Mireya signs transparency law

On January 22 the president signed the nation's first significant transparency law, a freedom of information act that gives any individual the right to see most public documents and creates a "habeas data" court procedure to obtain information that the government improperly denies. The law contains broad exceptions to protect individuals' privacy, national security secrets, information about ongoing criminal investigations and other specified sensitive data. The new law was passed with special provisions to make it effective immediately upon publication in the Gaceta Oficial, which took place the day after President Moscoso signed it. A number of government ministries and agencies had announced new transparency policies before the president signed the new law.


Moscoso denies corruption

While announcing the creation of a new anti-corruption commission on January 22, President Moscoso lashed out at her critics, arguing that in her 28 months in office her administration has been the target of many allegations of corruption, nobody in her administration has been found guilty of wrongdoing by any court. Many argue that this is because the prosecutors and courts are ineffective in fighting corruption.


Fifer replaced as Cocle governor

After complaints from the provincial organization of his own party, arguments with ANAM about permits from projects that would have environmental consequences and a lot of criticism over plans that would establish new pushbuttons in Penonome, Richard Fifer has been removed as governor of Cocle province. The new governor is Irving González and the new lieutenant governor is Ernestina Tejada. Fifer had used his own property to furnish the governor's offices and he took it with him when he left, so not only are provincial employees wondering whether they will have jobs under the new administration, but in many cases they've been having to improvise places to sit and to write.


Cesar Guevara succumbs to leukemia

Cesar Guevara, the former president of the Colegio Nacional de Abogados, died on January 15 at the Hospital Nacional after a long battle with leukemia. Last year Guevara had been named by President Moscoso as her anti-corruption director, but he had to decline the appointment due to his declining health. Guevara was 50 years old.


Truth Commission finds more remains

Forensic anthropologists and a dog who's trained to sniff out buried human remains have made new discoveries as part of the Truth Commission investigation into the fates of those who disappeared during the time of the dictatorship. On January 14 and 15 several bones and some dentures were found next to the National Air Service's runway in Tocumen. The dentures may provide a way to positively identify their late owner. The next day investigators for the commission found partial skeletal remains under the patio of a house in Betania where dissidents were detained and sometimes tortured and executed by the disbanded military's G-2 intelligence unit.


OPCW visits Panama

A team of five experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a United Nations agency, recently came to Panama to inspect San Jose Island. The island, the second-largest in the Perlas archipelago, was used in the 1940s for chemical weapons tests conducted mostly by the United States, but also by the United Kingdom and Canada. The OPCW created under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty to which Panama, the US, the UK and Canada are all parties. The treaty provides that where World War II-era chemical munitions are present the surface of the land, as is the case on San Jose Island, the party that left the weapon there is responsible for removing it. In many cases the treaty contemplates that places where chemical weapons are buried should be left as they are. Chemical weapons testing at San Jose Island ended with the rejection of the Filos-Hines bases treaty in 1947, and according to various documents and published accounts, some of the munitions at the island were dumped into the Gulf of Panama, while other bombs and shells were temporarily moved to Fort Sherman, then taken to the US Virgin Islands. Because a big part of the nearly five years of research that went on at the island was the development of bombs and artillery shells that disperse chemical fogs effectively under jungle conditions, and because the failure rate of these munitions is approximately known, it is estimated that there must be hundreds of unexploded weapons on or just under the surface of the island. A number of such shells are known and have been documented. Many of these shells have explosive charges that are no longer viable, but glass flasks of mustard gas contained within are still dangerous if broken. The OPCW team's report could ultimately end up a directive from OPCW headquarters in Brussels outlining what it considers every party's share of the responsibility in the matter.


Rajer to head National Theater restoration work

Anton Rajer, the University of Wisconsin art restoration expert who headed efforts to clean and restore the murals in the Panama Canal administration building, will be heading the team that will repair the partially fallen Roberto Lewis mural on the ceiling of the National Theater. Rajer, a Harvard-educated American veteran of the restoration effort at the Cistine Chapel, is probably the biggest fan of Panamanian history's most renowned painter, the Paris-educated artist and diplomat Roberto Lewis. He is working on an illustrated book about Lewis's work and has lobbied tirelessly to save threatened Lewis works like the National Theater ceiling and the murals at the Escuela Normal in Santiago. The National Theater's ceiling was damaged when, after lack of routine cleaning of the rain gutters that continued through the Noriega, Endara and Pérez Balladares administrations into the Moscoso era until, one June night in 2000, water from the clogged gutters that seeped through the roof unglued the canvas open which part of the ceiling was painted. Part of the Lewis masterpiece fell onto the theater seats below, and it has been difficult to marshall the assets needed to put it back on the ceiling. Among those performing the restoration work with Rajer will be one of his former students, who now works for the National Institute of Culture (INAC). INAC has set aside a modest $27,000 for the work.


Japanese help to repair schools

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency has donated $137,824 to the Education Ministry for repairs to public schools. When the 2001 academic year began, more than 60 public school buildings were in unusable condition and many others had serious problems. The ministry expects at least 10,000 students to transfer from private schools to public ones in 2002 as the result of difficult economic conditions, which will thus increase the pressure to repair, maintain and build classrooms.


