PANAMA: INTERNAL RULING-PARTY DYNAMICS AS JOSTLING

C O N F I D E N T I A L PANAMA 000525 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/CEN SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/06/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR PM SUBJECT: PANAMA: INTERNAL RULING-PARTY DYNAMICS AS JOSTLING FOR 2009 ELECTIONS BEGINS -- PART II: THE UNWANTED ONE REF: PANAMA 0502 Classified By: AMBASSADOR WILLIAM EATON FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D). ¶1. (U) "The Unwanted One" is Part II in a three-part series on Democratic Revolutionary Party inner dynamics. Part I (reftel): The Front Runners. Part III (septel): The Veeps. SUMMARY -------------- ¶2. (C) Ernesto Perez Balladares (PB) is widely seen as angling for another shot at Panama's presidency, which President Martin Torrijos is eager to prevent. To that end, Torrijos allegedly has asked 2009 presidential hopeful Juan Carlos Navarro to oppose PB, which he has done with gusto. Possibly Panama's most competent modern president (1994-1999),PB brought Panama into the WTO and privatized the country's creaking energy and telecommunications sectors. PB also has a long list of negatives that decrease his attractiveness to voters and to the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Although a dark horse at the moment, the wily, determined, and wealthy PB cannot be counted out. End Summary. PRD President -- Ticket to Success? -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Publicly campaigning for the past six months to become PRD president in the party's 2007 internal elections, former president Perez Balladares (57) has been holding political meetings in the countryside and allegedly will begin an aggressive media campaign in 2006 targeted to young PRD voters. Though the PRD presidency is largely ceremonial, observers assume that PB is eager to use his campaign for the job as a straw poll of his popularity within the party; and after being elected to it, ceremonial or not, it is widely assumed that he would use it as a springboard to gain the party's 2009 nomination for president. (Note: Real power within the PRD resides in the posts of secretary general and deputy secretary general, whose current incumbents are President Torrijos and Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, respectively. The current PRD president is political non-entity Hugo Giraud. End Note.) What Is "Torrijismo"? -------------- ¶4. (SBU) PB is widely disliked and distrusted within the PRD (and nationally) but some PRDistas, especially disappointed job seekers and others, disgruntled with Torrijos and his "technocratic" (read: non-PRD) governing style, could end up supporting him, especially if Torrijos neglects the party grassroots. Part of PB's strategy is to dent Torrijos's reputation within the party by questioning his assumed mantle of political heir to his father, former dictator Omar Torrijos, who founded the PRD in 1979. Torrijos's emerging anti-PB strategy is to paint PB as an unpleasant, vaguely sinister has-been. Stalking Horses -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Both Torrijos and PB are using stand-ins to damage each other's standing. Recently, PB's former labor minister, Mitchell Doens, has been issuing sentimental calls for a political rescue of "Torrijismo" -- the populist policies of Martin's dictator dad -- and to shun Martin Torrijos's PRD. On the other hand, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro has been attacking PB. Widely seen as PB's stalking horse, Doens is pushing for a return to the pro-labor, populist Torrijos policies of the 1970s (which also emphasized nationalist/anti-U.S. propaganda, repression, and human rights abuses),in which military strongman Omar Torrijos posed as benevolent champion of the poor and downtrodden and as the enemy of the aloof, selfish, rich "rabiblanco" elite and "U.S. imperialism." (Comment: In fact, corruption, income disparity, and national indebtedness all greatly increased under Torrijos. Not least, Torrijos gave Panama Manuel Noriega, who headed the military's feared intelligence branch, and whom Torrijos used to call "my gangster." End Comment.) Doens Leads the Charge -------------- ¶6. (SBU) In a recent op-ed piece, Doens called for the PRD to distance itself from the GOP and from Martin Torrijos, who he accused of running a "personalist" administration, ignoring the party's base, and leading it to certain electoral ruin in 2009. Doens claimed that Torrijos was making far too many concessions to the PRD's worst "enemies," who include the U.S. government. Green Light For A Fracas -------------- ¶7. (SBU) PB's negatives -- and his pugnaciousness -- are never far from the surface. During the week of March 13 PB engaged in an escalating public media altercation with Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, who told the Ambassador March 16 that Torrijos had given him the "green light" to take on PB and to oppose him for the PRD presidency. PB had taken umbrage at Navarro's comment on television that privatizing the state-owned electricity company had been an expensive mistake. PB shot back at what he called Navarro's "infantile demagoguery," called him a "coward," and reminded him of a fawning letter he once had sent to Manuel Noriega. Navarro fired back immediately, denouncing PB's "egoism," "uncontrollable arrogance," "excessive fortune," and "his barely controlled and unhealthy obsession" with seeking another term as president of Panama. Navarro followed that with a scathing op-ed piece in El Panama America backing Torrijos and calling PB a "vulgar," "irresponsible," and "hypersensitive" man of the past, and reminding his readers that the USG had revoked PB's visa, to the continuing "shame" of all Panamanians. Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) Aside from his overbearing personality, which earned him the nickname El Toro ("the bull"),PB has three main negatives: He privatized the energy and telecommunications sectors but left them with weak regulatory oversight. The result has been substantial rate increases and mediocre service, for which he is routinely blamed. Second, he held the nation hostage, in effect, for most of 1998 as he pursued a referendum to permit him to run for a second consecutive term. He lost that vote by a crushing two-to-one margin, a fact that PRD kingmakers will likely not forget. Lastly PB's U.S. visa was revoked in 2001 due to alien smuggling charges. He is unlikely to earn the PRD's berth in 2009. But no one should forget that Martin Torrijos himself was in the political wilderness until PB plucked him from obscurity following his referendum defeat to be the PRD's presidential candidate in 1999. EATON