Word: canalization
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What has America's right wing spooked is how assiduously the Panamanians are working to make the canal--which has always been run on a nonprofit basis--into a cash cow. It is not a new complaint. In the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter sold the handover treaty to Congress, there was much whining about turning the canal into little more than an expensive toll road. The latest version of this anxiety adds a national security tweak: fear of China. In 1997, the Panamanian government finalized a rich deal with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., based in Hong Kong...
...furor comes at a time when Panama is trying to reinvent itself. While only 7% of the country's economy is dependent on the canal, nearly 100% of its self-image is wrapped up in the belief that it serves as one of the world's most important trade links. This Wednesday the country will swear in a new President, Mireya Moscoso, 53, whose overriding challenge is to try to turn a world-class location into a world-class country, technologically literate and future oriented. More ambitious Panamanians (and the country's well-educated middle class is full of them...
...says Joseph Cornelison, the commission's deputy administrator, "we'll control the timing of ships going in and out of Hutchison's ports." Moreover, under the treaty, U.S. Navy ships will keep their privilege of cutting to the front of the line of vessels waiting to traverse the canal...
With only four months left until U.S. envoys hand over the keys to the waterway, the alarmists may have delayed too long to scupper the deal. The treaty allows the U.S. to intervene militarily--but only if the canal's neutrality is menaced. While critics now include presidential candidates Gary Bauer, Pat Buchanan and John McCain, it is hard to imagine the U.S. backing...
...separated her from the former President, Arnulfo Arias. His career provides a sobering lesson. Arias was elected three times, and each time the army deposed him. Diplomats in Panama say Moscoso knows she must tread cautiously. She has vowed to keep politics out of the handover, entrusting the canal's operations to the autonomous Panama Canal Authority. Moscoso expects Washington to do the same, leaving rumbles of Chinese conspiracies to the thriller writers...