On December 18 the Legislative Assembly's Budget Committee rescinded its resolution rejecting the Moscoso administration's 2002 budget, allowing the proposal to come before the entire legislature. The move didn't mean that the PRD-Partido Popular alliance had changed its mind about the subject. The maneuver merely allowed for the budget's formal rejection by the entire assembly, which is what eventually happened. Though the opposition called upon the administration to present a modified budget, that was not done before the end of the 2001 legislative session. Thus, in accord with Panama's Constitution, the 2001 national budget will also be the 2002 budget --- notwithstanding the fact that it couldn't be implemented even in 2001 because its revene projections were greater that what the government was actually able to collect. The problem may still be corrected if the executive and legislative branches can agree on a new budget during the course of the year.
Columbus ship contract voided
The contract between the National Institute of Culture (INAC) and Investigaciones Marinos del Istmo, SA (IMDI), which had provided that the company would be paid 50 percent of the fair market value of any object recovered from the site of a ship believed to be Christopher Columbus's Vizcaina has been rescinded, or at least will be modified. The government has declared the underwater site and all objects taken from it to be national property, for which IMDI will not be paid. However, because National Geographic and the Discovery Channel have expressed interest in buying the rights to film the recovery effort and the government of Spain says that it would like to subsidize the project, the company may not end up losing the several hundred thousand dollars it has spent on the project and may not be entirely taken off of the job.
Rainy season overstays its welcome
As this issue was uploaded dry season had yet to arrive on the isthmus. The unseasonable heavy rains caused a number of minor local floods and several drowning deaths. The delayed onset of dry season has also hurt several agricultural sectors, most severely to watermelon, tomato and coffee crops in the Interior, and has made many rural roads impassable and thus prevented farmers from taking their produce to markets. According to public health director Dr. Esteban Morales, the unseasonable rains have prompted increases in rodent and mosquito populations, which could result in increases in human diseases that these vectors carry.
Criminal charges in maritime license sales
Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Cecilia López has ordered the arrests of two employees of the National Maritime Authority and will ask the United States to extradite a third suspect, in relation to the practice of selling seamen's papers. The practice caused a stir in the world maritime industry when a British maritime union official bought certification as a first mate from Panamanian authorities in the Philippines for $4,000, without possessing or being required to show any qualifications for the post. A person with such certification would, for example, be allowed to take the helm of a supertanker. Because the Moscoso administration has allowed this scam to flourish and none of the top officials at the National Maritime Authority have lost their jobs as the result of the scandal, many Panamanian-flag ships have been delayed at ports around the world while coast guard officials conduct special reviews of of their crew members' certifications.
Cabinet approves more arms purchases
The Cabinet Council has approved $4 million in arms purchases, after having approved $3.5 for weapons for the nation's police and security forces in the middle of 2001. Details of Panama's arms transactions are considered national secrets, but the deals have been generating questions and criticism nevertheless. Panama does not have an army, and its police forces are not prepared to fight off any determined assault coming across the Colombian border, whether the attack might be by left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries or Colombia's regular armed forces. A need to improve the Panama Canal's defenses has also been perceived in the wake of the September 11 events. A recent attempted theft at the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) arsenal in Corozal and a long history of well-connected Panamanians participating in shady arms deals tend to raise questions about the nation's weapons transactions. These suspicions are aggravated by frequent but unconfirmed allegations by the AUC paramilitary that Panama's police are in cahoots with the guerillas, and by recent but also unconfirmed allegations by a FARC source that Panamanian police weapons have been offered for sale on the black market. In addition to concerns about possible corruption, anti-militarists like law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal oppose the arming of Panamanian police with heavier weapons because they see it as a step toward the re-creation of an army. After much criticism and many questions, National Police chief Barés told El Siglo that the extra $4 million wasn't for weapons, but for overtime and other additional expenses related to defending the border with Colombia.
PTJ chief suffers a stroke
On December 30 Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) chief Emilio De León suffered a stroke, the result of an aneurism --- a thinning of a blood vessel that if left untreated would eventually burst like a balloon --- in a cerebral artery. A few days later he underwent successful surgery to repair the aneurism. Despite the surgery, however, De León remains in the hospital with partial paralysis and slurred speech and faces a recovery process that will keep him sidelined for at least two months. The government does not plan to replace him while he undergoes therapy during the weeks ahead. According to current practices Attorney General Sossa can remove a PTJ chief, but any replacement would be named by the Supreme Court. During De León's absence deputy chief Javier Chérigo is taking over day-to-day command of the law enforcement agency.
Governor calls for crackdown on Chinese
Miguel Fanovich, the presidentially appointed governor of Chiriqui, has called upon the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to inspect all Chinese-owned retail stores in his province, to verify that the owners and at least one person working at each such business are Panamanian citizens. Fanovich also complained that foreigners across his province go into businesses reserved by law for Panamanians by using figurehead citizens to register as the owners while the non-citizens actually retain full possession and control.
