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On September 18, after a process that lasted less than two days, the Legislative Assembly approved the nomination of Minister of Government and Justice Jacobo Salas to become a magistrate on the Supreme Court. The Arnulfistas have a 6-3 majority on the high court, with no nominations coming up during the next presidential term unless a vacancy occurs or unless the next president and legislature decide to pack the court by increasing its membership. Salas was replaced as minister by Arnulfo Escalona, a member of a large extended family that occupies many highly paid posts in the Moscoso administration. As happened at the legislature's September 1 organizational meeting, PRD discipline broke down on the vote. Carlos Afú and Carlos Alvarado voted for the nomination, while deputies Olivia de Pomares, Manuel de la Hoz, Abelardo Antonío and Arcelio Batista were absent.

The United States Coast Guard, concerned about the possibility of Al Qaeda operatives entering America with sailors' credentials purchased from Panamanian consulates or turning a ship into a floating bomb, is according to The Miami Herald getting information about all new applicants for Panamanian maritime certificates from the National Maritime Authority. The deal does not include Panama providing information about old applicants, some of whom bought their papers from corrupt officials without showing proper qualifications, but it does give the US access to the database of Panama-flag vessels. More than 100,000 Indonesians sail the world's oceans using Panamanian papers, and though most of them are surely well qualified and law abiding, Indonesia does have a substantial Islamic extremist movement with links to Osama bin Laden's international network. According to the Herald's report Norwegian intelligence sources believe that Al Qaeda owns or controls 20 or 30 ships, but Panamanian maritime officials discount this estimate.

After spending the better part of two years awaiting trial and despite an energetic Miami-based campaign to secure his freedom, anti-Castro Cuban activist Luis Posada Carriles and three co-defendants have an October 3 court date to face charges of entering Panama by using false documents, forging official documents, possession of explosives and conspiracy to do these things. The court has dismissed charges that the accused plotted to kill Fidel Castro during the November 2000 Latin American summit here. Venezuela and Cuba have demanded Posada Carriles's extradition for the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed dozens of people in the skies over Barbados, for which the defendant was awaiting a retrial when he escaped from a Venezuelan prison. Cuba also wants Posada Carriles for masterminding a series of 1990s bombings at Cuban hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist. Panama has refused extradition because the activist would face the death penalty in Cuba and Venezuela might hand him to the Cubans if he were sent there. The case has strained relations between Cuba and Panama, with the former accusing the latter of caving in to pressures from Miami-based groups. The explosives possession case may be hard to prove, as the accused did not have the material on their persons when arrested. The use of false documents to enter Panama is an open-and-shut case, but it's a relatively minor offense.

Arnulfista legislator Francisco Ameglio has proposed a sweeping new censorship law that could in effect put all magazines and newspapers out of business in Panama and ban daytime and prime time news broadcasting. Though the initial stated intent of legislation that Ameglio unsuccessfully proposed in the past Legislative Assembly session was to control the publication of gory pictures of crime and accident victims, under the new version he's proposing any magazine or newspaper that contains graphic violence, obscene language or pornographic content would be required to be packaged in an opaque wrapper that conceals the cover, sealed in plastic and affixed with a sticker warning of the content. A new "Interdisciplinary Classification Commission" would be created to replace Panama's existing Board of Censors to enforce this and other laws, and publications, including news magazines and newspapers, would have to be submitted to this board for their deliberation and classification before they could be sold. Violators of the new censorship law would also be subject to fines ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Ameglio's proposed law would also restrict all radio and television programs that make reference to sex or depict violence --- for example, news coverage of atrocities in Colombia's civil conflict --- would only be permitted to be broadcast between the hours of 11 p.m. and 4 a.m.

Renegade PRD legislator Carlos Afú, who is now getting favorable mention in the newspapers by way of Legislative Assembly ads extolling the wonderful things he has done in his few days as new head of the legislature's Agriculture Committee, has accused Panama's television networks of violating a self-policing agreement by running telenovelas --- Latin American soap operas --- during the day and during prime time. In a speech on the Legislative Assembly he particularly singled out MEDCOM, which runs the RPC and Telemetro networks and Panama City's Cable Onda cable system. The commercial TV station owners deny that their programming or its scheduling violates any laws or agreements. Afú is accused of his erstwhile PRD party comrades of taking a large bribe to approve Mireya Moscoso's Supreme Court nominees last January, and has in turn alleged that bribes were paid in order to secure passage of the CEMIS multi-modal airport and container transport development in Colon. Attorney General José Antonio Sossa has put off any further investigation of the bribery allegations until early next year or later.

Former La Prensa publisher Ricardo Alberto Arias was compelled to give a sworn statement to prosecutors on September 26, in connection with a July 12 court reporting story by Rolando Rodríguez. In that story, Rodríguez told of how Colon businessman Walid Zayed, who had been jailed for money laundering, testified under oath that while he was a prisoner Attorney General José Antonio Sossa had visited him in prison to interview him for a book that Sossa allegedly was planning to publish after his term in office ends. Though it is not disputed that Zayed testified as he did --- in the course of a criminal defamation trial arising from Sossa's complaint that he was defamed by attorney Santander Tristán --- Sossa filed criminal charges against Rodríguez, La Prensa editor Winston Robles and Arias as a result of the story. La Prensa blasted Sossa's ministry, saying in a front-page editorial that it "selectively interprets the law, inverts the presumption of innocence, and considers whoever is accused to be guilty without notification of what it has against them, an attitude that's openly violative of due legal process, of the Constitution and of various international treaties signed and ratified by Panama." The criminalization of reporting about court testimony would be unprecedented in this country. Zayed's testimony was given in a case in which Sossa alleges calumnia e injuria because Tristán accused him of ordering his phone tapped.

