PANAMA: THE CAMPAIGN OF ARNULFISTA PRESIDENTIAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 000924 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN/BRIGHAM E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/16/2014 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PM POLITICS FOREIGN POLICY SUBJECT: PANAMA: THE CAMPAIGN OF ARNULFISTA PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOSE MIGUEL ALEMAN. IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. INTERESTS REF: A. PANAMA 0802 ¶B. PANAMA 0828 ¶C. PANAMA 0875 Classified By: Ambassador Linda E. Watt for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d) Summary: Behind and fighting the Anti-Moscoso Vote -------------- -------------- ¶1. (C) Arnulfista Presidential Candidate Jose Miguel Aleman, a distant third in most public opinion polls, seeks to emerge from President Moscoso's shadow to place first in Panama's May 2 elections. Neutralizing Aleman's greatest logistical asset, the three-party coalition that backs him and its political machine, President Moscoso has become his greatest liability. While Aleman's opponents blame the Moscoso Administration for Panama's every woe and promise to remedy all, Aleman has to tiptoe around Moscoso's policies, particularly those that he helped implement as her Foreign Minister (September 1999 - January 2003). Post-election, Aleman must also break Moscoso's grasp on the Arnulfista Party, over which she currently presides with an iron grip. Many political insiders believe that the party's strong grass-roots structure will propel Aleman past current number two, former President Guillermo Endara, but few deny that Endara and Aleman will compete for the same voters, who dislike Martin Torrijos and his Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). In the unlikely case that Aleman is elected, the USG can expect continued close law enforcement collaboration from the GOP, the same direction on trade and foreign policy as Moscoso, and a focus on Panama's maritime/transportation infrastructure. END SUMMARY. Who is Jose Miguel Aleman? -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Arnulfista Party presidential candidate Jose Miguel Aleman is a successful lawyer with extensive exposure to the U.S. and a track record of activism in the Arnulfista Party. Jose Miguel is the son of Roberto "Chato" Aleman, a veteran political activist for the now-defunct Liberal Party. His mother renounced her U.S. citizenship during the negotiation of the Torrijos-Carter treaty. Aleman's first public sector appointment was as Vice-Minister of Government and Justice under President Guillermo Endara (1989-94),now his campaign opponent. During the Endara Administration, Aleman represented Panama in negotiating a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the United States. More recently, Aleman served as President Moscoso's Foreign Minister from September 1999 to January 2003. Born on May 8, 1956, Jose Miguel Aleman obtained a 1978 B.A. from Ripon College in Wisconsin and a 1981 J.D. from Tulane University. Married to the former Victoria Eugenia Dutari, Aleman has two sons. In addition to his native Spanish, he speaks English fluently. ¶3. (C) Aleman is a true politician, ready to squeeze political mileage out of non-issues. Many critics claim that Jose Miguel began campaigning for the Arnulfista Party's nomination for President from the time he entered the Foreign Ministry. Aleman himself sheepishly admitted to DCM that he was planning his campaign well before leaving the Foreign Ministry. That tendency made dealing with Jose Miguel as Foreign Minister occasionally problematic for Embassy Panama when he turned tired issues like unexploded ordnance (UXO) on former U.S. military facilities or weapons testing on San Jose Island (SJI) into political footballs to win over Panama's electorate on perceived hot-button issues. Who supports Jose Miguel? -------------- ¶4. (SBU) Estimating support for Jose Miguel Aleman is tough, because public opinion polls are unreliable (Reftel B) and Arnulfista and MOLIRENA loyalists are split between Endara and Aleman. Jose Miguel Aleman is running as the candidate of a three party coalition representing the Arnulfista Party (PA - 194,207 members),the National Liberal Republican Movement Party (MOLIRENA - 108,663 members) and the Liberal National Party (PLN - 51,369 members). With a maximum backing of 354,239 registered party members, Jose Miguel needs votes from independents and dissidents from the parties that oppose his candidacy to become Panama's next President. Aleman will have difficulty tying down Arnulfista and MOLIRENA votes because his opponent, Guillermo Endara, is a founding member of the Arnulfista Party whose running mate, Guillermo Ford, helped found the MOLIRENA Party. ¶5. (SBU) In addition to his six siblings (one sister and five brothers) and Arnulfista stalwarts from the Moscoso cabinet, Aleman receives strong support from others, like Carlos Raul Piad and Maria Alejandra Eisenmann. Piad, Aleman's Campaign Manager is a dedicated Arnulfista loyalist who is currently the Party's Secretary General and served as the General Manager of the state-owned savings bank (Caja de Ahorros) from September 1999 until late 2003. Eisenmann, a successful attorney and social activist, was Secretary General of the Aleman Foreign Ministry. Eisenmann eventually resigned from her MFA position, alleging that there was too much corruption in the Moscoso Administration. She helped Jose Miguel focus the areas of his platform that address women and children. What obstacles does Aleman face? -------------- ¶6. (C) Aleman's number one liability is President Mireya Moscoso. Moscoso angered Aleman's opponents for the Arnulfista presidential nomination by publicly declaring her support for Aleman well before the party's June 2003 convention. Two other substantial negatives for Jose Miguel are Moscoso's open campaigning on his behalf and that of other Arnulfistas, which many contend violates a constitutional prohibition, and the perception