President Moscoso has signed a law creating an official medical association, the Colegio de Medicos. Physicians' membership in the new group will not be mandatory, but if the law works as advertised the organization will have the power to suspend or revoke the licenses of malpracticing, unethical or unqualified doctors. In Panama malpractice litigation is rare and generally as fruitless as any other procedure in our corrupt and inefficient courts, and a code of silence has protected many a physician from facing any consequences for the most egregious negligence. The bright side of the situation is that unlike the United States Panama has no costly malpractice suit racket and associated high insurance rates, so our health care costs are held down. The new legislation is designed to address the dark side of Panamanian health care realities.

José Antonio Sossa fired the last chief of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ), Alejandro Moncada, not long after an armed standoff between Sossa's and Moncada's bodyguards when Sossa went to PTJ headquarters on behalf of a friend's son, who had been arrested for drugs. Now Sossa says he'd like the power to replace all of the directors of Panama's law enforcement agencies (a power he's not likely to get), and meanwhile is investigating the PTJ and some of its top officers for various alleged acts of corruption. The most serious alleged wrongdoing seems to be a PTJ investigation of the possibility that Sossa's son may have been involved in suspected drug offenses. In some versions the investigation is being spun in the press as a matter of disloyal cops digging for dirt to throw at Sossa.

President Moscoso got none of the educational changes that she asked for in the August 12-21 special legislative session. The only one of several measures submitted to the Legislative Assembly by the Cabinet Council that passed, a change in the educational benefits that are part of Panama's social security system to allow some of the money to to private schools, was substantially modified by the PRD-led legislature. Most of the decentralization and other proposed changes didn't even get out of committee. In an appearance before the legislators Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata was upbraided by the deputies, most stridently by Partido Popular suplente An’bal Culiolis. The minister's protests about Culiolis's disrespect brought on a declaration from the deputy for whom he alternates, Teresita de Arias, who called Rosas de Mata the most incompetent person in government. Due to Attorney General José Antonio Sossa's policy of suspending investigations of legislative bribery allegations while those legislators who have not waived their privilege enjoy immunity, the special session did put off any progress in uncovering the truth behind the scandals and prosecuting those who may have been involved until next year. Legislative immunity applies for five days before and five days after every session, and Mireya's call was timed to extend legislative immunity from August 6 through next January 5. In that sense the special session was a successful defense of the prevailing governmental corruption.

On the night of August 22 a car in which three Italian tourists were heading from Tocumen Airport to downtown Panama City was intercepted at a tunnel on the Corredor Sur by two cars full of robbers who were armed with Uzis, and the visitors were relieved of their cash, jewelry and watches. The well-planned assault, which was by no means unprecedented, was most likely carried out using information provided by someone who works at the airport.

On August 13 a brawl between high school students of Artes y Oficios and Colegio Richard Neuman took place at and around a bus stop on Calle 50, with Artes y Oficios students being caught on television cameras wielding clubs and in one case a handgun. Police arrested 25 students and Artes y Oficios principal Raymundo Hurtado Lay says that those students identified engaging in the off-campus violence will be expelled.

Catholic vicar Gabriel Guardia, on hand for the inauguration of courses in computer skills and English for Health Ministry employees, criticized First Lady Ruby Moscoso (the president's sister) for arriving more than an hour late to the ceremony. Guardia called Moscoso "irresponsible," drawing the first lady's retort that the priest was "impudent." Moscoso administration officials frequently charge their critics with crimes when arrogant abuses are pointed out, but the Catholic Church has so far been immune to such measures.

At the inauguration of the Arnulfo Arias monument in Balboa, President Moscoso declared that "The manipulation of information by the mass communications media will not be an obstacle for the present government administration." Accusing unspefied media of spreading unspecified "lies," Mireya unveiled a monument with a large Arnulfista party flag and strident plaques that among other things make the dubious historical claim that Arnulfo Arias lost the 1964 presidential election by fraud and characterize Arias's 1941 cancellation of the citizenship of all Panamanians of Asian or West Indian ancestry as a defense of the Spanish language.

Prosecutors have asked the courts to set a trial date for Arnulfista legislator José Isabel Blandón, whom ex-President Ernesto Pérez Balladares has charged with criminal defamation for suggesting that the source of the former president's personal wealth is mysterious. Pérez Balladares has been denied a US visa for his alleged role in the smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States, but prosecutors have managed to get all evidence of that scandal excluded from the case. Attorney General Sossa is making the legal argument that short of a conviction (which of course won't happen without a prosecution, which won't happen without an investigation), it's a crime for someone to suggest that a current or former politician may have been corrupt.

