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C O N F I D E N T I A L PANAMA 000115 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/28/2019 
TAGS: PGOV PM ECON PREL
SUBJECT: PANAMA: BALBINA'S PLATFORM UNDERSCORES CONTINUITY 
 
Classified By: Classified by: Ambassador Barbara J. Stephenson for reas 
ons 1.4(b) and (d) 
 
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SUMMARY 
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¶1. (C) Governing Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) 
presidential candidate Balbina Herrera and her party in 
January released their electoral platform that stresses 
continuity, particularly with respect to current president 
Martin Torrijos's economic and social welfare policies. 
Interestingly though, the platform neglects to mention 
President Torrijos (who is also the PRD Secretary General) by 
name.  Highlights of the platform, a sweeping document 
describing an integrated approach to social development, 
include: 
 
- grand plans for a new public transportation system in the 
capital; 
- universal access to pre-school and high school education; 
- Panama's "consolidation" as a regional business center; and 
- a list of 100 "Commitments" to the people. 
 
(C) Conspicuously thin and low-profile, however, are PRD 
proposals to address rising crime that has consistently 
polled in recent months as the top concern among Panamanians. 
 Although Democratic Change (CD) presidential candidate 
Ricardo Martinelli and his grand five-party opposition 
Alliance for Change have yet to release a platform, 
Martinelli has effectively captured the strong "change" 
sentiment among the electorate in a campaign where policy 
debate has taken a back-seat to personality.  The continuity 
preached in Herrera's broad electoral platform indicates that 
she is willing to stick to her PRD guns, even as she lags 
behind in the polls and Torrijos's approval ratings dip below 
50%.  End summary. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
PLATFORM: WHAT THE PRD CAN (CONTINUE TO) DO FOR YOU 
--------------------------------------------- ------ 
 
¶2. (C) The PRD in January 2009 released an 86-page document 
entitled "Promise of a Government for the People: Electoral 
Platform, 2009-2014" that lays out the challenges, plans, and 
promises of a prospective Herrera presidency.  The platform 
argues "the fundamental purpose of 'a government for the 
people' is to achieve sustainable human development with 
quality of life, concentrating on the most vulnerable 
sectors: indigenous areas, and the rural and urban belts of 
poverty and extreme poverty."  The platform is described as 
"the continuation of (former military dictator Omar) 
Torrijos's national transformation legacy," and aims to build 
a Panama "compatible with both a market economy and the right 
to a dignified life, particularly for the poorest groups" 
(Note: Herrera repeatedly refers to herself as a "torrijista 
at heart" (torrijista de corazon); the reference is not to 
President Martin Torrijos, but rather to the president's 
father and former Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos.)  The 
platform is organized into five broadly strategic "prongs" 
designed to foster "development with equity:" 
 
-- Human Development with Quality of Life, 
-- Economic Growth and Job Creation, 
-- Integration of the "Three Panamas," 
-- Citizen Participation in the Government, and 
-- Modernization of Public Institutions. 
 
Sub-sections within the prongs include a "diagnosis" of the 
current status of a particular issue, "objectives" for 
improvement, and a list of "what we will do." 
 
---------------------------- 
A WOMAN, A PLAN, FIVE PRONGS 
---------------------------- 
 
¶3. (C) The Human Development with Quality of Life section 
represents the bulk of the plan, and lays out projects to 
address high-profile social challenges, including: healthcare 
delivery, poverty, education, food security, citizen 
security, transportation, housing, and employment. 
 
-- Healthcare and poverty receive the most attention, 
highlights of which include: assuring free public health 
services for vulnerable populations including children under 
five and pregnant women; implementing a national electronic 
medical records system; and boosting 24-hour medical services 
in priority areas. 
 
