This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 000440 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
 
DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN/BRIGHAM 
 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PM PINR PREL POLITICS FOREIGN POLICY
SUBJECT: PANAMA ELECTIONS - NOTES FROM THE FIELD - CHIRIQUI 
PROVINCE 
 
REF: A. PANAMA 0298 
     ¶B. PANAMA 0352 
 
 
SUMMARY: JOBS AND AGRICULTURE TOP THE AGENDA 
-------------------------------------------- 
¶1. (SBU) Residents of Chiriqui, Panama's largest dairy, 
coffee, and vegetable producer, and its capital David, 
Panama's third-largest city, want politicians to focus on 
unemployment and an agricultural sector threatened by a 
bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States. 
Pol Counselor and Poloff visited from February 9-11 and met 
with Electoral Tribunal Officials, political party 
representatives, candidates, and interested observers, 
including Catholic Church activists and ACS Wardens. 
Interlocutors plugged favorite candidates and expressed 
confidence in Panama's electoral system, downplaying the 
possibility of electoral fraud.  As in Panama City, 
unemployment topped voters' lists of urgent needs.  Unlike in 
the capital, Chiriqui's leaders view Canal expansion as a 
vital national project, although one that will give them 
little direct benefit.  Not unanimously against the 
construction of a road connecting the highland towns of Cerro 
Punta and Boquete, Chiriqui residents were convinced that 
President Moscoso's insistence on building the road despite 
strident ecological objections damages Arnulfista Candidate 
Jose Miguel Aleman's campaign. 
 
 
CHIRIQUI BASICS 
--------------- 
¶2. (U) Chiriqui is Panama's westernmost province on the 
Pacific coast.  It extends from Panama's western border with 
Costa Rica to the semi-desert lowlands of Veraguas on the 
east, bordered on the north by Bocas del Toro province and 
the Ngobe-Bugle indigenous community.  Poloffs visited Puerto 
Armuelles near the Costa Rican border, the home of a massive 
banana plantation formerly owned by Chiquita, to the eastern 
town of Tole in the foothills of Panama's central mountain 
range populated primarily by subsistence farmers.  At the 
center of the province in the shadow of Volcan Baru (11,400 
feet), Poloffs visited the coffee-growing town of Boquete, a 
popular ecotourism destination loaded with retired 
foreigners, many of whom have established profitable 
businesses.  Of Panama's nearly two million registered 
voters, 259,783 or almost 15% reside in Chiriqui, 90,492 of 
them in David and the nearby towns.  On May 2, 2004, 38,082 
Chiriqui residents will vote for the first time, the most new 
voters in any province except for Panama (140,493 of 970,703 
total).  While Chiriqui's population is clustered in urban 
areas, rural concerns, especially in the agricultural sector 
influence political decision-makers. 
 
 
ELECTION PREPARATIONS 
--------------------- 
¶3. (SBU) Electoral Tribunal (ET) officials explained to 
Poloffs their efficient management of their regional office 
in David and described the entire electoral process after the 
official presentation of candidacies on February 2.  Although 
currently focused on selecting voting place representatives 
from each of the political parties, they are also preparing 
the logistics to transport voting materials and ET personnel 
on election day.  he regional director for electoral 
organization, engrossed in managing the entire process, 
enlisted her colleague, the regional director of public 
registry (births & deaths) to pool GOP vehicles and drivers 
and make sure that they are in good shape for before election 
weekend.  The third regional director, in charge of issuing 
identity cards (cedulas), described her success in outreach 
to remote areas to register voters and replace IDs that are 
no longer valid. 
 
 
¶4. (U) Each of the seven political parties has a "Campaign 
Headquarters" in David, but the bulk of electoral activities 
occurred outside those buildings.  With the notable exception 
of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), with five 
full-time staff, no more than two permanent employees were 
working in any of the offices that Poloffs visited.  On the 
streets, Poloffs saw campaign representatives hanging 
advertisements and heard jingles on the radio and from 
loudspeakers mounted on passing cars.  When local candidates 
were not busy meeting interest groups or shaking hands and 
kissing babies from one end of the province to the next, they 
were explaining to poloffs why they would win on May 2. 
 
 
¶5. (SBU) Poloffs also met the regional directors of the 
Catholic Church's Peace and Justice Commission, who said they 
are not concerned about fraud, and are focused instead on 
recruiting election observers and collecting funds to train, 
transport, and feed them.  The Commission will send 
representatives to polling stations to observe Panama's 
elections for the third time this year, having observed the 
1994 and 1999 elections.  They are known for the 
dependability of their "quick count," intended to ensure that 
provincial and national vote totals don't deviate from local 
results.  Using copies of the final voting tally from each 
voting station, Commission representatives will transmit 
results to their Panama headquarters for rapid press 
dissemination. 
 
