Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity

Political careers, corruPtion, and imPunity Panama’s assembly, 1984 – 2009 carlos Guevara mann University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana © 2011 University of Notre Dame Introduction The scene could have hardly been more illustrative of this book’s topic. On January 16, 2002, before a crowd of cameramen and reporters, Pana - manian legislator Carlos Afú, then of Partido Revolucionario Demo - crático (PRD),1 extracted a stack of paper money from his jacket. Those six thousand dollars, he said, were the first installment of a payment for his vote in favor of a multimillion-dollar contract between the government of Panama and a private consortium, Centro Multimodal Indus- trial y de Servicios (CEMIS).2 Legislator Afú claimed to have received the money from fellow party and assembly member Mateo Castillero, chair- man of the chamber’s Budget Committee. Disbursement of the bribe’s balance—US$14,000—was still pending. That was the only kickback he had received, claimed Afú, alluding to the accusation of another fellow party and assembly member, Balbina Herrera,3 that Afú had received “suitcases filled with money” to approve the appointment of two government nominees to the Supreme Court. Afú’s declarations sent shock waves throughout the country and seemed to confirm the perception of Panama’s political system as one in which corruption, impunity, and clientelism prevail. As political figures exchanged accusations and added more sleaze to the story, commenta- tors, media, and civil society organizations called for a sweeping inves- tigation of the “Afúdollars” case. But the tentacles of the CEMIS affair 1 © 2011 University of Notre Dame 2 | Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity were spread too broadly throughout Panama’s political establishment. They stung not only the leadership of the opposition PRD—the politi - cal arm of the 1968– 89 military dictatorship—but also the government of President Mireya Moscoso, Panama’s first woman president, and her Panameñista Party (PPAN), which was founded by the military’s historic adversary, Arnulfo Arias. Predictably, investigations by the Prosecutor- General’s Office never succeeded. In a few months, the case was filed by the Supreme Court (Alianza Ciudadana Pro Justicia 2004).4 This book is about behaviors, such as those portrayed above, by members of representative assemblies in liberal democracies. Following May - hew (1974, 8) as well as Shugart and Carey (1992), the term representative assembly best describes the organization with whose members this book deals. In daily usage, terms such as legislature, parliament, or congress are used interchangeably to refer to the legislative branch of government. Representative assembly, however, is preferable to legislature because dis- cussing and enacting legislation is not the only function elected chambers perform in liberal democracies and executives in both parliamentary and presidential regimes also have important lawmaking powers. Parliament, in turn, connotes a political system in which the survival of the government depends upon the confidence of the majority in the representative chamber. Congress suggests a regime type in which the branches of government have separate origin and survival, a notion that excludes those assemblies, generally called parliaments, upon whose con fi dence government survival is contingent. Thus, parliaments and congresses are the two main types of representative assemblies. In 2004 Panama’s congress regained the name of National Assembly, which it had in 1904– 68, and its members once again became known as “deputies.” Between 1984 and 2004 the unicameral chamber was called the Legislative Assembly and consisted of “legislators.” The regime type known as liberal democracy comprises at least three dimensions: political representation, popular elections, and civil free- doms. The representative ingredient refers to “government by the freely elected representatives of the people” in accordance with the people’s preferences (Lijphart 1984, 1; 1999, 1). In modern liberal democracies such representation is normally mediated through political parties, an in- dispensable component of the democratic system. For Freedom House © 2011 University of Notre Dame Introduction | 3 (2009c), the electoral dimension consists, at a minimum, of the following elements: 1. A competitive, multiparty political system; 2. Universal adult suffrage for all citizens (with exceptions for restrictions that states may legitimately place on citizens as sanctions for criminal offenses); 3. Regularly contested elections conducted in conditions of ballot secrecy and reasonable ballot security, in the absence of massive voter fraud, and that yield results that are representative of the public will; 4. Significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open political campaigning. The liberal component encompasses “a substantial array of civil liber- ties.” These include freedom of information, expression, and belief; as- sociational and organizational rights; the rule of law, and personal au- tonomy and individual rights.5 In its classification of states, Freedom House (2009c) labels liberal democracies as “free” countries. According to the organization, Panama has been a liberal democracy or “free” state since 1994. This book’s argument is simple, even self-evident for anyone who has paid attention to congressional or parliamentary politics throughout the world. The literature on legislators’ behavior, mostly based on the U.S. experience, has long assumed that representatives want to advance their careers—either through reelection (where it is allowed), appointment to political office, or election to a party position—more than anything else. By focusing on the behavior of the 309 individuals who were pro- claimed as duly-elected members of Panama’s assembly in the six general elections held between 1984 and 2009, this book argues that representatives’ actions might also be motivated by other goals and that these additional objectives may be as attractive to assembly members as career advancement. In Panama the most salient additional goals are getting rich and re- maining free from prosecution. Other goals might be recognizable in different settings; identifying them is a challenge this book poses to the scholarship. In pursuing their objectives, Panama’s assembly members undertake certain activities and engage in specific behaviors (see table I.1). © 2011 University of Notre Dame Table I.1. Goals, Activities, and Behaviors of Panama’s Assembly Members Goals Activities Behaviors Political Reelection to an Distributing patronage advancement assembly seat Buying votes Manipulating elections Switching parties Appointment to Supporting the incumbent executive government office Supporting a presidential candidate Election to party office Distributing patronage Buying votes Manipulating elections Personal Using office for Seeking emolument increases enrichment private gain through Blocking emolument reductions legal means Seeking assembly and committee board appointments Using office for private Abusing privileges gain through illegal Selling votes means Peddling influence Misappropriating public resources Exemption Manipulating immunity Denying immunity suspension from prosecution prerogatives Stretching immunity provisions Manipulating judicial Peddling influence with judges decisions and prosecutors “Quid pro quo”: discarding cases against Supreme Court justices in exchange for justices’ discarding cases against deputies © 2011 University of Notre Dame Introduction | 5 Institutionalization Whether or not objectives in addition to reelection can be pursued by politicians—and to what degree they complement the goal of career advancement—depends, to a large extent, on the characteristics of institutionalization in a polity. Institutionalization, as Huntington reminds us, “is the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability” (1968, 12).6 Recent scholarship recognizes two broad types of institutionalization: formal and informal (Helmke and Levitsky 2006; North 1990; O’Donnell 1996, 1998b). In those areas where formal institutionalization prevails—where codified rules constitute strong pre- dictors of political behavior—we expect that politicians in general, and members of representative assemblies in particular, will adhere to formal rules and procedures.7 Because most modern polities have written rules that prohibit the use of public office to obtain personal gain or exemption from prosecution, strong formal institutionalization in activity areas concerning political representation, accountability, and the rule of law does not provide an incentive to the search for the additional objectives identified in this book. Within democratic polities, however, informal institutionalization exists alongside or instead of formal institutionalization in some areas. This type of institutionalization refers to normally unwritten rules that emerge—and are conveyed and implemented—through unofficial chan- nels. Informal institutionalization covers a broad range of phenomena: some might complement and others may compete with (or subvert) the formal institutions of democracy (Helmke and Levitsky 2006, 5, 13– 16). This book focuses on three informal institutions that have a direct impact in shaping the behavior of Panama’s assembly members: corruption, impunity, and clientelism. Goals and Behaviors and Their Impact on Democracy In states where corruption, impunity, and

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