Whether it's a matter of the PRD and its Partido Popular allies making insincere gestures or a further crumbling of Martín Torrijos's authority as PRD leader, it appears that only the approximately one-third of the Legislative Assembly's deputies who have voluntarily renounced their immunity will be subject to investigations for corruption during the present legislative session, which ends in June. The PRD National Executive Committee and the party's legislative caucus leader, Balbina Herrera, called for the stripping of all 71 legislators of the legal immunity that protects them during assembly sessions and five days before and after each session. Likewise, Partido Popular and Legislative Assembly president Rubén Arosemena, echoing the call of a fellow former Christian Democrat, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, also said he'd like to set aside all legislators' immunity. However, 14 of the PRD's 34 deputies have refused to drop their immunity. Meanwhile PRD legislator Mateo Castillero, who is accused by at least two witnesses of passing out envelopes of money to legislators in exchange for approval of the CEMIS airport expansion and industrial development project in Colon, has sued to end the investigation against himself, pleading that since he didn't actually vote on the legislation to approve that contract (which passed without a dissenting vote), he couldn't possibly be guilty of bribery. The Arnulfistas and their allies in the legislature are solidly against the setting aside of their immunity, arguing that the legislative bribery scandal is solely about the PRD and ignoring allegations that three PRD deputies were bribed to support Arnulfista Supreme Court nominees Winston Spadafora and Alberto Cigarruista. The net result is that there will not be enough votes in the assembly to strip all of its members of immunity and that the bribery investigations will be hampered until at least July 6. Public opinion polls indicate that more than 90 percent of Panamanians oppose legislative immunity, and the current law is cited in many of the frequent calls from all social sectors for a new constitution.

Due to the breakdown of Colombia's peace process and an upsurge in fighting, Panama has reinforced its police presence along the Colombian border and arranged for more cops to be ready to move into the area on short notice. The government has no plans at this time to implement the constitutionally mandated system of a militia commanded by the police to confront military emergencies. Panama abolished its army after the 1989 US invasion. The United States has offered training and equipment for the enhanced border guards, but the Moscoso administration says that it won't be requesting the assistance of US troops.

The Legislative Assembly has approved on the first two of three required readings a law that would impose fines of $250 to $1000 upon business establishment that deny admission or services to individuals on the basis of race, gender, age or religion. If the proposal becomes law, businesses that repeatedly violate its provisions could be closed. A number of Panama City nightclubs notoriously exclude blacks, arguing that admission of blacks would drive away the rich white clientele that they seek. It is unclear whether President Moscoso, whose late husband Arnulfo Arias stripped Panamanians of Asian, Middle Eastern and West Indian ancestry of their citizenship and who excludes blacks from top positions in her government, will sign or veto the law if it passes on third reading.

El Salvador has become the third country to seek the extradition of Cuban anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, in this case for fraudulently obtaining Salvadoran identification papers. Posada Carriles is wanted by Cuba for allegedly plotting to kill Fidel Castro when the latter visited here for a November 2000 regional summit, and for an alleged role in the 1975 bombing of a Cubana airliner that blew up over Barbados, killing 73 persons. Venezuela seeks Posada Carriles's extradition for the bombing as well, as it is alleged that the bomb was placed aboard the plane in Caracas, and for escaping from the jail where he was awaiting retrial on the bombing charge. He is being held in Panama, along with three alleged accomplices, for entering Panama using a false identity, possession of explosives and plotting to kill Castro. It appears that the evidence that Panama has to support the assasination plot charge is entirely circumstantial and not enough to gain a conviction, the explosives charge depends on the word of one witness buttressed by some circumstantial proofs, and the illegal immigration charge is an open-and-shut case unless the prosecution intentionally loses it. Panama has refused Cuba's extradition request because Posada Carriles faces the death penalty there. The Salvadoran extradition request may be motivated by the defendant's supporters, who are waging a vigorous defense campaign out of Miami. Posada Carriles was an active supporter of the Salvadoran death squads in the 80s, and the present Salvadoran governing party, ARENA, originated as the political wing of those right-wing paramilitaries. By extraditing Posada Carriles to El Salvador, he would face relatively minor charges but avoid facing prosecution for the far more serious airliner bombing.

