Panama News Briefs

RP, UN meet about refugees
On July 16 Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán met at the Palacio de las Garzas with the regional representative of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, María Virginia Trimarco, to talk about Colombians who have fled to Panama to escape fighting in their country's civil war and are now living in Jaque, Boca de Cupe and Puerto Obaldia in the Darien and Kuna Yala. The Panamanian policy is to repatriate such refugees, in cooperation with the Colombian government.

Peru investigates Montesinos's RP connections
According to the Lima daily La Republica, Peru's Banking and Insurance Superintendent is investigating a Panama City bank.
Editor's note: An investigation may be newsworthy when it's going on, but in this case it didn't really turn up any culpability in any of the Panamanian people or figures mentioned and they denied the allegations of a Montesinos tie. Thus this brief has been for the most part deleted so as not to continue old suspicions that were unproven and thus are unfair to maintain on the website. But when this deletion was made, the extent of and nature of Montesinos's ties in Panama was still an open question.

Weeden points to special interests
In the wake of I. Roberto Eisenmann's resignation as a presidential advisor due to his complaint that a "small group of maleantes disguised as businessmen" surrounds the president, others have begun to allege names that Eisenmann had refused to name. Comptroller Alvin Weeden, for example, pointed to banker and developer Mayor Alemán, the Shahani brothers and Augusto "Onassis" García as people with special business interests who are trying to ingratiate themselves with the Moscoso administration. Most of these individuals have strongly objected to Weeden's claims. Eisenmann said that he agrees with Weeden.

Presidential guards stand by during murder
Panama's Institutional Protection Service (SPI), which protects the president and other top governmental officials and handles certain politically sensitive investigations, is the object of a storm of public criticism in the wake of a July 19 gangland-style hit. Attorney Roque Pérez was sitting at a table in the Boulevard Balboa restaurant, drinking coffee with former Attorney General Efrain Villarreal, when a hit man walked up, shot Pérez twice in the face, then walked out of the restaurant and left in a taxi. Also present were SPI director Alejandro Arauz, presidential advisor George Weeden, the Legislative Assembly's secretary general José Gómez, Social Security sub-director Alejandro Pérez and former legislator Joaquín Franco. Two armed SPI guards were standing no more than 12 feet away as the crime took place and took no action. Suggestions that it's not the SPI's job to intervene when non-dignitaries are murdered in front of them did not stop an avalanche of allegations of cowardice. A few days later police detained a suspect in the killing, a Colombian man, but later released him when he was able to prove that he was elsewhere when the crime was committed.

Activist to be burned at the stake?
Physician and Arnulfista activist John Hoger, the former mayor of San Miguelito, complains that the SPI and the Ministry of Government and Justice are investigating him. The purported crime? Hoger says that he is falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, by trying to cast an evil spell on the president.

Endara challenges Moscoso
Arnulfistas who are calling for more democracy within the party, among whom Dr. Hoger is counted, may have found a champion. At least, former President Guillermo Endara hopes for their support. Endara has announced that he will run against President Mireya Moscoso for the party's presidency at the September 29 Arnulfista convention.

Ancient graves found
The National Institute of Culture (INAC) has announced that three pre-Columbian graves, dating back to between 500 and 800 BC, have been found in mountains near Nata. Nata already has an archaeological park, but that site is much later, and includes the remains of a town that Spanish conqueror Gaspar de Espinoza encountered.

"Work harder" Mireya tells her minions
At a July 12 and 13 meeting in Rio Hato with Arnulfista legislators, government ministers, presidential aides and the leaders of allied parties, President Moscoso called on her people to get down to get down to brass tacks. "We have to work together, give more of ourselves, and set aside the fighting between one entity and another, or between one official and another," the president said. The meeting's main purpose was to work on rural development strategies.

Prisoners released
The government has commuted the sentences of 210 convicted criminals in a bid to reduce prison overcrowding. The inmates, who had good behavior records while behind bars, had already served most of their sentences. Most of the commutations, 183, went to foreigners, who were expelled from Panama after their release. The amnesty also freed 27 Panamanian citizens.

Search for leftist leader's remains
The Héctor Gallego Committee of Relatives of Panama's Disappeared, a group of families whose members disappeared during the military dictatorship, says that it thinks that it knows where the remains of leftist leader Floyd Britton are interred on Coiba Island, and that it hope to exhume the body during the month of August. Britton, who split from the Moscow-line Partido del Pueblo in the mid-60s to form a more militant movement, died on November 29, 1969 at Coiba, where he was being held prisoner, allegedly due to mistreatment by guards there. One of Panama's leftist groups, the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29) and its student affiliate FER-29 take their names in part from the day of Britton's death.

Factions merge
Nuevo Amanecer, the former MOLIRENA faction led by ex-legislator Rodrigo Arosemena, has decided to join the Partido Liberal Nacional. At the announcement of the merger, Arosemena called upon the president to make public officials work harder.

Kidney patients protest
On July 17 kidney dialysis patients blocked traffic on the Transistmica, in front of Seguro Social's Arnulfo Arias Madrid hospital complex. The complaint of the day was overcrowding at the public health system's existing dialysis clinics, and the protesters' key demand was a clinic in Aguadulce, which would save patients in the interior the time and expense of several trips into the capital per week.

also in this section Academia, community adopt scholar as one of their own Two generals from the Minnesota Air National Guard, donate computers
©2001 The Panama News