Page 118 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

SUMMARY

Barletta’s victory reflected the will of the Defense Forces General Staff, not the
will of the majority of the voters. Such is the reality of the present Panamanian political
system: dishonest military ruling through pliant and equally dishonest civilians. And
we use the term “honesty” advisedly and in its fullest and correct sense. Dishonest is
not only he who steals money; this is an extremely restricted definition, favored by
some supporters of the regime, especially Barletta. He is also dishonest who steals
votes or collaborates with those who steal them.

“Fraudito [Barletta] said several times during the campaign that he

(as opposed to his bosses and associated) is an honest man.
Obviously, his interpretation of this term is an extremely restricted
one. An honest man would never stoop to collaborating with

thieves, particularly for a period of ten years, without even once
raising his voice to condemn excesses (including murders) that
were public knowledge and that he better than anyone else had to
51

know about. An honest man would never accept the theft of the
Panamanian people’s votes to hand him an office of president that
the whole wide world knows is not his but Arias’s. An honest man
would not allow his paramilitary groups, acting under the Guard’s
watchful gaze, to attack peaceful and unarmed demonstrators with

clubs and guns, leaving dead and wounded on the streets. An honest
man would not have allowed the resources of the State and the
Guard to be used to impose his widely unpopular candidacy on the
country, or to buy votes as so many popsicles, or to wrest voter
cards from their holders and have them punched. An honest man
would have died rather than enduring the shame of accepting the
spurious credentials being handed to him today by justices who
would sell their very souls to the devil”51.

The pro-government campaign began by imposing Barletta as the PRD candidate
on orders from the General Staff. Ernesto Pérez Balladares’s words, quoted in Chapter
One, provide convincing evidence of this (“if I talk, they are going to throw me in jail,
and you all know who puts people in jail in this country”). More evidence is to be found
in the ACAN-EFE wires and in the report prepared by the “Center for Strategic and
International Studies” at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. And there is the
Panamanian people’s own perspicacity in dubbing Barletta the “barracks” candidate.

The campaign went on amidst daily abuses of the material and personnel
resources of the government. PRD flags manufactured at the Ministry of Finances and
the Treasury with materials bought and paid for by the Ministry of Justice and the

51 “En Pocas Palabras”, La Prensa, May 30, 1984.