Next Panama election is all in the family

The first rule of politics in Panama seems to be: Keep it in the family.
Martin Torrijos, the leading candidate for presidential elections on May 2, is the son of a former dictator. He hopes to replace President Mireya Moscoso, the widow of a man who was elected chief executive three times.
Political dynasties are nothing new in Latin America, and even the United States occasionally votes in a favourite son.
But Panama's concentration of political power is a symptom of one of the world's most uneven concentrations of wealth - a problem that damages the economy and affects workers in Panama's gleaming skyscrapers, residents of jungle slums and even its famous canal.
"It's not democracy. It's a debating society among the same 20 families," said Nicolas Shumway, head of Latin American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
A University of Panama study in 2002 said about 80 people, many linked by family ties, have control over half of the economy in a nation of three million mostly poor people.
"There are genuine disagreements, but it's not national politics so much as a family feud," Shumway said. "Look at their last names and you'll see it's the same people fighting over the same slice of wealth going back for decades."
Indeed, the May election gives most Panamanians an uneasy sense of deja vu. The No. 2 candidate in polls behind Torrijos, Guillermo Endara, was president from 1989-1994. Running third is Jose Miguel Aleman, a banker who hails from one of Panama's most elite coffee plantation-owning families.
Some candidates play up the family connections, hoping to capitalise on nostalgia. Torrijos has plastered pictures of his father, a popular dictator, on billboards all over the country to promote his own campaign.
Political analysts say the candidates have predictably campaigned as heroes of the poor, but all would follow a broadly similar pro-business, pro-US agenda if elected.
"There's no real choice in this election," said Rolando Gordon, a professor of economics at the University of Panama. "All of them will serve the rich families in power."
A 2002 United Nations report said Panama "is one of the countries with the worst income distribution in the world".
Much of the income gap can be explained by the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914 and was maintained by the United States until 1999.
International shipping spawned a separate first-world services industry of import/export companies and banks that drives about 40 percent of Panama's economy, but employs only 15 percent of the population, according to the United Nations.
First-time visitors would be forgiven for mistaking wide swaths of Panama City for downtown Dallas or St Louis. The wide streets of the financial district are lined by towering, air-conditioned office buildings and an unusually high number of McDonald's and strip malls.
But move beyond downtown, and the slums resemble any Central American country. Those on the outside can do little to break in. Access to education is limited, and business circles are insular.
The skewed wealth has helped make Panama's economy stagnant in recent years, even for the elite.
"If you've got 90 percent of the population on the sidelines, you're going to have mediocre leaders in business and politics," said Jan Dehn, an economist.
Dehn said the clubby nature of politics contributes to corruption and provides little incentive to publish reliable economic data for the outside world - trouble for any country trying to attract foreign investment.
"Panama is particularly guilty of this. The information is pathetic," Dehn said.
When confronted about the lack of new faces, most officials point out that Panama is a young democracy. Few new politicians have been trained since strongman Manuel Noriega was overthrown by US forces in December 1989.
"We need more new people, that's absolutely true," said presidential hopeful Guillermo Endara in an interview. He vowed his Cabinet would be filled with "young faces"
Panama's democracy is widely seen as one of the region's most stable, and there is no sign of the popular revolts seen elsewhere in Latin America in recent years. There has never been a strong militant leftist challenge to the oligarchy.
Meanwhile, that sense of political deja vu gets stronger. If Torrijos replaces President Moscoso as expected, history will repeat itself. It was his father who deposed her husband in a 1968 coup.