Monsignior Rómulo Emiliani returned to Panama on April 2 for a series of public appearances and to wind up his work here before taking up his new post as Auxiliary Bishop of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Emiliani was papally appointed as bishop of the Darien but spent most of the past two years in exile and in hiding due to threats he received for his stands against Colombian guerrillas, paramilitaries and bandits, who frequently cross the border into Panama and sometimes commit violent acts here. The cleric has received a hero's welcome.

The Public Services Regulating Entity has threatened radio station owners with fines if they allow persons who are not graduates of the University of Panama's Faculty of Social Communications, or of journalism programs certified as acceptable by that university department, to report the news on the air. The measure is apparently aimed mainly at Radio La Exitosa talk show host Miguel Antonio Bernal, the law professor, activist and award-winning correspondent for Le Monde Diplomatique, whose education is in law rather than journalism. The order has drawn protests from international journalists' human rights groups.

In their bid to deflect public attention from the HP-1430 helicopter insurance fraud scandal, spokespeople for the Moscoso administration denied that the aircraft's pilot had any connection with the presidency. Now it turns out that the pilot, José Reyes, was on the Ministry of the Presidency's payroll at a salary of $3,500 per month. The chopper dropped out of a presidential entourage and into the Pacific Ocean off of Rio Hato early last year, apparently because it ran out of gas. The following day, the National Maritime Service was sent to the floating helicopter with orders to sink it with machine gun fire, which they did. A $1.8 million insurance claim was then filed and quickly approved by a politically connected insurance agent, despite the fact that aircraft insurance policies exclude coverage when the problem is that they ran out of fuel. The Moscoso administration, which has lied and concealed evidence in the case ever since, won a court victory recently when it convinced a judge to order an end to the investigation, supposedly because it was taking too long. The special anti-corruption prosecutor is appealing that decision, but Mireya's supporters now control the Supreme Court --- in fact one of the high court magistrates, Winston Spadafora, was the very man who ordered police to sink the helicopter.

Judge Delia Duncan has ordered the removal from office of Colon Mayor Matilde Rosales de Ardines and four members of the city council for their alleged parts in a failed attempt to issue municipal bonds. The five officials, along with several other Colon public servants and a couple of American private consultants, face allegations of fraud and a number of other crimes in connection with the case and have been prohibited from leaving Panama while they await trial.

Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán has sent the US Embassy a list of American citizens who he says are destabilizing Panama. Alemán, who says he has presidential aspirations, informed reporters for some of daily newspapers of the alleged conspiracy but refused to specify who the destabilizers are or what they have done. The US State Department itself, to the local representative of which the complaint was given, has reported that the government in which Alemán serves is seriously corrupt.

Government and Justice Minister Aníbal Salas says that his ministry is investigating a plot to destabilize the government, after a copy of a public relations, lobbying and legal strategy designed by Guatemalan political consultant Julio Ligorría for submission to the Consorcio San Lorenzo made its way into the daily newspapers. Nothing suggested in the document, which the Consorcio San Lorenzo says was merely a set of recommendations that it didn't accept, was illegal or aimed against the Moscoso administration. "We have a criminal proceeding due to the existence of an alleged action plan that would tend to destabilize the democratic system that prevails in this country," Salas said in a request for assistance made to Guatemalan authorities.

A Florida court has declared missionaries Dave Mankins, Mark Rich and Rick Tenenoff, who were kidnapped by FARC guerrillas from the Panamanian Darien community of Pucuro in January of 1993, officially dead. The ruling will allow the families to collect life insurance benefits and otherwise straighten out legal affairs placed in limbo by the men's abductions. Though shortly after the kidnappings FARC demanded a large ransom and rumors were spread via FARC's leftist friends in Panama that the men were US government spies, in later years FARC denied any connection with the abductions. Mankins, Rich and Tenenoff were fundamentalist Protestants working for the Florida-based New Tribes Mission, conducting Bible study classes and translating the Bible into Kuna.