Rock singer heads city council
Panama City's representantes have chosen their colleague from Pueblo Nuevo, Víctor Juliao hijo, as the city council's president for the March 1 to August 31 session. Juliao is the son of Public Works Minister Víctor Juliao and like his father an Arnulfista. In addition to his political life, the next council president is the singer for the rock band Los 33.
Panama City gets two new corregimientos
The Legislative Assembly has approved a measure promoted by both the government and opposition caucuses to create two new corregimientos for Panama City, in Las Mañanitas and 24 de Diciembre. In 2004 each of the new corregimientos will elect a representante, who will serve on the city council and in a number of other functions according to Panama's local government system.
City confronts street racing
Yeyes who race their daddies' cars on the streets of Panama City are finding the municipal government less understanding. Earlier in mayor Juan Carlos Navarro's term in office the city took special measures to suppress drag racing on Avenida Balboa, and now that the races have moved to Calle 50, Via Italia and Via Brasil, Transito Police and city officials are conducting special efforts on those streets. Those caught racing are fined $100 if they are adults, and their parents are fined $100 if they are minors. The races typically start late at night on the weekends and the participants are generally young men under the influence of alcohol. Because this phenomenon occurs almost exclusively among the sons of the rich and powerful, the fines are often meaningless but parental disapproval can be a more powerful sanction.
New restrictions in Casco Viejo
Panama City's representantes have imposed tighter restrictions on outdoor advertising and street vendors in the capital's colonial-era Casco Viejo. The measure, which allows the mayor to revoke permits that had been legally issued, was taken to bolster efforts to renovate the area's buildings and promote the neighborhood as a cultural center. It follows earlier municipal actions to control noise and litter in the area, which has been designated as a national historic monument.
Disturbance at La Chorrera jail
Inmates at La Chorrera's carcel staged a Day of the Innocents uprising of sorts. On December 28 prisoners were specifically protesting a cutoff of visitation privileges due to the finding of four cell phones in a shakedown at the jail the previous day, and also generally objecting to overcrowding, insuffient water for bathing, bad food and other conditions --- among other ways, by setting fires. The police moved in with tear gas, beating and strip searching inmates in the prison yard. The National Police public relations office denied that anything of consequence had happened at the jail, but then scenes of prisoners being run through a gauntlet of club-wielding police were broadcast on television and photos of semi-nude inmates in the prison yard appeared in El Universal. Later the police said that what they had quelled was a planned mass escape, and Police Chief Barés stuck by his claim that no prisoners were beaten.
University expels three for street blockage
When President Moscoso announced that city bus fares would increase from 15¢ to a quarter as contemplated on December 15, student leftists predictably took to the Transistmica to block traffic in protest. However, the announcement came during finals week and the public was fairly well resigned to the increase, so only eight people, not all of them students, answered the call to action by the Revolutionary Student Federation (FER-29). The vice-rector warned the protesters to cut it out and was ignored, and the day after the three-hour street blockage the rector expelled three students who were identified as participants in the disruption. The students have appealed the decision to the university council, and FER-29 warns that the expulsions would set a dangerous precedent. Public opinion appears to be against the young militants in this instance.
Colon city floods
On December 19 heavy rains and a series of other factors combined to leave parts of the city of Colon under three feet of water. The one mile square of Colon's city center, built on landfill and the former mangrove swamp of Manzanillo Island, has been served since early in the 20th century by water, sewer and storm drainage systems built by the Americans. Because the soil under the city is still settling, that tends to break up its aging underground tubes. The problem is aggravated lately because of the six large pumps used to move heavy storm runoff from the city's drainage system, five are not working. To make the situation even worse, people throw trash into the storm drains and in some places enough debris accumulates to clog the system. Thus Colon merchants lost business on what should have been one of the best Christmas shopping days, and many residents had to wade through dirty water to get into or out of their homes.
IDAAN reforms approved
Changes in the management of the IDAAN water and sewer utility have finally been approved by the Legislative Assembly. Though international lenders have advised the Panamanian government to privatize IDAAN and risk the sort of uprising that took place in Bolivia when that country took similar counsel and sold its urban water systems to the Bechtel corporation, politicians from across the partisan spectrum, most notably President Moscoso, have vowed not to sell the utility. Under this administration IDAAN has been tainted by a scandal, wherein one of the Arnulfistas' junior coalition partners, Canal Affairs Minister Ricardo Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party, imposed a partisan dues paycheck deduction on IDAAN employees. Due mainly to the scandal and suspicions about stronger political controls, earlier attempts to change the way that the utility is governed failed both in a regular legislative session and in a special session held this past August to consider President Moscoso's proposed reforms. The passage of a revised reform package represents a compromise between the administration and legislature. Under the new arrangement, IDAAN will be run by a seven-member board headed by the Minister of Health, with two presidential appointees and five members from various civic and professional groups. The reforms do not directly deal with the utility's major problems, which are both economic and cultural given that Panama is a society in which water meters and water bills have long been rare and mostly irrelevant.
