MEDIAWATCH: Panama’s path to democratic hell

I have never seen so much panic in a bully, who is also a bigmouth. It reminds me of the little boy who breaks down in tears and screams before the shot of the vaccine. It is one of the most pathetic things to witness the cry of a lazy person, the embodiment of fear writes Rolando Rodríguez B in La Prensa.

This man is terrified of paying for what he did. And it does not defend itself because the imagination simply not able to explain its stark fraud. So his dream team is not looking to prove his innocence. No way! His defense is to attack, threaten, warn and hit.

He is the sad combination of Dr. Zachary Smith, from Lost in Space, and the clumsy and cowardly Mr. Bean, with something from the theater of Travis Bickle, the central character of Taxi Driver, when, from his cell – in those months in which he was a guest of the State – he looked at himself in the mirror, puffed up his chest, and imagining that he had the magistrate Jerónimo Mejía in front of him, said to him: You talkin ‘to me? You talkin ‘to me?

Yes, because he thinks he is a gangster, the boss of the local Cosa Nostra. And that is true. He even had a nickname: Eagle, although I think he would never have taken flight if he had to leave the nest without help, since he lacks the courage to do so. It would be an eagle that, having wings, will not fly: the first specimen of the species aquila ignavus.

Others call it a white shark. I am sure that those who make him believe that he is the owner of such ferocity and majesty – including himself – must be people like his faithful friend, who when they see him, actually (augmented, of course) have before them a hindrance , but they are convinced that they are in the presence of “the great white”. They know perfectly well that they contemplate the king of the remoras, who, in addition, needs a school to accompany him, that is, his own remoras, whom he feeds in exchange for his total surrender, parodying the late Cerati.

He has believed his own tale that he is a victim; that there are political and economic powers that hate him and want to harm him. And although it sounds schizophrenic, I do not entirely rule out that he is a victim, but if he were, it would be its mythomania, its excessive greed, its narcissistic sociopathy, its kleptomania. If Stan Lee had known him, the great eagle shark would have been immortalized as one of his supervillains, an evil X-Men.

After listing so much execrable stuff, I started to wonder if this guy has any good. At first, I didn’t find anything. And the truth, in the end, neither. But I admit he is good at some things. And I  thought that if hell were a democracy, he would be an exceptional candidate to occupy the devilish top office, although I think Trump could fight him. The problem is that all that tear clucking is not because he wants to rule hell. His intention is to turn Panama into our greatest hell. And he has spent eleven years in that campaign … and counting.