An Interview with Billy Ford

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Billy Ford is an icon of Panamanian politics. His photo on the cover of "Time" magazine, covered in the blood of his murdered bodyguard and being attacked by a pipe-wielding thug, cemented world opinion against Noriega and US commitment to removing him from power. Known as the "Gallo Ronco" for his deep voice, he has lent his natural charisma and public speaking ability to running mate Guillermo Endara, most recently in 2004 when they came in second behind Martin Torrijos and the PRD. We met today in the New York Bagel Cafe in El Cangrejo to discuss Panamanian politics, corruption, the economy, and the fate of Manuel Noriega. Incredibly, Billy Ford was gracious enough to keep our appointment even though he had just learned that his older brother "Freddie" had died this morning of a heart attack. While we talked, his cell phone rang constantly with calls from family and friends offering their condolences. (more)

Panama-Guide.com - The political parties making up the opposition to the ruling PRD seem to be hopelessly fragmented while the PRD is doing a pretty good job of running the country. Is there any way the opposition can pull together and unite to have a chance at taking power back from the PRD in 2009?

Billy Ford: "I agree with you wholeheartedly. I see a lot of silly people, a lot of stubborn people, a lot of ambitious people. Those three things combined is a time-bomb in my opinion. The PRD is a solid, you can't overlook that. People from the PRD would never jump to another party, but people from other parties have jumped to the PRD, so that makes them a little stronger. They have one idea, they move along, they give instructions and they move. Now, my sincere opinion and I've been saying this to the media for the past week, is not only getting the opposition together. There is only one Presidential chair. If we elect a good candidate from amongst the opposition we have a heck of a good chance of winning. This time, different from other times, the candidate will make the parties win, the parties will not make the candidate win. In other words if the candidate is a good leader, if people really like him, if he's not all BS, then there's a chance."

Panama-Guide.com - Who is that guy?

Billy Ford: "I don't want to predict anything, but there's a split. Mr. Martinelli is a personal friend of mine but I don't agree with his position to be very honest. He says 'Well, it's me or the devil - I'm going to run.' OK. I think that if he doesn't win he's going to split and diminish the power of the opposition. He will spend money, he will do a good campaign. Of the other three or four parties, they haven't chosen their candidates. There are aspirations from here and from there but again, if we don't get together not so much as an agreement between the parties, but rather from within the parties to elect a good Presidential candidate. You need both. You can have a very strong opposition and a lousy candidate and you lose and vice versa. So I think the combination of both is going to make a world of difference."

Panama-Guide.com - From the people who are on the scene right now, is that Varela? Aleman? Endara?

(At the mention of Endara's name, Billy winks and smiles...)

Panama-Guide.com - I see the wink and the smile...

Billy Ford: "Well you know he's a very dear friend of mine. Apparently he wants to run. The problem is if he runs alone he's going to make a good show, but people damage more the perspective of politics by subtracting more than those that add."

Panama-Guide.com - In 2004 the PRD united behind Torrijos who ran against Aleman as the official Arnulfista candidate, Endara as an outsider, and Martinelli as a spoiler. The result was a three-way split of the opposition, diluting their individual chances to win, basically a repeat of 1994.

Billy Ford: "Endara and I, and I say this with a lot of pride, we ran for a small party that had 80,000 people registered, and we got 462,000 votes, second place by far over the other two candidates, so I'm trying to substantiate my philosophy that the candidate will make the difference, not just the party. You can have the PRD, if they choose a lousy candidate they're going to lose."

Panama-Guide.com - Do you actually seen the opposition coming together? Is it possible, given the personalities and the egos of the people who are on the field of play right now?

Billy Ford: "That's a hard question to answer with a yes or no. My feeling is that we have a chance as long as we stay on track of selling the idea, of communicating to the other people that we need to come together, otherwise we are going to lose. I don't know if it's possible or not, but everything in life is possible if you have the good will to do it. I don't have the vocation of being in the opposition. I've been opposition, and I've been in the government. You can not help your country from the opposition, except criticizing everyone. So if we don't get our act together and start thinking smartly we're going to lose."

Panama-Guide.com - What kind of a grade would you give the current administration of Martin Torrijos on the economy?

Billy Ford: OK. Being very objective. There is no such thing as a good government or a bad government in the world. They all have their good sides and their bad sides. I would give them a good grade on the economy. From an "A" to and "F" it would be somewhere between a "B" and a "C." The economy is moving. Now again being objective you can not give all of the credit to the government. You've got the private sector, there are foreigners coming in, the investment, the Panama Canal, you know, all of these things. They are managing the country at this time so they were lucky enough to have a boom. The economy is growing, unemployment is not as bad as it was but it's not as I would like to see it. Poverty is way up so again...

Panama-Guide.com - Poverty is up?