-- Anti-poverty measures aim to incorporate marginalized 
populations into national development through improvements in 
a variety of areas such as education, food security, housing, 
and transportation.  Measures aimed at rural and suburban 
populations include steps to improve the delivery of public 
services to the poorest areas, efforts to reduce the drop-out 
rate, supporting businesses that build low-cost housing, 
strengthening community efforts to prevent youth gang 
membership, and extending transportation infrastructure to 
poor suburban areas.  Projects directed at poor rural and 
indigenous populations include increasing land titling, 
facilitating producers' access to the market, and for 
indigenous autonomous regions (comarcas), the integration of 
modern and traditional education approaches. 
 
-- The education sub-section reveals that almost 40% of 
children do not receive preschool education, and more than 
half of youths between the ages of 14 and 17 drop out before 
finishing high school.  The plan's broad ideals such as 
"improving the quality of schooling at all levels," and 
providing universal preschool and high school education are 
backed up by incentive and training plans for teachers and 
programs to construct and maintain school buildings. 
 
¶4. (C) "Generating dignified jobs and opportunities for all 
by sustaining dynamic growth above 5% annually" is the main 
objective described in the Economic Growth and Job Creation 
section.  Specific objectives include consolidating Panama as 
a regional and global center for a variety of services, 
including banking and finance, cargo transportation, and 
communication, and developing a sustainable eco-tourism 
sector.  Plans for programs in 11 economic sectors that will 
drive growth include:  (a) ensuring that canal expansion 
proceeds on schedule; (b) the improvement of infrastructure 
serving the "canal conglomeration" (the network of businesses 
and services linked to the canal, which accounts for 35% of 
Panama's GDP and 72% of its exports); (c) development of the 
tourist sector (including protection of eco-tourism 
resources); and (d) making Panama more attractive to foreign 
investment by improving security and promoting new free trade 
agreements (including, presumably, the U.S.-Panama Trade 
Promotion Agreement (TPA)). 
 
¶5. (C) According to the platform, "for more than 100 years, 
the country's regional development has lacked integral 
integration."  Herrera and her party's platform proposes the 
Integration of the "Three Panamas" -- cities, rural areas, 
and indigenous communities -- through increased connectivity 
among these disparately developed regions.  This section is a 
laundry list of infrastructure improvements to be made to 
rural and indigenous areas to better integrate them with the 
areas that derive benefits from the canal, including 
constructing new roads, schools, and water-treatment plants, 
and diversifying export agricultural production. 
 
¶6. (C) "The lack of citizen participation in public 
decision-making weakens the effectiveness of democracy and 
diminishes the potential for the country's integral 
development," begins the Citizen Participation in the 
Government section that seeks to harness greater governmental 
transparency and popular consultation with civil society.  It 
also aims to carry out the Agreements of the National 
Dialogue (Concertacion) for Development, a 2007 document 
drawn up by a group of government officials and members of 
civil society, religious, and business organizations 
advocating a series of proposals aimed at overcoming social 
and territorial asymmetries and promoting gender and ethnic 
equality. 
 
¶7. (C) Modernization of Public Institutions aims at greater 
transparency, more efficient public administration, 
decentralization, and strengthening foreign relations with 
the U.S. with an eye toward passage of the TPA. 
 
----------------------- 
PROMISING A ROSE GARDEN 
----------------------- 
 
¶8. (C) The platform concludes with a list of 100 
"Commitments," organized under 15 subheadings such as 
education, transportation, citizen security, healthcare, and 
food security.  Highlights include: 
 
-- the construction of a monorail to relieve traffic 
congestion in the capital, 
-- opening 4,000 nursery schools and 20 new pilot schools 
according to national standards of excellence, 
-- equipping all schools with internet connections, 
-- incentives for English instruction, 
-- increasing the salaries and number of police officers 
(from the current ratio of four officers per 1,000 
inhabitants to seven), 
-- building 10 new prisons, 
-- expanding existing hospitals and building new ones, 
-- continuing the clean-up of the Bay of Panama, 
-- improving the water supply in several cities, 
-- helping ensure food security by creating a fund to 
stimulate production of "strategic foods," and 
-- building new markets in several communities to keep food 
prices down. 
 
