Spadafora and Cigarruista approved, PRD in disarray
by Eric Jackson
President Moscoso scored a major political victory on January 9 when the Legislative Assembly approved her two Supreme Court nominees, Winston Spadafora and Alberto Cigarruista. The narrow victory came thanks to the defections from the PRD caucus of alternate deputy Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque and deputy Carlos Afú on the Cigarruista vote, and of those two legislators and their colleague Carlos Alvarado on the Spadafora nomination. Spadafora's appointment was ratified by a 37 to 34 vote, while Cigarruista was approved by a 36-35 margin.
As a result of the votes, PRD general secretary Martín Torrijos has initiated proceedings before the party's disciplinary tribunal to strip the dissident legislators of their party membership and elected positions in the assembly. Panama's Constitution allows political parties to remove members of their caucuses from their seats in the Legislative Assembly, a power that the PRD previously exercised in the case of Mario Miller in 1995, when that ex-deputy was arrested for (and later convicted of) extorting payments from business owners who needed government permits. The parties' ability to revoke elected officials' mandates is often cited by advocates of a new constitution as a defect in Panama's current political system.
As the debate unfolded on the Legislative Assembly floor, rowdy supporters of the contending factions exchanged shouts and insults in the gallery and outside the chambers, and in some cases threw eggs at one another or engaged in shoving matches. The legislature's security chief, former world champion boxer Eusebio Pedroza, personally moved in to confiscate a carton of eggs and separate individuals before their jostling escalated to serious violence.
The vote came as the culmination of a ferocious war of words, particularly about the Spadadora nomination, that had intensified for several weeks. Though the two vacancies that Spadafora and Cigarruista have now filled were created on January 1 with the ends of their predecessors' terms, the legislature adjourned its 2001 session without considering the nominations, which prompted President Moscoso to call a special legislative session to consider the matters.
In a brief statement after the vote, Spadafora thanked those who voted for his confirmation and complained that he had been frequently slandered in the course of the public debate. Some of the criticisms lodged against him related to aspects of his performance as government and justice minister, in particular his jailing of several staff members of the satirical weekly La Cascara News and his signing of presidential pardons or commutations of a number of convicted criminals. Though PRD president and legislator Balbina Herrera suggested that Spadafora had been paid bribes in exchange for the prisoners' liberation, no proof of this was ever presented. The role that the former government and justice minister may have played in the sinking of a helicopter that fell out of the presidential entourage and into the sea off of Rio Hato --- an act that apparently aided in a $1.8 million insurance fraud scheme --- also came up in the public discussion and may again be raised by the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's ongoing investigation of the affair. Spadafora was also the subject of a public whispering campaign about his alleged love affair with President Moscoso --- something that both he and she deny --- and was faulted by his critics for some of the unsavory clients whom he represented as a lawyer, particularly some arms merchants.
Cigarruista, an Arnulfista legislator from Los Santos, was nominated several weeks later than Spadafora and the target of significantly less mudslinging. However, in the week before the vote his critics also blamed him for some of the clients he represented as an attorney. A couple of Los Santos pushbuttons --- places of assignation designed to protect their users' anonymity --- and a number of Chinese citizens seeking to legally immigrate to Panama were particularly cited as undesirable recipients of Cigarruista's legal services.
The anti-Chinese racism inherent in some of the attacks on Cigarruista may have been a factor in the breakup of the PRD's unity. One of the PRD deputies who voted for both Cigarruista and Spadafora, Carlos Afú, is of Chinese ancestry.
Afú and Alvarado, like Cigarruista and Spadafora, are also from the Interior and were probably representing the wishes of most of their constituents when they voted to confirm the president's nominees. Several public opinion polls had indicated a substantial majority of Panamanians against the Spadafora nomination, while Cigarruista was opposed by a slim plurality. These same polls, however, indicated a split in opinion between people in the Panama-Colon metro area and the rest of the country.
Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque, who served as vice-president during the Pérez Balladares administration and is one of the PRD's founding members, had previously announced his support for Spadafora. The legislative seat for which he is the alternate is held by his son, who defied a PRD national executive committee resolution ordering him to be present for the vote on the nominations in order to prevent his father's voting against the party line. Like Afú and Alvarado, Altamirano Duque cited his long personal association with Spadafora and his family, arguing that the president's nominee is an honorable and capable man who is well qualified to serve as a high court magistrate.
Though they did not dispute either Spadafora's or Cigarruista's ethics, a number of lawyers and business leaders who testified before the assembly's Credentials Committee argued that the nominees' professional credentials were insufficient for the high posts to which they were appointed. There was never any question that the two men met the constitutional requirements as to age, citizenship and at least 10 years in the practice of law, but critics argued that a Supreme Court magistrate should also have a brilliant academic background and distinguished experience as a judge before ascending to the high court. Cigarruista did have some judicial experience and Spadafora served as government and justice minister, but nobody seriously denied that both nominees' principal qualifications were as political activists rather than as legal scholars.
In the maneuvering leading up to the vote, there were allegations of economic arm-twisting by the Moscoso administration. A week before, agents from the Comptroller General's office shut down a quarry near the Colon town of Buena Vista that was operated by a company owned by PRD legislator Miguel Bush. Bush had obtained the concession to mine stone and gravel from President Moscoso in 2000, but the contract had expired many months earlier and in any case the Constitution forbids legislators from holding government concessions. Bush and other PRD leaders accused Weeden of closing down the concession as a means of exerting political pressure, something that both the comptroller and the president deny. Detractors note that Altamirano Duque's family's business might also have had something to do with the vote for Moscoso's nominees --- the Duque family has for many years held the lucrative government contract to print lottery tickets.
The terms that Cigarruista and Spadafora are now serving will last for 10 years, through the end of 2011. They now form part of a clear Arnulfista majority on the court, but according to the way that Panama's Supreme Court is organized, most of their work will be on the tribunal's subsidiary benches. Spadafora will be on the bench that hears administrative cases, while Cigarruista's assignment is to the three-judge panel that deals with appeals in general civil matters. Only in rare cases does the entire nine-member court sit together to decide an issue.
