The top two officials for Panama Canal affairs visited Atlanta today to give an award to former President Jimmy Carter in celebration of the waterway’s centennial anniversary.
Roberto Roy, cabinet minister for canal affairs, and Jorge Quijano, administrator of the Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, were received by Mr. Carter at the Carter Center. They were slated to fly immediately back to Panama after thanking him for his central role in pushing through treaties that turned over control of the canal to Panama in 1999.
During their half-hour conversation, Mr. Carter asked questions befitting an engineer and displayed a breadth of knowledge about the current $5.2 billion expansion project, Mr. Quijano told Global Atlanta in a private interview after the meeting.
But the canal administrator wanted to do more than talk shop.
“We actually have these jobs because of you,’” Mr. Quijano said he told Mr. Carter. “He allowed us Panamanians to take hold of our future with the Panama Canal.”
Yesterday in Panama, Mr. Roy and Mr. Quijano presented a similar award posthumously to the family of Omar Torrijos, the late Panamanian leader who signed the 1977 treaties with Mr. Carter in which the United States agreed to cede control of the canal zone, a six-mile strip of U.S. territory on either side of the waterway, and eventually the canal itself in 1999.
Both officials praised Mr. Carter for his foresight and expressed appreciation for the political courage it took to drive congressional ratification of the unpopular treaties.
The canal’s completion in 1914 under American control had effectively transformed the nation into a Pacific power, and some legislators argued that it remained key to the country’s maritime defense. Many worried that in addition to losing a security asset, they would also be turning over an unrivaled tool for global trade to inexperienced managers.
Mr. Roy, a Georgia Institute of Technology graduate of the early 1970s, conceded that it was good that the Panamanians had 20-plus years to prepare for the takeover but added that the results in the 15 years since have proven Mr. Carter “absolutely right.”
The canal authority has been praised for effective management, even in light of disputes that have delayed and threatened to derail the current $5.2 billion expansion project. The canal has contributed $8.5 billion to Panama’s treasury since it came under Panamanian management.
This outcome was far from inevitable. A turning point came in 1964, when riots broke out over the right to fly the Panamanian flag in the canal zone. Twenty-three students died and diplomatic relations were briefly suspended, adding pressure on politicians on both sides to come up with a new set of treaties. Mr. Carter’s achievement in this regard has made him an “intimate part of Panamanian history,” Mr. Roy said.
“For Panama, President Carter is a man that is held in the highest esteem. Even more, the words is not ‘esteem. He is a very beloved person in Panama, because President Carter did justice for us,” Mr. Roy said. “Above all, President Carter is a man with a deep sense of justice and compassion.”
Mr. Quijano, the Panama Canal chief, will next year celebrate 40 years working there. He said many Americans fail to realize that for Panamanians, the canal itself was secondary to the territorial dispute it so vividly represented in bisecting the country. Imagine, he said, having to cross another nation to get from Georgia into Florida.
“To the Panamanians, [the canal] was not it. The Panamanians wanted this territory. That was No. 1. One flag – that was always No. 1, and we never lost that focus,” he said.
Now the canal is adding a third set of locks to handle larger container vessels handling nearly 14,000 twenty-foot shipping containers, or TEUs, more than triple the current maximum of 4,200 TEUs.
With some snags including a $1.6 billion dispute over costs, the ACP has been able to steer the project toward completion without using general government funds or requesting outside assistance. That’s further proof that Mr. Carter’s faith in the Panamanian people was well founded, Mr. Quijano said.
“We haven’t asked for any country to help us with our project. It has been the Panama Canal management that has done this,” he said.
He added that the consortium building the third set of locks, by far the most expensive part of the expansion project, had received a $400 million loan that should provide the liquidity needed to wrap up by late 2015 and open for business by the first quarter of 2016.
Mr. Quijano shrugged off concern about mounting competition from the Suez Canal, which can already handle larger ships and has taken some traffic from Panama.
“What the Panama Canal has that the Suez Canal does not have after the expansion is that we are still a shortcut,” he said.
He also dismissed a $50 billion Nicaragua canal proposed by a Chinese entrepreneur as lacking financial justification based on current demand projections.
Still, the Panama Canal has studied the option of adding a fourth set of locks if needed. After the current expansion is completed, Mr. Quijano said 98 percent of the world’s container ships will be able to pass through the canal fully loaded. Even after the current orders of super ships come online in 2018, that number drops by 1 percentage point.
“That’s good enough for us,” he said.
Read more from our 2010 article: President Carter: Panama Canal Vote in Congress ‘Most Courageous’
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