ex-President Guillermo Endara, Juan Carlos Varela, and Ex-Minister of Agriculture Alejandro Posse. PA bylaws bar someone who has been expelled from the party from returning. A new party with a new Board of Directors could welcome all comers and perhaps build momentum based on mutually shared opposition to the Torrijos administration. And PA members have not forgotten that former President Endara (1989-94) won almost twice as many votes as Moscoso's candidate (Jose Miguel Aleman) in the May 2 election, votes that PA leaders want back. Moscoso opponents, including the Ameglios and the Varelas, believe that a name that evokes a shared mission or ideology rather than Moscoso's deceased husband Arnulfo Arias would reinforce their rejection of Moscoso's decision to follow in the thrice-deposed president's footsteps as a traditional "caudillo" in the personalist politician mold. Instead, they seek to make the party a model for democratic practices (though critics also see a good dose of personalismo in the ostensible goals of the would-be reformers.) COMMENT: SOON, BUT NOT JUST YET -------------- ¶5. (C) Juan Carlos Varela told POL Counselor that he and the Ameglios are using the November 2004 convention proposal as a ploy to avoid any possibility that Moscoso may postpone the January 16, 2005 convention. Stepping into the trap, Mireya Moscoso explained in a 10/21 radio interview that, "the Board of Directors of the Arnulfista Party would have to approve any proposal to hold the party's extraordinary convention before the scheduled date of January 16, 2005. No such proposal has been presented." The Varela/Ameglio faction's proposal has upped the stakes. After nearly resigning from the PA Board in May 2004, Moscoso has dug in her heels at the helm of the party. When asked about the movement to unseat her and reform the PA as recently as September, she told a confidant, "This is my party and I rule it!" To Juan Carlos Varela, Moscoso shouted over the phone, "If you want a war, then I'll give you a war." Moscoso still has plenty of influential allies within the party who are willing to back her right to stay in charge until January 2006 (including Blandon when it suits him). Her opponents currently claim 60-70% support. While we expect that mounting pressure within the PA will eventually persuade Moscoso to relinquish control of the party, we suspect that she will try to play one faction against the other in order to maintain a modicum of influence in the party leadership. MCMULLEN