Billy Ford: Up, way up.

Panama-Guide.com - There's more poverty now than there was five years ago?

Billy Ford: "I would say so. There are more people. There are less jobs."

Panama-Guide.com - Less jobs?

Billy Ford: "Less jobs. It's amazing."

Panama-Guide.com - That's what I don't understand. How do you have less jobs in a booming economy?

Billy Ford: "It's a mystery to me also. I'm not an economist but the way I feel and I sense it there's less offers for jobs that there was three or four years ago. It's a contradiction like you say. The economy is booming, construction is booming, but certain sectors I think are taking advantage of the boom. Other sectors are not being able to join in the current of the economy. But being objective I think we need to create at least 50,000 new jobs."

Panama-Guide.com - What about on issues of security? The Torrijos administration is getting beat-up on internal security right now.

Billy Ford: "Two things - corruption and security. We have a tendency to blame governments. I would never say it's 100% the responsibility of the government because the security has gone down and delinquency has gone up. There's a factor in there, not necessarily about hunger or lack of jobs. There are people like the hoodlums that go out and shoot and kill people, you have the damn narcos and the drug problem. They are shooting amongst themselves. I think people are getting very nervous because of the things that are happening. People jumping into homes, tying up a husband and a wife, beating them up to steal from them. People feel afraid. If you ask me, right now there is a perception of low or poor actual security, people are nervous. If we don't fix that foreigners are not going to come to Panama so its an issue we need to fix."

Panama-Guide.com - Do you think it's more of a perception of a reality? How much of that is brought on by the press?

Billy Ford: "A lot of it. Sometimes I feel it's too much. You know, you get nervous. For instance look at the TV this afternoon, any of the channels. At least 20% of the 6 o'clock news is bad news. Well actually all of the news is usually bad news. You see that this guy got shot and that guy got stabbed. But then you look around and see that Panama is mostly quiet and nice, so it's a contradiction."

Panama-Guide.com - As in the plane landing without incident is not news.

Billy Ford: "Exactly, but if it crashes then they are all over it. Right, I agree. We have a tendency to over-do it."

Panama-Guide.com - I recently spent two weeks following the case of Toni Grossi-Abrams who was killed right up the street here in El Cangrejo. That was a horrible and brutal crime involving a woman who moved here from the United States, she was killed and her body was dismembered and set on fire in an abandoned field in Rio Abajo, there were Colombians involved. It was a horrible crime.

Billy Ford: "Let me give you a comparison from my feeling and my experience. When the military were in power Panama was a transit country for drugs going to the States. Once that came down consumption started to come up in Panama. Why? They would bring in the drugs and they would pay local traffickers in drugs so they would have to go out and sell it to get their money. Son the consumption has gone up. That's a point that really bothers me. You have decent good kids getting blown away over drugs and everything. I think Panama is a jewel. We have to get our act together, to stop promising and to start doing the things that we feel that we have to do. Security, the impunity with corruption - my God the perception is horrible on corruption! It's hard, but my God we have to put an end to this."

Panama-Guide.com - How will that lingering perception of corruption figure into the $5.25 billion that's going to be spent to expand the Panama Canal, another $6.8 billion to build a refinery, and other infrastructure improvements and projects such as the construction of the mega-port and the program to clean up the Bay of Panama?

Billy Ford: "We're going to be swimming in dollars but we can drown. Let me tell you my perception of corruption. No white collar people go to jail. You hear about a case, they have the proof, they have evidence, they have everything they put the whole thing in the ice box. Now if there's a guy that steals my watch they will probably catch him and throw him in jail. Why don't we put a stop to this? In our five years of government we did not have one scandal. Go back and check. From '89 to '94, and we can say that with pride. What has happened? The kick-backs, the contracts, the banks. It happens in the States and it happens everywhere. But that's not a tranquilizer for me knowing that it happens in other countries. How can we put a stop to it? By having honest, decent people in the government."

Panama-Guide.com With regards to the perception of corruption and to put the last four administrations in a nut-shell - I saw the Endara administration as basically having to clean-up after the years of the military dictatorship. The Balladares years were marked by the end of the US military presence in Panama and the most important thing was the privitazation of the state held utilities. When dealing with that level of sell-off there were lots of opportunities for corruption. The Mireya Moscoso years were marked by a significant perception of rampant corruption - bags of money in freezers and stuff. Here's the part that I don't get. Those things happened from '99 to 2004 and we are now well into 2007. It's been three years. Where are the convictions?

Billy Ford: "Right, and from the Perez Balladares years there are none."

Panama-Guide.com Why is that?

Billy Ford: "That's what I mean. Is the judiciary corrupt? Are they buying judges? Are they manipulating the system? I don't know, but that's the perception.