Press accounts and government admissions in Taiwan have it that the former Kuomintang administration in Taiwan paid some $11 million to public officials and others in connection with former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's 1997 appearance at the Universal Congress on the Panama Canal. Lee's presence provoked a worldwide boycott of the event by most other heads of state, who feared offending China. The Taiwanese accounts don't specify which public officials received payments, and former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares denies that he received any of it. By various accounts at the time and the recent revelations about how Taiwan's slush fund used to work, it seems very likely that part of the $11 million was paid to Panamanian journalists and media owners for favorable publicity. (The Panama News has always held the editorial position that Panama should maintain its relations with Taiwan, but we have never received any payments in exchange for this.) The current government of Taiwan says that the practice of payoffs has been ended.

Canal security guards preventing TV crews from filming the aftermath of a collision in Culebra Cut have become the popular symbols for the proposition that the government's recent celebrated freedom of information law is mostly smoke and mirrors, but according to Transparency International, the big lie is in the claims of missing fine print. As a practical matter, few of the information law's provisions have been implemented because bureaucrats say that regulations to govern the law's applications have not been promulgated. Transparency complains that regulations are not necessary. The law that created the Panama Canal Authority also specifies a freedom of information policy, but the implementing regulations and procedures passed by that semi-autonomous public institution are all about restricting reporters' access and punishing employees who divulge information.

The government's plan to scrap the improvements that have been made at Albrook field, move the capital's commuter and civil aviation airport from there to Howard, and sell the land at Albrook to private developers, who would then build office buildings and then rent them to the government for a so-called "Governmental City," is picking up some expected support but much more opposition. Opposing the plan as expected are most commuter pilots and passengers, and Civil Aviation Director Jorge Rodríguez. Supporting it, as expected, is the developers' lobby, the Panamanian Construction Chamber (CAPAC). Though the SUNTRACS construction workers' union has not pronounced a position on the subject, almost all of the nation's other labor unions oppose the project because they consider it inherently corrupt. The Panamanian Society of Engineers and Architects (SPIA), objects to the plan for similar reasons, arguing that the government needs to spend less, not more, in rent for office space and also that the project is not justified from an urban planning point of view. Former ARI director and Noriega-era president Nicolás Ardito Barletta also opposes the plan, because he says that Albrook field is needed for the expansion of the Port of Balboa.

The PRD's Honor and Discipline Tribunal has thrown Los Santos legislator Carlos Afú out of the party and moved to strip him of his seat in the legislature. Afú, who broke with the party to vote for President Moscoso's nominees for the Supreme Court and then alleged widespread bribery in the Legislative Assembly, is appealing the verdict and remains a member of the legislature while the appeals are pending.

In the initial phases of the bribery investigation directed at the San Lorenzo Consortium and members of the Legislative Assembly, the consortium's director Steven Jones was out of the country on vacation and there was a lot of speculation that he had fled rather than face allegations that politicians were paid to approve the Colon Multimodal Industrial and Services Center (CEMIS). Jones did, however, return to Panama and voluntarily appeared to answer prosecutors' questions. When he did so he was detained and required to post a million-dollar bond. What was most unusual, and barely noticed in the mainstream media, is that Jones is not charged with any crime. This is believed to be the first time that a million-dollar bail has been required of a mere witness in a Panamanian criminal investigation.

A Panamanian who used to work at the US Embassy is now living at the women's prison in Tocumen, where she awaits trial on charges of stealing some $90,000 from the embassy by way of fraudulent purchase orders. The woman is also under investigation for using her position to falsify documents as part of an international stolen car ring.

Legislator Denis Arce, who has proposed a law to license journalists, recently held hearings by which he promised "wide discussion" of the subject among those who would be affected. The leaders of officially approved journalist groups that would be placed in a position to issue licenses (and collect bribes for doing so, as is done in the taxi business that Arce's committee also oversees) and executives of some of the larger media corporations were invited. Not invited were Panama's foreign language newspapers (The Panama News and the Chinese-language El Diario Chino and El Expreso), the country's independent radio stations, or foreign correspondents working here, all of whom would be subject to Arce's journalism cupo scheme. Also invited to the meeting were certain universities, not one of which has a student-run newspaper, which are also promised a share in the contemplated journalist licensing racket. Speaking out against Arce's proposal at the hearings was La Prensa's Winston Robles (who spoke for the Forum de Periodistas), and from New York the Committee to Protect Journalists' Ann Cooper stated her group's fundamental opposition to the idea of licensing journalists.

