During 2001, government officials proposed legislation to toughen repressive press laws, castigated local journalists and media outlets, and prosecuted them for criminal defamation.

Panama's so-called gag laws include a range of articles, laws, and decrees --- many promulgated under military government --- that criminalize criticism of public officials and permit prior censorship. In December 1999, following a pledge to repeal those regulations after she took office in September 1999, President Mireya Moscoso signed a bill that repealed some of the more onerous provisions. Under the law, the government was required to submit a bill before June 2000 that was expected to bring Panama's press laws in line with international standards.

But the bill was never submitted, neither in 2000 nor in 2001. In fact, the government considered presenting legislation that would have tightened press laws, though no new restrictions had been formally proposed by year's end.

In a positive development, the government passed a new access to information law based on a proposal from Transparency International, an international nongovernmental organization that aims to combat corruption. The bill establishes fines of up to 2,000 balboas (US$2,000) and even dismissal for government employees who do not release public information in a timely manner.

The government continues to use lawsuits to attack journalists, accusing the media of waging a campaign against public officials. Even President Moscoso, along with Winston Spadafora, the former minister of government and justice and a current Supreme Court justice, filed a criminal defamation suit. On September 17, the weekly La Cáscara News published a photomontage portraying Moscoso and Spadafora, both scantily dressed, in an intimate embrace. Several La Cáscara News employees were briefly detained, and on September 19, the Ministry of Government and Justice temporarily banned the weekly for violating parts of the press laws that had not been repealed in December 1999, including the requirement that publications provide the ministry with data such as the names of its editors and legal counsel.

Meanwhile, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa again proved to be a foe of the press. "There's a criminal aspect to Panamanian journalism that can only be eradicated with the application of penal laws," he was quoted as saying in the June 3 edition of the daily La Prensa. The chief prosecutor kept up a drum beat of criticism before and during a June visit to Panama by members from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the IACHR's then-special rapporteur for freedom of expression Santiago A. Canton. The IACHR delegates used this visit, during which they also met with an indignant Sossa, to reiterate an earlier request to eliminate Panama's "disrespect" provisions.

Panamanian journalists have taken to the streets to protest their situation. On March 19, after two of their colleagues were handed suspended 18-month prison sentences, journalists picketed the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, in a country where, according to some estimates, one-third of journalists face criminal defamation prosecutions, self-censorship has become rampant, and even protests have become subdued.

On March 22, Panama's leading daily La Prensa was subjected to what has been dubbed a "boardroom coup" by Ricardo Alberto Arias, the foreign minister for former president Ernesto Pérez Balladares. The daily, which was created in 1980 to fight Panama's military dictatorship, later became a thorn in the side of Pérez Balladares because of its take-no-prisoners muckraking of his government's officials.

According to CPJ contacts, Arias persuaded a majority of the paper's shareholders to elect him as the new president of the paper. Previously, Arias had convinced a majority of executive board members to vote against renewing the contract of Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, who, as La Prensa's associate editor, led the paper to break scandal after scandal about the Pérez Balladares administration during the late 1990s. A key member of La Prensa's crack reporting team subsequently resigned, and others at the paper were demoted, leaving the once feisty paper a shadow of its former self.

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