Monsignior Rómulo Emiliani, who had been serving as the Vatican-appointed acting bishop of the Darien but has been outside of Panama for nearly two years as the result of threats by Colombia's warring factions, has been named auxiliary bishop of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, by Pope John Paul II. Emiliani, a Colon native and Claretan priest, was in Rome when his appointment was announced and will return to Panama briefly before taking up his new post.

On March 21 the world came a step closer to having a permanent court in The Hague to hear cases involving war crimes, genocide or other gross human rights violations, when Panama became the 56th country to ratify the Statute of Rome, a United Nations treaty to establish such a tribunal. The treaty provides that it will go into effect once at least 60 nations ratify it, a goal that is expected to be passed sometime this year. The United States and most of the other great powers oppose the treaty because they do not want the world to judge how they conduct their wars. Despite such opposition, once the court is established its jurisdiction could become a part of customary international law, which according to most authorities on the subject would then become applicable to countries that didn't agree to the court.

Guatemala's Attorney General Carlos García Regás says that a team of his country's prosecutors who came here to investigate published reports that President Alfonso Portillo and people close to him have hidden large sums of money in Panamanian corporations and bank accounts did find that high Guatemalan officials have moved a lot of money into Panama. The Guatemalan investigation is now centering upon the source of those funds. Portillo, who denies all, would not have had a legal source for the amounts of money hidden in Panama, if it was all his.

A team of FBI agents and other US government officials has come here to investigate suspicious Panamanian activities of the Miami-based Hamilton Bank, which was closed by American banking authorities earlier this year. According to a report in The Miami Herald, bags of cash from public officials from around Latin America would regularly flow into the Hamilton Bank for laundering. One of the people whom the Herald mentioned as a depositor in the Hamilton Bank was Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso. Moscoso denies any connection with the bank. Banking Superintendent Delia Cárdenas, wary of another money laundering scandal that could hurt the public image of Panama's banking center, points out that the Hamilton Bank was a US-based company which had an office here but was never licensed to provide banking services in Panama. Cárdenas argues that any insinuation that alleged illegal activities by the Hamilton Bank amount to a Panamanian banking scandal would be unfair.

The presidential anti-corruption commission, whose initial report was criticized by President Moscoso for opposing nepotism, also drew criticism from other parts of the political spectrum. Former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares said that the report was deficient because it didn't cite specific cases, while banker and presidential candidate Alberto Vallarino dismissed the document as a naive wish list. Now the commission says that it will soon issue a second report, with detailed charges of specific acts of corruption in the Moscoso administration, for the benefit of prosecutors and the public.

Panamanian outfielder Rubén Rivera, released by the New York Yankees after he was caught stealing a bat and a glove from the locker of teammate Derek Jeter and attempting to sell the items to a sports memorabilia dealer, may or may not play in the major leagues again. According to La Prensa, the Yankee's dismissal of Rivera was a case of anti-Latino racism and hardball competition for a position on the team. When asked about the scandal, President Moscoso responded that Panama's major league baseball players bring credit to this country. In discussion on the Internet via the La Carta de Panama forum, a number of people called the action against Rivera unfair and some said that he should have been sent to a psychiatrist to deal with supposed kleptomania rather than fired as a thief. In his own defense, Rivera argued that other players had not been dismissed for drug and alcohol violations, which he considers more serious than theft. It seems that, especially among those who are now or once were employed by the Panamanian government, the notion that professionals would not want to work with a thief in their midst is considered bizarre.

Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata, who by virtue of her position controls the Canal Once educational television channel and has turned it into a propaganda outlet run by political activists and watched by very few people, complained in a speech at Pedro J. Sosa elementary school that was broadcast on RPC radio that the government is working "with all the communications media against us." Rosas de Mata alleged an agreement among Panama's various print and broadcast media to force the country to "go in reverse" in educational policy. Most of the media have published or broadcast mostly unflattering coverage about Rosas because her ministry has been inefficient and partisan according to most accounts by teachers, parents and students who are willing to talk about the subject. Rosas's brother is the president of MOLIRENA, a small party that's a junior partner in Mireya Moscoso's administration, and several other members of their extended family hold positions in the government. If there is a conspiracy among the media to make the government look bad, nobody has ever contacted The Panama News about it. We do, however, report the news.

Notwithstanding Attorney General José Antonio Sossa's earlier promises not to try the series of legislative bribery scandals in the press, prosecutors leaked information that telephone records indicate that Comptroller General Alvin Weeden and legislator Carlos Afú were in constant telephone contact in the weeks leading up to Afú's break with PRD party discipline that put Winston Spadafora and Alberto Cigarruista on the Supreme Court. Weeden and President Moscoso immediately said that the phone calls were about other legislative business and were not unusual, but PRD regulars who allege that Afú received a large bribe to vote the way that he did have a more sinister interpretation. Weeden then accused the mass media of conspiring to divert attention from allegations that PRD members were bribed to approve the CEMIS multimodal transport project in Colon by bringing up the question of whether bribes were paid to win approval of Mireya's nominees.

Administrative Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher has called for a ban on some of Panama's most popular morning radio music programs, including those by WAO 97 1/2, Tropic Q and La Mega. In a press statement she called the music that the stations play obscene and accused broadcasters of forgetting their duty to inform and educate. Panama has a Board of Censors that occasionally bans certain musical compositions, but Montenegro de Fletcher apparently thinks that the censors are too easy on sexually suggestive material.