that her administration is both inept and corrupt. As noted in Reftel C, the Endara camp is banking on votes from Anti-PRD voters who want a candidate who has broken ties with President Moscoso and the Arnulfista Party under her leadership. ¶7. (C) Aleman's number-two liability is the psychological weight of public opinion polls that consistently show a wide gap between him and frontrunner Martin Torrijos. For instance, an April 6 La Prensa poll showed PRD candidate Torrijos at 48%, Solidarity candidate Endara at 29%, and Aleman at 16%, with Ricardo Martinelli trailing even further behind at 7%. Earlier editions from the same series of polls won Jose Miguel the dubious honor of being the most disliked candidate from November 2003 through February 2004 (the last month that question was included). ¶8. (SBU) Finally, critics question whether Aleman will have the political will to follow through with his promises to be more transparent than President Moscoso. Jose Miguel is the only candidate who has presented a sworn declaration of assets for public scrutiny, but most believe he did it only to highlight questions about the source(s) of Martin Torrijos' wealth. If elected, Aleman has promised to immediately eliminate President Moscoso's regulating decree that crippled Panama's Transparency Law, but critics note Aleman was on the cabinet that approved that decree. In an April 16 RPC News interview, Aleman also promised to publish on the internet copies of all checks drawn on public funds, but Moscoso too promised to subject all expenditures to public scrutiny during her campaign, but has refused to do so. Ironically, despite Aleman's pro-transparency stance, it was not until well after he left the Foreign Ministry that his old office's internet portal began providing even basic information on Panama's diplomatic activities. What would an Aleman presidency mean for the USG? -------------- -------------- ¶9. (C) The USG could expect continued excellent law enforcement and security cooperation with the GOP under an Aleman administration despite the fact that Aleman took several politically driven stances as Foreign Minister that created headaches for this Embassy. For instance, to earn political mileage, he revived the dead issues of Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and San Jose Island (SJI). Despite this populist pandering, Aleman and the Arnulfistas are not anti-American nationalists like some of the PRD old guard. The Arnulfistas tend to view security cooperation pragmatically as a way to build goodwill with the United States while obtaining logistical and/or financial support. ¶10. (C) Jose Miguel Aleman's populist rhetoric is second only to Endara's. For instance, Aleman proudly takes credit for Panama maintaining WTO-maximum tariff levels on selected agricultural products. Nevertheless, the Aleman campaign team still views trade liberalization and an FTA with the U.S. as major pluses. Taking advantage of the mistaken perception among Panamanian voters that privatization inherently brings with it greater cost and poorer service, Aleman opposes privatizations of any type because they would violate (paternalistic) Arnulfista doctrines. Aleman has also vowed not to privatize Panama's water utility or Social Security fund. ¶11. (C) Current Panama Canal Authority (ACP) Administrator Alberto Aleman Zubieta is Jose Miguel's cousin and there is no indication that Jose Miguel would seek to replace him. Jose Miguel Aleman also has a comprehensive plan for infrastructure development. He wants to expand Panama's Atlantic and Pacific Canal-area Ports and those near its western border with Costa Rica, as well as upgrade the roads between them, particularly the Panama-Colon highway. Comment: Behind the skirt? -------------- ¶12. (C) Like Panamanians, including Martin Torrijos, who accused Aleman of "hiding behind President Moscoso's skirt," Emboffs are curious whether as president Jose Miguel Aleman would be able to sufficiently distance himself from President Moscoso to run a clean and transparent government. He has made attractive promises to create jobs, improve education, reduce utility costs, and increase government transparency, but so did President Moscoso in her 1999 campaign. Her tolerance for graft and her administration's meddling in legislative, judicial, and environmental matters show Moscoso's disregard for fundamental principles of transparency, separation of powers, and due process. ¶13. (C) A growing movement within the Arnulfista Party led by banker Alberto Vallarino and Legislator Jose Blandon Figueroa, among others, seeks to remove Moscoso and those close to her from party leadership. Vallarino left the Arnulfista Party in 1999 and obtained an unprecedented 17% of the nationwide vote as a third-party candidate. Many Panamanians looked for Vallarino to run again in 2004, but he dropped out of the race in January 2003, creating the vacuum that Endara filled. Vallarino decided not to seek the Arnulfista Party nomination after Moscoso announced her decision to hold a nominating convention instead of primaries. Vallarino knew he stood a good chance of winning a nationwide secret vote among all registered party members, but Moscoso could easily twist arms among Party delegates before a nominating convention. ¶14. (C) The Alberto Vallarino/Mireya Moscoso rivalry within the Arnulfista Party has been divisive. In 1998, Aleman supported Vallarino's failed bid for the Arnulfista's 1999 presidential nomination, but quickly backed Moscoso when she came out on top. Perhaps with Moscoso no longer running the government and people like Vallarino and Blandon to back him up, Aleman might be able to convince her to run the party in a more transparent and democratic manner. However, the likelihood of Moscoso changing her "caudilla" top-down style is remote, even if (as expected) Aleman loses the election on May 2. Many observers believe that Moscoso is more willing to concede such a defeat than loosen the tight reins she holds over the Arnulfista Party leadership. WATT