The Truth Commission has found fragments of human bones belonging to several individuals under the patio at the David police station, which was a military barracks during the dictatorship. Attorney General José Antonio Sossa has not opened a murder investigation and is not expected to do so.

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, whose inauguration was greeted with a mortar attack by leftist FARC rebels and who capped off his first week on the job by ordering aerial bombardment of seven suspected guerrilla camps, has ordered the creation of a 15,000-member militia to augment the regular army's forces, which also count on the close cooperation of the right wing AUC paramilitary. All of this has increased the intensity of fighting all around the country, including areas adjacent to the Panamanian border. That has increased the number of people fleeing across the border into this country in recent days, but in small groups rather than the feared vast deluge. According to official Panamanian government figures, 783 Colombians have fled here, but the non-governmental Alternative Legal Assistance office says that the real figure is more than 900.

On August 22 investigators from the Organization of American States came to Panama to pursue the investigation of how weapons that on paper appear to have been sold by the Nicaraguan police to the Panamanian police went instead to Colombia's right-wing AUC paramilitary. OAS envoy Morris Busby met with National Security chief Ramiro Jarvis, National Police chief Carlos Barés and National Maritime Service director José Isaza, who denied Panamanian involvement and blamed the Nicaraguans.

The movement for a new Panamanian Constitution picked up another prominent supporter recently when Carlos Vásquez, the president of the Colegio de Abogados (Panama's bar association), declared his support for constitutional change. For Vásquez, necessary changes include the independence of the judicial system from political influences and more stringent educational requirements for those who would hold important posts in the government.

Marcos González, hijo, son of taxi syndicate boss and Arnulfista legislator Marcos González, has been replaced as warden of El Renacer prison in Gamboa. In an incident reported as a bungled kidnapping, the younger González and his wife briefly went missing in Colombia earlier this year, with the latter ending up suffering from gunshot wounds. The former warden has been given another job at the Ministry of Government and Justice.

Seven people are under arrest in connection with the alleged theft of some $32,000 from a refrigerator in the home of Dalvis Xiomara Sánchez, an administrator at the Ministry of the Presidency. The alleged victim, who says that the money was hers and her daughter's, claims that she kept her cash cold because she doesn't believe in banks.

The Coordinating Committee of the Black Panamanian Ethnicity, an alliance of 23 Afro-Panamanian community, religious, cultural, educational and business groups, has complained of government "apathy" in a letter to President Moscoso that her administration's efforts to carry out some of the promises made at last year's UN-Sponsored World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, Racial Discrimination and Related Forms of Intolerance. Noting that Second Vice-president Dominador Kaiser Bazan led a five-member Panamanian delegation to the conference and that this country took anti-racist stands at the gathering in Durban, South Africa, the alliance said that an official report on Panamanian race relations that was agreed to at the conference is overdue and the government is not participating in scheduled follow-up meetings.

The Moscoso administration has made no secret that its government advertising policies are made with political considerations in mind. An official ad boycott of the now-defunct El Universal was augmented by Moscoso administration officials' frequent refusal to talk to reporters for the daily or to allow its journalists to attend press conferences. In 2000 The Panama News was informed by the government IPAT tourism agency that it would not advertise with us because we published some articles that disparaged the government's tourism promotion effort. (Unlike El Universal, we don't believe that a newspaper has a right to government business so we didn't protest, but neither did we adjust our editorial policies and grovel before the Moscoso administration.) So anyway, who now qualifies for Mireya's advertising largesse? One of the beneficiaries is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the billionaire South Korean businessman and founder of the Unification Church. Part of Moon's business empire, which includes the UPI press agency and the Washington Times, is the Uruguay-based Spanish-language weekly Tiempos del Mundo. IFARHU, the government's human resources development office, now advertises in Tiempos del Mundo. Reverend Moon's religion teaches that God created Adam to sire a perfect human race, but because Eve had sexual relations with Satan all humanity's bloodline was tainted; that God sent Jesus to rectify the situation but that Jesus failed by getting crucified before he could have children; and that God has now sent a "Third Adam" to "purify" humanity's bloodlines --- that Third Adam being Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

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