Panama-Guide.com The procedures have to come through the Public Ministry to be taken to the judicial system. Are they starting the cases and investigations?

Billy Ford: "They start the cases and then they put them in the freezer with the dollars. Like this guy Arosemena. I knew him very well many, many years ago. He's accused of defaulting the Banco Nacional for I dunno $10 or $15 million dollars, the guy lives sixteen years in Mexico, he came back and now he's home."

Panama-Guide.com And how does that happen?

Billy Ford: Well I understand, and again I'm not an attorney, I understand that if you have 70 years or more you have a right to have your home as your jail, and he's like 73.

Panama-Guide.com And how old is Noriega?

Billy Ford: Noriega must be 70-something so that's why we're all worried. If he comes down here...

Panama-Guide.com What's going to happen?

Billy Ford: "I don't want him back."

Panama-Guide.com But what do you think is actually going to happen?

Billy Ford: "We should put him in jail and let him appeal."

Panama-Guide.com Noriega is going to be released in September of this year. International attention on Panama is going to ramp-up between now and then. There has been almost twenty years of relatively minor stuff going on down here. The latest international news has been the expansion of the Panama Canal, the poisioned medicines from the Social Security lab, the bus fire, and now the murder of Toni Grossi-Abrams. But from now until September international attention on Panama is going to increase and culminate on that day when Noriega is released. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen. Where do you think he's going to go?

Billy Ford: Well there was a story this morning in the media that says that France is requesting his extradition, from the United States to France. The US has replied very coldly, as they tend to do in foreign relations, that if France treats Noriega as a Prisoner of War they are willing to analyze the extradition to France. That was in the media this morning, like in La Prensa. Remember, he was condemed in three cases here, one for twenty years and that was seventeen years ago. So, if he says out of Panama for three more years..."

Panama-Guide.com So if he doesn't start to serve his 20 year sentence in Panama within the next three years then he gets off?

Billy Ford: "Will they put him in jail, because he's over 70? Who knows. That's why people don't trust the judiciary."

Panama-Guide.com Considering your experience as a diplomat, do you think the election in France over the weekend is going to effect Manuel Noriega's future?

Billy Ford: "Having a rightist I would imagine it would have an effect. What we have to do is to use our strength but we need to have a definite plan. We (need to say that) 'we want Noriega back and he's going to go to jail.' If we don't have that, nobody is going to send him to us."

Panama-Guide.com Do you really think that's going to happen?

Billy Ford: No, but that's what I mean. But if you modify the law according to what you need to do with this guy. He killed people here."

Panama-Guide.com If Panama can pass the Ley Jacome and the Ley Faundes, can't they pass the Ley Noriega? Personally, I don't think this will ever happen.

Billy Ford: "I don't think so either, but this would be the only mechanism."

Panama-Guide.com Wouldn't it be possible for Panama to pass a law that says 'In September of 2007 if Noreiga is released from the US and he comes to Panama then he will be locked up in jail (and not in his house) for the rest of his life, that he won't get any special treatment, etc.?

Billy Ford: "That would send a good message abroad. The problem is the perception in Panama. For example the Jones case. Again, I only know what I've seen in the media but it seems that he might be liable. How would you feel if it was your dad who died in that accident."

Panama-Guide.com That's the problem with the perception. If he wasn't Jones the lawyer but just some guy with no political power or connections he would have gone straight to jail and he would still be there.

Billy Ford: "My father used to say that unfortunately in Panama it depends on who you are and justice will be fair or unfair. If you have influence you can get away with it. If you don't have any influence you go to jail. John Doe's son goes to jail.

Panama-Guide.com How does that perception play in a new Panama that is now more on the international stage than ever before? 174 million baby-boomers are going to retire around the world in the next ten years, half from the US and half from the rest of the world. With the construction boom, everyone wants to buy a condominium, but the issue of Noriega's return is going to come up.

Billy Ford: "If I was the president I would make clear my position regarding Noriega."

Panama-Guide.com Personally I think Noriega will be released in Miami, he will be sent to France and he will die in jail there.

Billy Ford: "God bless you. We don't need that problem. Let me tell you this construction boom took us by surprise. I can't believe the development. I still get shocked when I see all of the construction."

Panama-Guide.com What do you think is the biggest problem facing Panama that's not being handled properly by the current administration?

Billy Ford: People feel left out. People block roads for any reason. They need a road, electricity, sewage, whatever. Hunger is the worst enemy of democracy. We talked about corruption, but if I have four hungry kids in my house crying and dying I would do anything and so would you.

Panama-Guide.com: Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Ford.

Billy Ford: Your very welcome, the pleasure is mine. But from now on, please, call me Billy.

Copyright 2007 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. As usual, feel free to use whatever you want as long as you credit the source. Salud.