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News Business Editorial Opinion Letters Arts Reviews Community Fun Travel Galleries Calendar Outdoors Dining Science Sports Español Front Page Archive |
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Classic abuses and the well known antidotes
by Eric Jackson
"Querella Penal," the heading of the document dated August 14, 2000 declared. A police officer brought it by our former office on Via Argentina, not bothering to hand it to me personally. In that document, presidential aide Alvaro Antadillas accuses me of "crimes against honor." That is, along with more than 90 of my colleagues facing similar charges, I am accused of "calumnia e injuria" or criminal defamation.
A story I published implied --- with a sound basis in fact --- that his clinic, which had (and last I heard, still has) a near-monopoly over kidney dialysis treatments under the US-funded health care program for pre-treaty "local rate" Panama Canal retirees, was charging higher prices than what hospitals would charge. "...Our prices are the usual and customary, and in addition are lower than those that other providers charge," the criminal complaint alleged.
Of course, Mr. Antadillas's clinic's prices were and are well above those charged by Seguro Social and Santo Tomas Hospital, where most of Panama's dialysis patients get their treatments. However, if my accuser wants to make an apples and oranges objection and keep the comparisons in the private sector, at the time at least one private hospital was offering to provide dialysis services for substantially less than he was charging.
The case has lain dormant for more than two years. I haven't been called to give a deposition. I don't know if the prosecutors have ordered Antadillas to show his business records, or have inquired about what other service providers' prices were. I doubt that they have, and this, rather than my particular case, is what this column is about.
In the bizarre hallucination that passes for Panamanian justice, the accelerating legal trend is that the facts mean nothing.
Attorney General José Antonio Sossa's political ally, former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, has charged Arnulfista legislator José I. Blandón (the son) with "crimes against honor" for alleging that Toro has not adequately explained the sources of his wealth to the public. Sossa's underlings have objected to defense efforts to question a witness who knows about the visa racket for which Toro has been barred from entering the United States, former National Security Director Samantha Smith.
In another trial involving a story that was actually defamatory, prosecutors and judges refused to allow evidence that one of the accused, former El Siglo editor Michelle Lescure, was not editor at the time and had nothing to do with the story or its publication.
So, given current practices, even though the United States government and the administrators for the health plan for those canal retirees would have in their possession records that would blow Antadillas's case out of the water, it would be no surprise if such evidence was kept out of the file.
The point of all this is that the right to a fair trial has become a meaningless joke in Panama. A sordid attorney general's political vendettas, judges' and prosecutors' propensities to take bribes and the behind-the-scenes influences of powerful interests all trump the truth and the law on a regular basis here.
Sossa is trying to tighten corruption's grip on our legal system. For example, we have a very limited jury system, in which panels composed of public employees hear murder cases only. Sossa wants to eliminate even that weak check on judges' and prosecutors' power to deny fair trials to those without the means to pay bribes.
Forget about reform by the disgraceful Arnulfista hacks who hold a majority on our Supreme Court. At least until the 2004 elections, we can also forget about the legislative or executive branches doing anything about the situation, except maybe to make things worse.
Panama needs a new constitution that guarantees the right to a prompt and public trial under the rule of law before an impartial tribunal, with defendants allowed wide leeway to confront their accusers and present evidence on their behalf. To the extent that our present constitution purports to guarantee some of these rights, such promises are proven to be lies on a regular basis.
Contrary to Sossa's demand to abolish juries, the right to a jury trial should be extended to all serious criminal cases, and juries should be selected from the general public rather than from the limited pool of civil servants and political hacks who hold government jobs. Trial by a jury of one's fellow citizens is one of the strongest safeguards against wanton judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.
The constitutional reforms that I suggest are not a perfectly foolproof method to avoid miscarriages of justice. They would, however, reflect the norms in the world's least corrupt democratic societies and would impede many of the abuses that characterize our current legal system.
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