Day of the Martyrs celebrated January 7
Under a new law shifting many of the nation's holiday celebrations to create long weekends, the Day of the Martyrs --- when Panama honors the sacrifices of those who were killed in the 1964 disturbances over the question of sovereignty in the former Canal Zone --- was moved from its traditional January 9 to January 7. The law, which President Moscoso signed on December 19, is Panama's second attempt to adjust most of its holidays to create long weekends. In 1998 an attempt to move Panamanian Mothers Day from its traditional December 8 Day of the Immaculate Conception offended both the Catholic Church and the labor unions and prompted the repeal of the previous law. Despite the change of legal holidays, January 9 remained a legal day of mourning, in which alcohol sales were banned and nightclubs were closed. On that day many labor unions and leftist organizations held marches and other observances, and Colon held an official ceremony at the mausoleum in which the remains of the three Panamanians who died in that city, Maritza Alabarca, Renato Lara and Celestino Villareta, repose. In the events of January 9 through 11, 1964, violence that began with a scuffle among students in front of the Balboa High School flagpole escalated and left 27 people dead, including 23 Panamanians (all of them except for Villareta civilians) and four American soldiers.
Truth Commission finds more remains in Panama Viejo
Investigators from the Truth Commission have uncovered more clandestine graves from the time of the dictatorship, this time behind the Fundartes building in Panama Viejo, which used to be the site of the former Panama Defense Forces cavalry unit. Last October a doberman named Eagle sniffed human remains after an undisclosed witness had tipped the commission that bodies were buried on the site, and after the holidays the excavations began and quickly uncovered human bones. Eagle and a number of forensic anthropologists are due back in Panama later this month to renew their search for the disappeared.
Malaria death in Puerto Caimito
Puerto Caimito, the fishing and fish meal processing community that's part of La Chorrera district and best known as the hometown of major leaguers Mariano and Rubén Rivera, was the scene of a rare malaria death recently. According to an El Universal report that cited Panama Oeste's Ministry of Health medical director Aurelio Núñez, a 72-year-old woman died of malaria in Puerto Caimito. The ministry has recorded high mosquito levels and an increase in dengue fever and malaria in Panama Oeste lately. The unusually heavy December rains may have something to do with it, as may the proliferation of trash since Arraijan and La Chorrera privatized garbage collection and certain people were unable to pay the bills for that service. The ministry has hired about 130 people as temporary workers for a public education campaign in the area, with the aim to get the public to stop creating mosquito breeding conditions.
Panamanian salesman abducted in Colombia
Adan González Otero, a 35-year-old Panamanian sales representative who was traveling between the Colombian cities of Barranquilla and Cartagena, was pulled from a taxi and taken away by a gang of unidentified gunmen on December 29. The Foreign Ministry is attempting to determine who kidnapped the Colon Free Zone shoe salesman and to secure his release. Colombia's leftist rebels and ordinary criminal gangs do a brisk business kidnapping foreign business representatives and holding them for ransom, while the country's right-wing paramilitaries are less likely to demand ransom for those whom they abduct but more likely to torture and kill them.
Panamanian's body recovered at Ground Zero
New York authorities have recovered and identified the remains of Diarelia Mena de Barahona, a Panamanian who was working on the 104th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center when it was struck by a hijacked airliner on the morning of September 11. Mena de Barahona was one of two Panamanians who died in the the attack.
Zuleta suspended and fined for altercation
The PROBEIS professional baseball league has issued its first fine and suspension to Julio Zuleta, who plays during the regular season for the Chicago Cubs and for Cerveza Panama in Panama's winter league. On December 28 a fan at the National Stadium shouted racial epithets at Zuleta, who went into the stands and punched him. The league suspended Zuleta for two games and fined him $100, and Zuleta apologized for his loss of temper.
Ministry to conduct anti-violence campaign
Calling violence a major public health problem, the Ministry of Health has announced that this year it will conduct a campaign against the most common forms of violence and its frequent causes. Singled out for special attention are domestic violence and the alcohol abuse that contributes to many altercations, road accidents and suicides.
Shootings mar start of school vacation
School had barely been out a week when within 24 hours in El Chorrillo, two minors were killed by stray bullets during the course of separate shootouts between local street gangs. A 15-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl were the victims of the Christmas and December 26 homicides. The girl's grandmother, who was a witness to the crime, complains that gang members have since then threatened her. On January 2 police arrested a teenaged alleged gang member in connection with the boy's death.
National Police get new uniforms
National Police chief Carlos Barés says that the men and women under his command are getting new uniforms, which are being produced in the department's workshops. Most police officers now wear khaki uniforms, with the border units and police cadets dressing in olive green. The new uniforms are olive green with black details. Some concerns have been expressed by anti-militarists and image-conscious politicians that it would not help the police if they look too much like the disbanded old Panama Defense Forces.
