PRD: A “dead body, walking?”

03-24-2009 | PHILIP EDMONSTON

lemonaid@earthlink.net

Government’s PRD party is alive, but not well and ‘fishy’ business at the Panama fin market

Panama Star How the mighty have fallen. Scandal after scandal over the past couple of months has the government’s PRD Party running scared. Its mayoralty candidate “Bobby” Velasquez , is still leading, but he has lost nine points this week and Balbina Herrera , the PRD’s presidential candidate trails CD Party front runner Ricardo Martinelli by almost 20 points.

Political insiders tell me that some of the PRD activists, especially those in the youth wing of the Party, are dispirited and leaving the Party. Additionally, charges of narco-money laundering have some of the Party chiefs worried that the U. S. government will refuse to grant them visas or may extradite them. Finally, I am told that President Torrijos’ own bodyguards are singing like canaries to government investigators looking into the money laundering scandal. After President Torrijos emphatically denied his guards ever moonlighted, his bodyguards admitted they were paid $200 a day to protect alleged Colombian money launderer David Murcia , whenever he visited Panama.

The Murcia case is more than a political bombshell; it’s a cluster bomb, as my Star colleague Eric Jackson , so aptly puts it. Almost all of the testimony given so far by Murcia from his jail cell has been verified. Yes, he was given police protection, yes, he met with key PRD political leaders, and yes, he had not one, but three meetings with “Bobbyto” Velasquez (who first denied ever having any meetings). Only Murcia’s assertion that he gave Herrera and Velasquez $3 million each for their campaigns has yet to be proven.

This feels like the last days of the Watergate-pummeled Nixon administration, or the Canadian Liberal Jean Chretien “sponsorship” government scandal that surfaced six years ago. Both events led to the decimation of the ruling party. Even former PRD President Ernesto Perez “Toro” Balladares (1994-99) wants the Party’s “inner circle” leaders to resign if the PRD loses this election on May 3rd, as he and Torrijos were forced to do when they lost in 1999.

Fishy business a t the Panama fish market? A bit, yes. The government has checked the accuracy of the market’s scales and only one gave an incorrect reading. No, I don’t know which one. A more serious problem for the vendors is getting sufficient ice to keep their catch fresh. Two ice machines that were given to the market over fifteen years ago, have self-destructed. Repairing them would cost over $20,000, if parts were available. Which they are not. The vendors are making do with ice bought from other suppliers, but they have to pay almost double what they paid last year.

So far, there haven’t been any spoilage complaints and the prices still beat supermarket prices by half. The best buys? Large shrimp (langostinos) ($5 a pound), corvina ($1.50 a pound), and combination seafood marinated ceviche ($4.00 a cup).

The best bargain is the upstairs restaurant which is clean and relatively quiet. The $3.25 fish soup comes in a large bowl that is full of seafood. It is first eaten with a spoon and then dug out with your fingers as you get down to the whole mussels.

If you want to beat the crowd to the freshest catch downstairs and still have a free seat for lunch, plan to go to the market around noon. After that time the stalls start closing, and the restaurant begins to fill up.

A quick anecdote I’ll never forget: A $100 bill fell out of my billfold when I paid my check. Two weeks later the waitress told me she found the money and gave it to her boss. He then came over to my table and returned the $100. I gave the waitress $50 and pledged to myself that the Mercado de Mariscos on Avenida Balboa, would forever be my seafood provider.

Honesty, should be rewarded.