 
THE RACE FOR PRESIDENT 
---------------------- 
¶6. (SBU) Despite national polling data and assertions to the 
contrary from the Endara/Solidarity Party camp, political 
insiders insist that the real race is between Revolutionary 
Democratic Party (PRD) Candidate Martin Torrijos and 
Arnulfista Party (PA) Candidate Jose Miguel Aleman.  They 
believe that party infrastructures will prevail in getting 
out the vote in every corner of Panama for Torrijos and 
Aleman, but the Endara camp will suffer from a lack of 
organization.  Endara's supporters, several claimed, are so 
disenchanted with the political system that they will not 
vote at all.  Endara and Aleman supporters emphasized an 
internal weakness of the PRD's alliance with the former 
Christian Democratic Party, the Partido Popular (PP).  One 
Aleman supporter, Liberal Republican Nationalist Movement 
(MOLIRENA) provincial Secretary Ivan Jurado, said the 
alliance was "like mixing oil and water."  After all, he 
noted, how can a party that fought against a dictatorship 
team up with the party that supported it? 
 
 
¶7. (SBU) Even Aleman supporters agree that President Moscoso 
is detracting from his campaign, especially with her stubborn 
support for the "Ecological Road" between Boquete and Cerro 
Punta a controversial 12 km mountain road would pass through 
a national park.  In late 2004, Moscoso stated to the Press, 
"the Ecological Road will be built, and I don't care if it 
hurts Jose Miguel Aleman's campaign."  Neither Chiriqui 
Arnulfista Party President Einar Fanovich, nor any of Poloffs 
other interlocutors in Chiriqui could explain why Moscoso is 
so intent on the road being built.  Amcit warden Price 
Peterson, a Boquete resident for over thirty years, claimed 
that neither Moscoso nor any of her close associates owns 
land along the proposed route, contradicting reports that La 
Prensa published.  Peterson noted several serious engineering 
obstacles that would have to be overcome for the alternative 
route to be viable. (Note: Local ecologists have claimed that 
the road will damage unique forest and wildlife habitad 
irreparably, in an area they say has the fourth highest 
annual rainfall in the world. END NOTE) 
 
 
UNEMPLOYMENT AND AGRICULTURE: HAND IN HOOF 
------------------------------------------ 
¶8. (SBU) According to several interlocutors, despite 
large-scale coffee and dairy agroindustry in the Chiriqui 
highlands and a substantial banana plantation in the 
lowlands, many rural residents of the province are small 
farmers who could not compete in an open market.  Ivan Smith, 
a former MOLIRENA activist whose allegiance to Endara VP 
Candidate Guillermo "Billy" Ford motivated him to join the 
Endara camp, is a third-generation employee of the Puerto 
Armuelles banana industry who moved to David over ten years 
ago.  He explained that after Chiquita left Puerto Armuelles, 
taking lucrative salaries and fringe benefits with it, many 
unemployed plantation workers departed in search of other 
opportunities in urban areas or settled on uninhabited lands 
as subsistence farmers.  An infant free trade zone at the 
port directed by two Arnulfista patronage appointees offers 
no short term solutions to unemployment in that region. 
Expressing a pragmatic approach, PRD Chiriqui coordinator 
Belgis Castro Jaen claimed that there are already plenty of 
unemployed people in Chiriqui, and forcing small or medium 
farmers to cease production will create more.  A bilateral 
Free Trade Agreement with the United States will benefit 
Panama, Castro claimed, but Panama needs to find ways to 
allow vulnerable sectors to transition into other, more 
competitive enterprises. 
 
 
COMMENT: FEW NEW FACES 
---------------------- 
¶9. (SBU) Prohibitive campaign costs ($200,000 and up for a 
legislative seat) and intra-party oligarchies block new 
candidates from emerging.  Campaign stakes rise rapidly from 
zinc roof panels and cinder blocks in local representative 
races to six figure expenses in legislative races.  For 
instance, MOLIRENA incumbent Jorge Alberto Rosas, who 
represents an expansive but under-populated segment of 
Eastern Chiriqui with only 19,697 registered voters, told 
poloffs that he expects to spend around $250,000 on this 
year's campaign.  Cambio Democratico candidate for mayor of 
David, Raul Montenegro acknowledged that even with $35,000 
that he can piece together from personal savings and 
contributions from his friends, he is at a disadvantage 
compared with his opponents' party machinery and wealthy 
benefactors. 
 
 
¶10. (SBU) The pool of viable candidates is small, and they 
move between parties as their interests shift, as evidenced 
in the race to defeat Rosas.  The Rosas family represents a 
Chiriqui political dynasty with extensive financial 
resources.  Without similar opportunities, others can't 
afford to be loyal to one party.  Rosas occupies the seat 
that his father Jorge Ruben Rosas lost in 1994.  MOLIRENA 
President and Jose Miguel Aleman's co-candidate for First 
Vice President Jesus "Maco" Rosas, is Jorge Alberto's uncle. 
Jorge Alberto explained that whereas Ricardo Martinelli's 
Cambio Democratico Party picked a virtual unknown as its 
candidate, Solidarity chose allies of former Arnulfista 
Rodrigo Jovane, who defeated Jorge Alberto's father in 1994, 
and could beat him on May 2. 
WATT