Page 13 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

PROLOGUE

The 1984 elections were no ordinary elections. They were the most important
elections the country has held in one whole generation. In fact, since the 1968
military coup, we Panamanians had been unable to elect our rulers. Citizens under
thirty, easily half the electors, had never been afforded the opportunity to vote for
either president or legislators.

Continuation or Change

In suspending presidential and legislative elections, the regime that has
prevailed in the country during the past sixteen years prevented the practice of
representative democracy in Panama. It also attempted to go further.

It sought to base the country’s political life on the so-called 505 District
Representatives, elected with no regard for proportional representation, at
elections held in 1972 and 1978 without political party participation and with strict
government control of the mass media. It replaced the method of direct election of
the president –the only method known in Panama since the establishment of the
republic in 1903– with an indirect election that in fact amounted to no more than
the ratification by the District Representative Assembly of the person designated
by General Omar Torrijos. It did away with the Legislative Branch, previously
freely and directly elected by the people, and replaced it firstly with a Legislative
Commission whose members were appointed and removed at the president’s (i.e.,
at General Torrijos’s) discretion, and then with a Legislative Council, two thirds of
whose members were indirectly chosen by and among members of the District
Representatives Assembly, while only one third were directly elected by the
people. It wrote into the constitution an article granting General Torrijos, in this
capacity as “Supreme Leader of the Panamanian Revolution”, absolute power for a
six-year period; another constitutional addendum provided for the supervision of
all branches of the government by the armed forces.

In summary, then, not only did the regime suspend the practice of
representative democracy but also attempted to substitute for it an alleged new
political legitimacy, a hybrid between the Caesar-like role of a military dictator
and the “people’s power” of a revolutionary movement. The regime included
everything but representative democracy.

In addition, this attempt to establish a new political order was accompanied by
efforts to alter the relationship between society and political power. On the social
level, labor unions and other organizations were regarded more as simple conveyor
belts for government decisions than as a means of expressing the hopes of people
from different walks of life. Indeed, a Family Institute was proposed that would