On March 6 and 7 the Legislative Assembly's Environmental Committee heard arguments for and against proposed Law 58, which would ban the transit of highly radioactive nuclear wastes (byproducts of nuclear energy generation, but not x-ray machines) through the Panama Canal and this country's territorial waters. The UK-based Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd. (PNTL), a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., took committee members on a tour of one of its ships. PNTL representatives argued that there has been no serious incident in the more than 160 canal transits that its shiploads of plutonium and uranium have made, and noted that in one incident another ship traveling at 15 knots crashed into the side of one of its nuclear waste carriers without breaching the PNTL vessel's hull. Critics pointed out that while the stainless steel casks in which the vitrified bricks of radioactive material are carried are certified to withstand an 800° fire for 30 minutes, the fire in the World Trade Center attack burned at more than 1000° for several hours and thus the nuclear waste ships would be unable to withstand a similar terrorist attack. Virtually all Caribbean countries and several Latin American jurisdictions have prohibited the passage of PNTL's ships through their waters, but Panama Maritime Authority director Jerry Salazar argued that it would be a violation of international law for Panama to do the same.

With the school year set to begin on March 11, there are many teacher vacancies and many inappropriate teacher appointments throughout the public schools, and educators' unions allege that it's a deliberate political shakedown rather than bureaucratic bungling. Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata, whose qualification for her job is that she is the sister of the president of the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA), a junior partner in President Moscoso's governing coalition, has long been accused of steering jobs and contracts with the public schools to party members under a variety of pretexts. This year, the teaching of history, geography, civics, philosophy and logic in the public secondary schools was combined into a general category of social studies, and teachers of these subjects were assigned new computer codes. The ministry's computers were programmed to assign the teaching of all of these subjects to geography teachers only, and the ministry claimed that the problem was discovered too late to make corrections. However, the teachers' unions say, history teachers have been able to obtain appointments to teach history --- if they join MOLIRENA and pay dues to that political party. Meanwhile in Veraguas, less than a week before the school year's start the process of assigning teaching posts was suspended after hundreds of teachers protested of favoritism toward those who pay MOLIRENA dues.

MOLIRENA, the leadership of which will be disputed between followers of Vice-President Arturo Vallarino and backers of party president Jesús L. Rosas in party elections later this year, says that a membership drive has succeeded in increasing its numbers to more than 100,000. The party usually gets the votes of about 10 percent of the Panamanian electorate in national elections.

On February 25 the presidential anti-corruption commission issued its preliminary findings and recommendations, which immediately drew criticism from across the political spectrum. (For Spanish readers, the document's complete text is found in our Spanish-language section.) Most common were allegations that the commission did not get to the heart of institutionalized corruption. Former Presidents Guillermo Endara and Ernesto Pérez Balladares took offense at the recommendation that their bodyguard protection should be withdrawn. President Moscoso, for her part, criticized the report's very first recommendation because it urged an end to nepotism.

At the center of the controversy over allegations that bribes were paid for the Legislative Assembly's approval of the CEMIS airport, container handling and commercial project one finds Martín Rodin, who is also engaged in a public war of words with his father and brother, Lew and Peter Rodin respectively. On February 26 La Prensa reported that Martín Rodin was one of the larger contributors to President Moscoso's 1999 presidential campaign, and the report drew immediate and angry denials from the president. Two days later, Mireya admitted that she had received $60,000 from Rodin. The identities of political campaign contributions need not be disclosed under Panamanian law, though some parties do disclose this information of their own volition. The Arnulfistas have blocked disclosure legislation and refuse to disclose their contributors, arguing that to do so would be a violation of privacy and would subject donors to political repression. Mireya said that she had not been told of Rodin's contribution until, after the La Prensa report, her 1999 campaign treasurer and current director of the National Maritime Authority Jerry Salazar informed her of it. It turns out that Rodin hedged his bets with large donations to the 1999 campaigns of Moscoso, Martín Torrijos and Alberto Vallarino.

Calling its findings "imprecise," Supreme Court president Adán Arnulfo Arjona blasted the US State Department's recent human rights report that concluded that Panama's legal system is corrupt, inefficient and subject to political manipulation. Arjona said that it was unfair for the United States to talk about the bribery, influence peddling and endless delays that characterize the court system over which he presides without making specific recommendations for changes.

