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 News from Around the Americas | October 2006 
Panamanians Vote Overwhelmingly to Expand Canal
 Marc Lacey - NYTimes
| | Ships cross the Panama Canal, while others wait. The addition of a third lane and other improvements are expected to double the canal’s capacity. (Jose Miguel/Reuters) |
Guatemala City — Panamanians overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to modernize the country’s aging canal, won over by government arguments that the $5.25 billion project would generate jobs and keep the canal relevant for future generations.
“Panama is betting on its future,” said President Martín Torrijos, chief backer of the plan, after casting his ballot on Sunday morning in a nationwide referendum.
The overhaul, to begin next year, will double the canal’s capacity by adding a third set of locks that are 40 percent longer and 60 percent wider than the current ones. Constructed by the United States in 1914, the canal these days is congested and too small to handle the world’s largest container vessels and tankers.
Opposition to the project was vigorous as skeptics questioned the government’s cost estimates and raised fears that corruption would doom the project.
But the government’s campaign for the expansion, the largest modernization of the canal in its history, was even more intense. Officials portrayed a “sí” vote as a vote for the children of Panama. Without an expanded canal, officials predicted, shipping traffic would find other routes and Panama’s growing economy would dry up.
The canal, 50 miles long, employs 8,000 Panamanians and is a source of national pride, as well as foreign currency. But even as skyscrapers go up at a furious pace in a downtown Panama City that has hints of Miami, 40 percent of the country’s three million residents live in poverty.
All the same, preliminary results gave the expansion plan just shy of 80 percent support, far more than the simple majority required. A referendum is required for major changes to the canal, a provision of the law meant to give the people ownership of a resource that had long been in the hands of foreigners. Still, most voters stayed away from the polls Sunday, with turnout estimated at about 40 percent.
The approval is a victory for the Torrijos administration, which staked its reputation on the project. The current president’s father, Gen. Omar Torrijos, negotiated in the 1970’s for the United States to hand over the canal to the Panamanians. The canal changed hands in 1999.
The government backed off an earlier overhaul plan that would have displaced thousands of Panamanians by expanding the lake used to raise and lower ships as they navigate between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. No residents will be displaced under the current proposal, officials said.
The expansion, which will be financed by loans and higher fees charged to shippers, is scheduled to be completed in 2014. Canal officials predict that a decade afterward the expanded canal will generate $6 billion a year, far more than the $1.4 billion expected this year.
“We’ve gotten a clear mandate,” Jorge Quijano, the Canal Authority’s maritime operations director, said in a telephone interview Sunday night. “We now have an opportunity to continue to grow.”
Ferdinand de Lesseps, a Frenchman who was the builder of the Suez Canal, began work on the Panama Canal in 1880 but abandoned it after the project went bust. Leaders in Washington, eager to control the Americas, took over the project in 1904 and finished it within a decade. It cost $375 million, making it the most expensive project the government had ever undertaken.
American vessels remain the biggest users of the canal, followed by Chinese and Japanese ships, according to the Panama Canal Authority, the operator. The canal handles about 4 percent of global trade.
The expansion will not rely on the aid of foreign governments, an outgrowth of Panama’s desire to go it alone after decades of standing by as the Americans operated the canal. Many foreigners and Panamanians alike doubted that the Panamanian government could handle operation of the canal. But profits have grown over the last seven years, and operations have continued smoothly.
Nicaragua announced last month that it was planning its own canal, although analysts doubt that its $18 billion public-private project, which would use the 60-mile-wide Lake Nicaragua, has much chance of success. Its chances might have improved had the Panama Canal expansion been rejected.
As they lined up around the countryside to weigh in on the canal’s fate, most Panamanians seemed to have concluded that their futures and that of the canal were one.
“This country needs this project to join the first world,” Joaquín Rodríguez, 48, a businessman wearing a green “yes” T-shirt, told Reuters.
Faustino Ortega, 41, a mechanic, agreed. “If you’ve got a business, you’ve got to do what you can to improve it, make it more competitive,” he told The Associated Press. “The canal is big business for all of Panama. Widening it will help the economy.”
But concerns about the project remain, even among those who voted for it. “The expansion is necessary, but we all have to watch closely, make sure there isn’t embezzlement and corruption,” said Igor Meneses, 34, an advertising executive. “With that kind of money, there’s a lot to steal.” |
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