(C) The "Commitments" list is drawn almost entirely from the 
Human Development prong, highlighting the PRD's legacy of 
social development dating to the Omar Torrijos dictatorship. 
 
---------------------------- 
MISSING THE BOAT ON SECURITY 
---------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) While long on social development, the platform is 
short on measures to relieve Panamanian hand-wringing over 
the rising crime rate, which has consistently polled as the 
citizens' top concern in recent months.  "Citizen security" 
efforts do include predictable plans to increase the salaries 
and number of police officers, but also bland nods to 
"capturing and punishing criminals according to the law," and 
"improving prison infrastructure to facilitate 
rehabilitation." Similarly, despite a recent up-tick in 
confrontations between the National Frontier Service 
(SENAFRONT) police and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia (FARC) in Panama's Darien province, there is no 
substantive discussion of border security.  The platform also 
fails to discuss how Herrera's administration would make use 
of last year's controversial security sector reform that the 
government justified, in part, by asserting that these 
reforms would reduce street-level crime. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶10. (C) Herrera's platform hails the achievements of the 
current Administration--debt reduction while sustaining 
economic growth, investment promotion, sound macro fiscal 
policies, the increase of basic public services, the 
reduction of poverty--without mentioning sitting president 
and PRD Secretary General Torrijos by name.  As Torrijos's 
approval rating hovers around 49%, having slid some twenty 
points over the past year or so, the omission of Torrijos's 
name very likely is intentional.  The platform's intent is 
basically to remind voters that the PRD is an established 
party with the know-how to continue the social welfare 
reforms that have been a hallmark of the current PRD 
government.  While short on important individual issues such 
as crime, the wide scope of the platform is an attempt to 
demonstrate that the PRD understands the landscape of 
Panama's challenges and has the bases covered.  Martinelli's 
untested CD party has yet to present a formal government 
plan.  The PRD platform is in large part designed to 
capitalize on the hesitancy some voters have about the 
independent-minded Martinelli and uncertainty over how he 
intends to govern.  (As Martinelli opens a more than twenty 
point lead over Herrera, the wisdom of this PRD logic is 
quite strained; the platform is probably too thin a reed to 
hold back Martinelli's surge.)  Though lacking the flash and 
populist appeal of Martinelli's "change" campaign, the PRD is 
trying to underscore that it has an established governing 
apparatus populated by experienced PRD leaders who feel 
empowered by the shared vision they have and who are armed 
with a basic plan as to how they want to govern.  One serious 
lacuna:  the plan is silent on how an Herrera Administration 
would pay for any of its "commitments." 
 
¶11. (C) The "continuity" that Herrera and the PRD have been 
marketing has been finding little resonance with the public. 
The conservative strategy to do more of the same kinds of 
things that the Torrijos Administration has been doing has 
failed to gain traction and has done little to dampen the 
relentless "change" drumbeat pounded out by Martinelli and 
his alliance partners.  Presently, the general election 
campaign is shaping up to be about character and defining who 
Panamanians can most trust to govern Panama for the next five 
years.  Ironically, the lack of substantive debate on issues 
and proposals is to a large extent due to the fact that not 
only is there a broad consensus regarding what Panama,s most 
significant challenges are - education, healthcare, security, 
transportation - but also there is an almost as broad 
consensus as to what solutions need to be applied.  (For 
example, a public transportation policy debate that pits the 
PRD,s preferred monorail project against the opposition,s 
light rail proposal is thin political gruel.)  Martinelli and 
his grand opposition alliance labeled the "Alliance for 
Change" will in the coming weeks release its platform.  Aside 
from tonal differences, post does not expect significant 
substantive differences between Herrera,s and Martinelli,s 
platforms.  In the end, both platforms may very well end up 
being footnotes lost in what is shaping up to be a very ugly 
and messy head-to-head race between Herrera and Martinelli. 
 
 
 
STEPHENSON