PANAMA: ASVAT LAYS OUT SECURITY PLAN; MARTINELLI TOUTS HIM AS FUTURE MINISTER

C O N F I D E N T I A L PANAMA 000930 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/09/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL MARR MASS SNARM PM SUBJECT: PANAMA: ASVAT LAYS OUT SECURITY PLAN; MARTINELLI TOUTS HIM AS FUTURE MINISTER REF: A. A: PANAMA 00789 ¶B. B: PANAMA 00725 Classified By: Ambassador Barbara J. Stephenson for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) Ebrahim Asvat, President of La Estrella newspaper, former director of the Panamanian National Police, and possible candidate for Minister of Government and Justice told PolOff that Panama needed to reorient its security resources away from trying to interdict drugs on the seas and borders and towards securing its main urban centers by taking on the growing threat of gang violence. He said the recent security reforms that established frontier, aero-naval, and intelligence services should be undone. A new administrative reform should be undertaken, Asvat argued, to centralize the administration of all the security forces in a new Ministry of Public Security under firm civilian control. Asvat said Panama could not confront the FARC militarily and even went so far to assert that, due to Colombia's success against the FARC, Panama did not need to. End Summary -------------- It's the Cities, Stupid -------------- ¶2. (C) Ebrahim Asvat, President of the Panama City daily La Estrella and a partner in an international law firm, told PolOff November 25 that Panama needed to radically revise its security strategy in the wake of the divisive national debate on the Torrijos government's security reforms (see reftel B). He asserted former Minister of Government and Justice Daniel Delgado Diamante (DDD),who pushed for passage of the laws, had really wanted to impose a military structure on Panama's security services. (Note: DDD was forced to step down in November 2008 pending judicial resolution into his involvement in the 1972 homicide of a National Guard soldier.) Asvat added that the reforms were crafted to emphasize the fight against drug trafficking in Panama's territorial waters and on its borders in the hope of getting U.S. military assistance in the form of helicopters and patrol boats (Note: The reforms created a separate border force (National Frontier Service - SENAFRONT),and merged the sea (SMN) and air (SAN) services into a combined aero-naval service (National Aero-Naval Service - SENAN),as detailed in reftel B. End Note). The failure to address the growing public concern with urban crime then contributed to the public's rejection of the reforms. He complained that the restructuring imposed by the reforms would require a substantial investment in air, naval and frontier forces at a time when the urban police force was overwhelmed by gang-related street crime. Asvat, who is a possible future Minister of Government and Justice (see para 7),said the next government would have to concentrate on improving security in Panama City, San Miguelito, Colon and David, the major Panamanian population centers experiencing increased crime and gang activity. Securing Panama's frontiers and territorial waters should wait, according to Asvat. He specifically rejected DDD's claim that the urban crime wave was directly linked to drug trafficking and so best dealt with by curbing drug trafficking. ¶3. (C) Discussing security threats, Asvat said that gangs were not yet well developed in Panama, but that they needed to be confronted now before they became stronger. He said that gangs were doing some jobs for trafficking organizations, and they might eventually be coopted by international drug cartels, a development that would pose a threat to the stability of the country. The keys to confronting the gangs, according to Asvat, were to increase citizen participation and expand police presence into problematic neighborhoods to prevent crime. While he praised the present government's Integral Security Program (PROSI), for its proposed use of social programs to prevent crime, he said that DDD had not implemented it seriously. Asvat added that he did not believe that the only response to crime was to wait for the long-term results of social programs, but said that such long-term social programs needed to be combined in the near-term with effective police strategies to combat and prevent crime now. -------------- Security Re-Reform? -------------- ¶4. (C) Asvat said that DDD's security reform not only ignored the real problem of street crime, but also failed to address the biggest internal problem of the security forces themselves: mis-management. At present, each security service, the Panamanian National Police (PNP) and the SENAN among others has its own administrative structure, and each basically acts on its own, establishing its own priorities, tactics, and threat assessments. Asvat said the system needed to be reformed by creating a Ministry of Public Security that would control all the security services, plus Immigration, and Customs. This new ministry would then assume the administrative functions from each of the services and create a unified structure. The ministry