The Legislative Assembly's Transportation and Communications Committee is again considering a proposal to license journalists, a practice that Panama has not seen since the overthrow of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. With the backing of the Colegio de Periodistas and the Sindicato de Periodistas, the proposed law would bar foreign citizens from working in the Panamanian media; require foreign correspondents to obtain a license from a Panamanian government commission; and exclude all but journalism majors who graduated the University of Panama's journalism program, or of programs accepted by said department, from working as journalists here. The proposal drew immediate condemnation from international journalism and human rights organizations, and in the legislative hearings the government-favored journalism organizations and the law's proponents were sternly opposed by the coordinator of the Forum de Periodistas, radio and television journalist Lucy Molinar. In last year's version of the law, which didn't pass before the legislative session ended, it would have been a crime for a journalist to take a bribe from a legislator without informing his or her superiors about it, but legal for legislators to bribe journalists and legal for publishers to accept bribes from legislators or anybody else to slant the news.

Father Conrado Sanjur, a Catholic priest who heads the Popular Human Rights Coordinator of Panama (COPODEHUPA), says that those responsible for the disappearances and murders of dozens of activists during the time of the dictatorship should be prosecuted for their crimes. In remarks before a Legislative Assembly committee, Sanjur added that those responsible include not only the soldiers and police officers who abducted and killed the victims, but also civilian accomplices, particularly former prosecutors and attorneys general who covered up the crimes and kept the families of the victims from knowing the fates of their loved ones. The latter remark may also have been aimed at the current attorney general, José Antonio Sossa, who by way of legal and political maneuvers and tampering with evidence has attempted to obstruct the work of the Truth Commission, whose report on human rights abuses during the dictatorship is due April 18.

Anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro has filed a criminal complaint with the Electoral Prosecutor against Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, accusing the mayor of illegally conducting political propaganda with public funds. Navarro attended a meeting with mayors of other cities in Santiago on a weekday during working hours, and at the event gave non-committal answers to reporters' questions about his political plans for the future. The Electoral Tribunal has already removed one elected mayor this year, La Chorrera independent Brenda de Icaza, for denying a political patronage job to an activist. Supporters of PRD secretary general Martín Torrijos and other foes of Navarro who are not in any way connected with or supporters of Torrijos have made a string of allegations against the mayor, who figures in opinion polls as Panama's most popular public official, in order to prevent a possible challenge to Torrijos for the PRD presidential nomination in 2004.

In the face of divisions over scandals and a breakdown in the party's legislative caucus discipline, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) is now enmeshed in bitter infighting. Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, who's relatively new to the PRD but according to all credible polls by far the nation's most popular elected official, has called for new leadership on the party's National Executive Committee, and in so doing has the support of many officials from the former Pérez Balladares administration. Party Secretary General Martín Torrijos, the son of the late military strongman and PRD founder Omar Torrijos, is expected to head the party's presidential ticket as he did in 1999, but recent polls show that he would lose badly. Torrijos resents Navarro's call for new leadership, is backing all members of the current National Executive Committee for re-election, and has dared Navarro to run against him at a national party convention to be held next August. Navarro supporters have been visiting party branches around the country, often to be called traitors by Torrijos loyalists, while Navarro himself is being seen more often at events far from the city.

In a photo opportunity that landed him on the covers of daily newspapers and on television news broadcast, Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán carried the Chiriqui provincial flag in a parade to mark the opening of the David Fair on March 19. The photogenic Alemán, who is said to have presidential ambitions, may have picked up a few points for image. However, shortly after its arrival at the stables at the fairground in David after the parade, the horse developed breathing problems and died. The animal, valued at some $30,000, was owned by businessman Mario Guardia. The incident has become the butt of various political jokes.

When American citizen Michael Sutherland finished serving his sentence for drug possession in El Renacer penitentiary, INTERPOL wanted to talk to him about more serious allegations. The international warrant said that Sutherland was wanted for conspiring to smuggle 15 kilos of heroin. According to ordinary procedures, Panamanian immigration officials would have wanted to see him as well, in order to deport him or send him to a place where he was wanted if there was an international warrant pending. However, Sutherland was released from the prison in Gamboa and apparently left the country withoug going through the Migration office's exit visa requirements, disappearing into the underworld. Now the special anti-drug prosecutors are investigating El Renacer officials for the unusual way in which Sutherland was released.

On March 13 Panama was shocked by an unusually brutal crime, the machete murders of 18-year-old Aracelys Lorenzo and her 14-year-old brother Noriel Oscar Lorenzo. The two were fishing in a river near their home in the Colon province town of San Juan when two men approached and tried to rape Aracelys. The Lorenzos resisted and were killed, and two suspects were identified and turned themselves in to police a few days later. The crime was turned into a media circus, with television reporters asking the parents how they felt about their children's deaths and then doing close-up shots as they cried, and with El Siglo running a screaming headline of "Monsters Give Up" when the suspects surrendered to police.

The Legislative Assembly has passed a law providing for $5,000 fines for those who kill, capture, harm or traffic in harpy eagles. The law officially declared the harpy eagle to be Panama's national bird, although it has unofficially held that status for many years now.

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