Though the PRD, Arnulfistas and most of the minor parties are presenting a united front against the idea, support for a constituent assembly to reform Panama's government is growing. A prominent addition to the ranks of those calling for a new constitution is César Quintero, a former Supreme Court magistrate, who said "I don't see any other way out" of the corruption that has gripped all branches of government, and in particular blasted the current state of the judiciary, which by all independent informed accounts runs mainly on bribery and influence peddling. Organized efforts to convoke a constituent assembly, however, are not faring well. Part of reason for that is the widespread public perception that the movement for a new constitution is merely a vehicle for discredited politicians who are currently out of office to come back to power and continue the current abuses within a new legal framework.

A series of stories in La Prensa and complaints by anti-corruption activists have apparently prevented close associates of President Moscoso from getting a windfall in a land deal with the National Bank of Panama (BNP). After rejecting bids to pay $556,000 and $351,000 for a parcel of farmland near Tonosi that had an assessed valuation of $760,000, the bank accepted a bid to sell the property to Ganadera El Cacao, SA, whose legal representative is Víctor Cano, for $273,000. However, Mr. Cano does not himself have that kind of money, and there were a number of as yet undenied allegations that Cano and his corporation were merely fronts for presidential advisor and Panama Canal Authority board of directors member Augusto Onassis García. After several days of silence, the bank released a statement that the initial bids had been properly rejected, but then the minimum price for the land was lowered and the previous bidders were at fault for not updating their bids (in a process that the bank had kept secret). The president of the National Bank of Panama, former Arnulfista legislator Bolívar Pariente, and Cano blasted the press for what they called unfair news coverage, but the company backed out of the deal before the lawsuits and legislative hearing began. President Moscoso, who also didn't deny that her aide was using insider connections to loot the national bank's property, also lashed out at the press, complaining that "here they question everything about the government."

President Moscoso, who has touched off a storm of public criticism and ridicule by nominating multiple members of a few extended clans to well-paid government jobs and repudiating her own anti-corruption commission's recommendation to end nepotism, says that she's for nepotism and won't discuss the matter any more. Before embarking on her vow of silence, Moscoso argued that in a small country it is necessary for people in high government positions to hire their relatives.

Erasmo Pinilla, the presiding magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal, admits that he hired "four or five" of his relatives to work at that institution, and defended it on the ground that he has about 600 relatives within the fourth degree of consanguinity. At least one of the two other Electoral Tribunal magistrates, Eduardo Valdés, has a relative in a highly paid position with that institution. The Electoral Tribunal is the main institution in charge of taking action against corrupt public officials.

Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata, faced with militant strikes and road blockages by high school students and their parents in several places in the interior, says that her failure to appoint teachers to staff the schools from whence the protests originate is the teachers' and principals' fault and that all the bad publicity about the situation is the product of a campaign of persecution against her. The brother of the president of MOLIRENA, a junior partner in the Arnulfista-led administration, Rosas de Mata complains that it's unfair to criticize her performance in office because she's not a politician. Educators' unions say that the ministry used teacher appointments as a means to shake down their members by obliging them to join MOLIRENA and pay dues to that party in order to obtain work in the public schools.

A Catholic priest in Rio Hato has been accused of impregnating a 16-year-old girl. Monsignior Uriah Ashley, the bishop of Penonome, has acknowledged the charges, which are in the hands of police and prosecutors, and said that the church will accept the courts' decision about the truth of the matter.

On April 10 Luis Carlos Valdés Sánchez, the Bocas del Toro correspondent for RCM radio and television and the La Prensa daily newspaper, was beaten to death at an Internet cafe in Changuinola. His alleged assailant was reportedly the enraged father of a 15-year-old girl with whom Valdés was accused of having sexual relations.

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