would also become responsible for devising a national strategy against crime, gathering statistics, deploying forces in such a way as to prevent crime, developing an effective system of public participation in the security system (community policing), and acquiring adequate resources for the security forces. The ministry would be firmly under the control of civilians, but there would be an advisory board of retired commissioners whose professional advice would be sought in coming up with policy proposals. (Comment: This is in fact very similar to GOP explanations of what they were trying to do with their reforms. See septel. End Comment) ¶5. (C) Asked what would happen to the DDD reforms if the opposition won the May 3, 2009 elections, Asvat said the security structure put in place by the reforms would have to be undone. The SENAN would be broken back into SMN and SAN, civilians put in charge of all the services, and the new intelligence service (National Intelligence and Security Service - SENIS) restricted to external intelligence, while the Police took over domestic intelligence. He stressed that all of these reforms would have to be approved by the kind of broad consensus building exercise that DDD had failed to engage in. -------------- Waiting for Uribe to Defeat the FARC -------------- ¶6. (C) Asked about the situation in the Darien, Asvat said that Panama could not afford to confront the FARC because it did not have the military capability to do so successfully. He said the best Panama could hope for would be a force that could deter the FARC from committing crimes in Panama, especially kidnapping, or from establishing a bases in Panama for offensive actions in Colombia. Asvat said that as long as the FARC were just entering Panama to rest, then Panama should not interfere, as the threat to Panama was not great enough to warrant taking "risky" action. He praised Colombian President Uribe, saying that Colombia was doing a great job against the FARC. He said he admired Uribe,s willingness to stand up to criticism of his alliance with the U.S. and to impose order within Colombia. He did not understand human rights groups that criticized Uribe for things that had happened in the past when Uribe was clearly improving the human rights situation on the ground. While noting that society's wounds would not heal unless there was recognition of the wrongs done to people, Asvat said he did not think this was necessarily the time for such a reckoning, as the security gains were still fragile. -------------- Future Minister? -------------- ¶7. (C) Democratic Change (CD) presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli -- currently leading the polls 10-12 points ahead of his closest challenger, governing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) candidate Balbina Herrera -- told POLOCUNS and POLOFF on November 21 that Asvat, who has played a major role in the opposition to the security laws (see reftel A),was one of his leading candidates to lead the security forces as Minister of Government and Justice should he win the Presidential elections on May 3, 2009. Asvat was the first director of the PNP following OPERATION JUST CAUSE in 1989, and served briefly as Secretary of Goals under President Torrijos. He is a partner in an international law firm, and a graduate of Harvard University. Asvat is also widely believed to want to be FM, and his name frequently is included on short-lists for this job. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) Asvat is a strong supporter of Martinelli's presidential campaign, and La Estrella has done its best to clear the field for him. Having played a major role in discrediting the present government's security reform, Asvat now seems well placed to produce Martinelli's alternative vision. While Martinelli has been preaching a "strong arm (mano dura)" approach to repress crime largely to take advantage of public concern over crime and to woo Navarro supporters, Martinelli's posturing has to date had little substance to it. Asvat's ideas seem directed towards actual implementation, and not to the campaign trail. His analysis of the administrative failings of the Panamanian security services are similar to what members of the Torrijos administrations and U.S. law enforcement agencies have said. It remains to be seen if Asvat has the administrative skills to pull off such a wide ranging reform. The undoing of the Torrijos/DDD reforms would be traumatic, but Martinelli himself has said that they must be reversed, and he has signed a public document saying he would. Asvat's recommendation that the fight against drug trafficking be de-emphasized to concentrate on common crime in the cities seems based the belief, common throughout the security establishment, that Panama is using a large amount of its resources fighting drug traffickers. This is not the case, as Panama's great successes are based on U.S.-generated intelligence and a small group of vetted officers. If Asvat were named Minister of Government and Justice, and briefed on the reality of U.S. drug cooperation, there is no reason to believe he would cut back on cooperation, or that Martinelli would let him. STEPHENSON