Traitors, Betrayers,or saviours

PANAMA’S biggest political party, the PRD, remains deeply divided with words like “Betrayal” and “Traitor” being bandied about, with one side , demanding a united front against President Juan Carlos Varela, and the other insisting on the need to move the country forward.

  In the three days since six members of the PRD refused to toe the party line and support Crispiano Adames, as the heir to the presidency of the Assembly the infighting continues. The new president is PRD, but that’s not enough for some of the naysayers.
The six members joined with a coalition of Panameñista, CD, Molirena, Partido Popular and independent deputies to elect Rubén De León, one of the six dissident PRD members, as the leader of the legislature. De Leon was not carrying the political and personal baggage of Adames, alleged to be in cahoots with ex-president Ricardo Martinelli and some of those currently under investigation for massive pilfering from the public purse.
Adames was poised to lead a campaign against Varela, even if it meant an alliance with the devil, and some CD members had been promised chairmanship of influential committees, among them Sergio Galvez, renowned for his use of nearly $700,000 of public money to hand out turkeys and hams to his voters. With Galvez and Adames in tandem who knows what precarious path the Assembly would have followed. “Saviours” might be a better name than “traitors” for the PRD dissidents.
PRD stalwart Camilo Alleyne, who is close to former President Martín Torrijos, said that everything is a product of the lack of leadership and commitment to the country shown by the party’s current directors.

“It is a group that has bad political leadership and petty interests which do not display the collective as working for the general good of the country,” La Prensa reported
He said that the leadership that lost the general elections in 2014 insists on staying in power, and that has brought them “a series of irregularities.”
Former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares,addicted to  the Toro in the china shop approach, said the decision by the six deputies was an example of “putting their own interests before that of the party,” which brought some horse laughs from several political commentators,
He was highly critical of the alliance with the Panameñistas, “It is better to lose with dignity.’ than lowering our heads against such disrespect.”
Balbina Herrera, who lost to Martinelli in the 2009 election when many voters saying “anybody but Balbina” held their noses and helped give el loco a sweeping majority.
“The big loser was the PRD, we cannot hide that there is a deep fracture,” she said.
The PRD has an internal election slated for July 12. Look for some furious mudslinging, and perhaps some renewed fisticuffs from  a disgruntled Adames.