Mireya extends Carnival holidays

This year public employees will get all of Ash Wednesday off to recover from their Carnival carousing, instead of a half day as has been the practice in past years. They will also not have to work on Carnival Monday. However, most public servants will work a couple of Saturdays to make up the time off. The administration justified the change as a way to promote internal tourism, and it will probably help to ease the post-Carnival traffic jams of people coming back to the city from the Interior.


Vacation-time street blockades

Though labor unions or community groups are sometimes the culprit, usually when caught up in a traffic jam caused by someone blocking the road it's a good bet to suspect students. But from the Christmas holidays until late March is school vacation time, and we're still getting a number of road blockages. Because there seem to be new players every day, this is a partial lineup:
o In Colon you have community groups in neighborhoods along the Trans-Isthmian Highway staging protests about lack of garbage pickup services; there are people who live in Arco Iris (Rainbow City), close to where the railroad tracks cut through the community, who want money to move; and the coalition of unemployed groups, labor unions and community organizations that staged protests last year endures and maintains its pressure for more jobs in the
highly unemployed province;
o Vacamonte-Panama bus drivers angry with competition from unlicensed "pirate" taxis closed down the western approaches to the Bridge of the Americas on January 24; and
o The protests against corruption have so far not involved street blockades. However, there have been protest marches and outdoor rallies that do cause traffic detours. While many people marching in the capital are calling for the revocation or suspension of the Consorcio San Lorenzo concession for a multi-modal transport center and adjacent industrial and commercial developments in France Field, in Colon there have been labor marches in favor of the project.


Colon property owners file criminal charges against Lamb

The Urban Property Chamber of Colon, a group of business and land owners in the Atlantic side province, has filed criminal charges against Donald Lamb and several of his associates. Lamb heads a group of individuals who claim to own stock in the old Panama Railroad Company, which was taken over by the US government in the early part of the 20th century as part of the construction of the Panama Canal, and which was transferred to Panama under the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties. Lamb and his followers claim that the 1904 and 1977 transfers were illegal and that they thus own vast stretches of property in the former Canal Zone. They have asserted their claims to such real estate as the ports of Cristobal and Coco Solo Norte by filing numerous lawsuits and registering claims to many properties. While in a few cases Lamb and his followers have prevailed in lower courts, such favorable judgments have been overruled on appeal. Last year, in response to Lamb's activities, the Supreme Court ordered the Registro Civil to eliminate all deeds in the former Canal Zone that do not derive from ARI's master deed. One provision of the controversial concession for Colon's multi-modal transport center requires the Panamanian government to indemnify the Consorcio San Lorenzo for any legal problems that Lamb's claims cause for the development. Now attorney Alberto Navarro has begun a legal counter-offensive on behalf of the Urban Property Chamber, accusing Lamb and his associates of falsifying documents, usurping lands, fraud, extortion and illicit association in their attempts to get money or land titles from chamber members Attia & Attia, Colon 2000, Rada SA, Nirzvi SA, Oficina Quijano, Victor Lum Lee and the Panama Canal Railway Company.


Red Cross volunteer drowns in Gatun Lake

Fabian Salazar, 20, was trying to improve his rescue skills when the currents from the Gatun Dam ended his career. A participant in a jungle survival seminar that included a night-time swim through the lake to a forested island, Salazar disappeared on January 17 and his body was recovered a few days later. His getting caught up in the currents behind the dam was recorded by the Panama Canal Authority's video surveilance cameras, and is far from the first instance of a drowning at the site.


HRW criticizes RP prisons

The international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch has put Panama on its list of countries with "especially abusive and inhuman situations" in their jails and prisons. The group's report specifies overcrowding as the principal problem. Although there has been a small rise in petty crime during Panama's economic difficulties, the main causes of overcrowding are the rise in drug-related incarcerations as part of the "War on Drugs" and the glacial pace at which Panama's legal system moves. Nearly two-thirds of those who find themselves behind bars in Panama have been convicted of no offense, but are awaiting trial.


Rumble for control of MOLIRENA

Panama's fractious oligarchic party, the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA), is bracing for a new round of infighting. Under discussion is an internal party plebiscite for next June or July which would extend the current leaders' terms of office through the next election cycle. The party's secretary general Jesœs Rosas, brother of Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata, wants to close the party's membership rolls before the vote, while First Vice-President Arturo Vallarino, a critic of the Rosases, wants to allow new members to sign up and participate in the plebiscite. MOLIRENA, which is a junior partner of the Arnulfistas in the Moscoso administration, regularly gets about 10 percent of the national vote.


US military here to look for long-fallen comrades-in-arms

A team of forensic anthropologists and other experts from the US military are down here to look for the remains of US military personnel who were killed in a 1941 US Army plane crash in the hills northeast of El Valle. The wreck of the plane has been found, but so far not any human remains. The Americans are excavating the site to look for remains or clues as to the fates of the soldiers.

 

also in this section Bribery allegations Journalists killed in the line of duty
©2001 The Panama News