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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) 
 
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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. 
 
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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. 
 
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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