OPINION: A bonfire of stupid vanities

The first candidates for the presidential candidacy of the political groups that will hold primaries for that position are beginning to become official. The primaries should be the first filter to know the proposals that all these applicants will make, facing our national problems. Thus, citizens could calculate the seriousness of their ideas with enough time to make a decision, based on facts and relevant and qualified information. It is not enough to describe the problems when the diagnosis is already known. Society needs details: what, how, when and with whom they will do it. That must be the commitment to evaluate them. But in Panama, the primaries are not that first filter; what politicians do –instead of promoting the open debate of their proposals– is to promise canonries, contracts or buy the vote of their conventional. That is the first big mistake of politicians because that method only guarantees a great self-deception since the best is not elected, but the one who has the most to buy votes. The primaries, consequently, have become a mirage, a scam. For this reason, the general elections become what they fear the most: the bonfire of their stupid vanities. – LAPRENSA, Feb. 28.