The Minister of Panama to the Acting Secretary of State.
Washington, May 6, 1912.
Excellency: Until the Panaman people, who are having their first trial of self-government, shall have received proper education, taught by experience, and shaped their system of voting in conformity with their very peculiar conditions, which is the aim of a group of patriots who wish to bring stability, steadiness and honesty into the Republic’s administration by endeavoring to introduce into the elective franchise such limitations as will make it the true expression of public opinion and so make it respectable, it will be impossible to prevent disturbances or frustrate the purpose of seeking unlawful advantages in the great mass of ignorant voters, who form the great majority of our electorate.
[Page 1140]Our short experience shows that whenever an election has taken place since the first one for President, which went to the one candidate, Dr. Manuel Amador Guerrero, more or less well-founded complaints have been made in which the friendly intervention of this Government was sought under Article 136 of our Constitution.
Thus in the elections of 1906 for members of the Legislative Assembly, the Liberal Party complained of the electoral registration in the city of Panama, and upon the intervention of Minister Charles E. Magoon, in conference with the Commissioners, Dr. Pablo Arosemena for the complaining Liberals and the undersigned for the Constitutional Party, a satisfactory arrangement was reached whereby a common candidacy was adopted by both parties, and it was religiously observed.
In 1908, before the presidential elections, the party styled “Coalición Republicana,” in memorials by the Liberals and Conservatives belonging to it, brought grave charges against the Constitutional Party then in powder as to the manner in which the lists of voters were being made. The Government, of which the undersigned formed part as Secretary of State, invited a joint Panaman-American investigation; in this investigation it was found that the electoral lists had been drawn up as regularly as our inexperience permitted and without evil purpose; furthermore, the suggestion offered by the Commission appointed by the Honorable William H. Taft, then Secretary of War, now President of the United States, were heard and heeded.
The same conditions occur again to-day, with identical results, and the Liberal Party—which holds absolute control of all the electoral colleges, as they fire constituted by a majority of members elected ad-hoc from that party—is making the list of voters so as to favor its followers and hurt its opponents by excluding under more or less veiled pretenses many of the members of the Unión Patriótica. Such is the purport of many complaints of the last-named party to the Government and denunciations published by the press.
The electoral colleges enjoying absolute autonomy, the Executive Power has no authority to intervene in the drawing up of the lists of voters and to enforce respect for true and pure elections, in order to give satisfaction to that respectable and large part of community which complains of its being deprived of its principal political right.
Under these very difficult and alarming circumstances, I have received express instructions from my Government to solicit the benevolent and friendly intervention of your excellency’s Government to the end that the electoral registration shall faithfully and exactly express the number and identity of the electors and that the balloting be pure, thus vesting the right of suffrage with all the respectability that its present defective organization allows.
The above-cited precedents which have had the concurrence, consent and participation of the various political factions of Panama, and the interest your excellency’s Government has evinced in the maintenance of constitutional order in the Republic of Panama, inspire me with confidence that the petition will meet with a favorable prompt reception on the part of your excellency’s Government, all the more as the electoral lists are to be closed on the fifteenth of the current month of May. To that end my Government offers to assist as far as possible in carrying out such measures as your excellency’s Government may wish to take in accordance with established precedents.
With sentiments [etc.]