Supreme Court suplente Emeterio Miller didn't show up for a March 7 hearing before the ethics panel of the nation's bar association, the Colegio de Abogados. The alternate magistrate is accused of unethical conduct while acting as a private lawyer for a company engaged in the wholesale tire selling business. Unlike in most other places, a judge's disbarment in Panama does not automatically mean removal from the bench.

Judge Zaida Cárdenas has ordered an end to the anti-corruption prosecutor's investigation of the HP-1430 helicopter affair. The chopper was the property of a shadowy Colombian-owned Hanta Corporation but was used by President Moscoso, and last year it ran out of gas over the Gulf of Panama off of Rio Hato and dropped out of the presidential entourage into the sea. Two of the president's relatives were aboard when the pontoon-equipped chopper made its controlled landing. The National Maritime Service (SMN) nautical police patrol was dispatched to the area with orders to sink the floating helicopter, which they did with machine gun fire. Then an insurance claim for some $1.8 million was submitted and approved by an insurance agent who happened to be the son of the then-president of the Supreme Court and brother of the then-deputy minister of government and justice, though standard insurance policy provisions deny coverage for aircraft that run out of gas. The anti-corruption prosecutor called in the cops who were involved, and then the SMN chief, who said that he had orders to sink the aircraft from higher up. The only people who ranked the SMN chief were National Police Chief Barés, then-minster of government and justice and present Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora, and President Moscoso, and there was testimony that the order to sink the chopper came to the SMN from Spadafora. Judge Cárdenas said that the investigation was taking too much time. Judge Cárdenas is the cousin of Spadafora's alternate on the Supreme Court, Jacinto Cárdenas. Anti-corruption prosecutor Cecilia López said she will appeal the decision to end the investigation. President Moscoso has steadfastly refused to answer any questions about her role in the $1.8 million insurance fraud scheme. If payment was actually made on the bogus insurance claim, and if it was to whom, are questions whose answers are not currently known to the public.

On February 28 someone set a fire on the top floor of the Legislative Assembly's Palacio Justo Arosemena, and sent a communique in the name of the previously unknown "Comando Armado de Panama" to the RCM television news channel. The fire was quickly extinguished and did little damage. However, the incident reignited a debate about the legislature's security force, which is largely composed of political appointees rather than professionals in the security and law enforcement fields. Critics note a series of thefts from the assembly and allege that some of the legislature's guards drink or take drugs on the job.

Dr. Alfredo Lammie has been convicted of negligent homicide and abortion in connection with the 1999 death of a Chiriqui mother of three for whom the physician had performed an abortion. The woman began hemmorrhaging after the procedure and bled to death. Abortion is illegal in Panama, and women with post-abortion complications often hesitate to go to emergency rooms because they are typically arrested when they do. Dr. Lammie could get a 20-year prison sentence.

A blockade of the Trans-Isthmian Highway in the community of Nuevo San Juan turned into a rumble within the community's public health clinic, and Social Security director Juan Jované is very unhappy about it. The road-blocking protest was staged on March by community members demanding better local streets, and when police moved to open the highway a battle ensued, with police using clubs and tear gas and protesters throwing rocks and bottles. Gas seeped into Seguro Social's clinic, and when several of the protesters ran into the building to escape from the riot police they were pursued into the facility and arrested. The clinic, which is located near the Cemento Panama plant, devotes a lot of its time and resources to treating people with respiratory problems caused by the area's polluted air and Jované lamented the tear gas's effects on children and adults who were at the clinic seeking treatment for such maladies. He also complained that it's illegal for the police to invade a public health facility in the manner that they did.

At the request of President Moscoso, the Pedasi city council has named the town's new sports complex after the president's cousin, Gisela Moscoso de Palermo. The decision was made despite a petition signed by about 300 local residents who wanted the fcaility named after José Asunción Castillo Ortíz, a popular local athlete who dropped dead at the age of 37 while running in a marathon in 1998. The decision was also made despite municipal and national laws: Mireya's cousin is very much alive, and it's illegal to name public works after living persons.

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