Prosecutor Julio Lauffarie has petitioned Panama province's 14th Court to put El Panama America reporters Jean Marcel Chéry and Gustavo Aparicio on trial for the criminal defamation of Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora. Chéry and Aparicio truthfully reported that the Social Investment Fund built a rural road that went from La Chorrera past farms owned by Spadafora (then minister of government and justice) and Comptroller General Alvin Weeden, a road that served very few other people. Weeden protested in the media that the road had long been contemplated and would open the area for economic development. Spadafora pressed criminal charges, even though the report was factually true. Theoretically truth is a defense to calumnia e injuria cases, but courts and prosecutors now typically refuse to allow defense evidence about the truth of the matter in question.

After Donald Trump's organization deposed Russian policewoman Oxana Federova as this year's Miss Universe, the crown passed to the runner-up, Miss Panama Justine Pasek, who was crowned on September 24. The precise reason for Federova's ouster has not been stated by either Trump or Federova, though the pageant cited unspecified contract breaches. Pasek's elevation occupied the front pages of Panama's daily newspapers for several days.

The Legislative Assembly has passed a resolution calling for Yoselyn Sánchez, Miss Panama in the Miss World pageant, to stay away from the competition because it will be held in Nigeria. The resolution was a response to a Nigerian Islamic court's death sentence against Amina Lawal, a woman who gave birth to a child conceived in an adulterous relationship.

Continuing its string of decisions that leave Panama's freedom of information legislation relatively meaningless, the Supreme Court has rejected a request by Panama City's former mayor, Mayín Correa, for a long list of information about city expenditures. Correa wanted the names and salaries of everyone who works for the city, copies of the contracts of all city consultants, a list of those city workers who have been fired during the administration of current mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, and information on spending for things including publicity and car rentals, and details of liquor permits granted during Navarro's tenure. Much of the information that the former mayor requested is now published on the Internet by her successor's office, but Correa filed suit because many of the details that she wanted to know are not published. The court held that the information that the city provided was sufficient under the law.

In an even more significant blow the freedom of information law, the Supreme Court denied a petition by the former Christian Democrat mayor of Panama City and legislator Willy Cochez, who wanted to know the names and salaries of all alternate legislators (suplentes) who are on the government payroll. Comptroller General Alvin Weeden refused to divulge the information, and the court ruled that since Cochez doesn't have a direct personal interest in knowning these things, he has no right to that information. Essentially the court held that government spending, and especially corruption, are none of the public's business. Abstaining from the decision were three of the nine magistrates, Arnulfo Arjona, Graciela Dixon and César Pereira. Transparency International's Fernando Berguido called the decision "a death blow to the Transparency Law."

Arnulfista legislator Gloria Young has proposed legislation to make sexual harassment in the nation's workplaces and educational institutions a crime. The law would apply to harassment of women by men, but not by women of men or among people of the same gender, and would provide for four-year prison terms in cases of unwanted touching, sexual advances or showing of pornographic materials. Sexual harassment would also be cause for discharge from any government job. As originally reported, the law would require the firing of men from public posts upon the mere allegation of sexual harassment --- a convenient way to open some post for more political patronage employees --- but it is likely that definitions and procedures will be tightened up as the proposed law makes its way through the legislative process.

On September 21, in the wake of a hard-played soccer game at the Los Andes playing field, SPI (Institutional Protection Service, the presidential guard force) Agent Efraín Gallardo drove up to one of the players on the winning team, Marcos Antonio Oglivie, and shot him four times. Gallardo is in jail and Oglivie in an intensive care ward. Although a number of eyewitnesses deny it, Gallardo says that Oglivie fired at him first. Oglivie's family have complained that authorities have been concentrating on trying to find or fabricate evidence that could be used to exonerate Gallardo.

On September 26 the National Maritime Service, having been tipped off by local fishermen found an uncovered boat out of gas and adrift off of Pedasi, with a four-member Ecuadoran crew and 15 would-be illegal Chinese immigrants. The crew and passengers were taken into custody, with several requiring hospitalization for dehydration and exposure.

Panama City has lots of little parks, many of which were created by national government institutions and left for the city to tend, and many of which were created on private property but have long been used by the city. The city only owns title to four of its 250 parks, however. So now the mayor and city council are asking the national government to transfer title to all of the parks, gyms and other recreational facilities that the city government is maintaining.

After September 22 voting in districts where MOLIRENA party boss Jesús "Maco" Rosas had attempted to exclude supporters of Vice-President Arturo Vallarino from the ballot in internal party elections, it appeared that Vallarino narrowly won the day but Rosas maintained his lead, claiming 445 delegates to Vallarino's 369 for the October 6 party convention. However, these numbers could change in either direction by various betrayals in the form of individual defections or factional shifts. Vallarino has not conceded defeat in the contest for the leadership of the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA), a right-wing political party that's a junior partner in Mireya Moscoso's Arnulfista-led governing coalition.

Legislation proposed by PRD deputy Jorge Castro to regulate the surgical sterilization of women --- but not men --- has attracted the wrath of the Catholic Church. The proposed law would require that for a woman to have her tubes tied she would have to be at least 28 years old, the mother of at least three children and have the permission of her husband. The church is against all medical procedures which have as their purpose the prevention of human reproduction.

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