Morris Busby, the American who heads an Organization of American States team that's investigating a large shipment of AK-47 assault rifles that made its way from Nicaraguan police arsenals to Colombia's AUC paramilitary, with Panama's National Police and Israeli arms merchants figuring in the paper trail and rather obvious complicity of the Colombian government, says that the report on the affair will be delayed. Recent Nicaraguan allegations that the deal was submitted to and approved by the US government and delayed responses to inquiries by several of the governments implicated are thought to be behind the delay in issuing the report. The US ambassador in Nicaragua, Oliver Garza, admits that the matter was brought to him, but he says that he approved a transfer from Nicaraguan to Panamanian police without knowledge that what was really happening was a Colombian death squad supply operation.

On November 21 police arrested Shimon Yalin Yelinek, an arms merchant of Israeli origin, at Tocumen Airport after he disembarked from a flight from Venezuela. Yelinek is accused of arms trafficking, forging public documents and conspiracy in relation to an arms shipment from the Nicaraguan police to the Colombian AUC militia, which on paper passed through the hands of Panama's National Police. Yelinek is defended by Panamanian attorney Sidney Sittón, who claims that the United States is trying to have his client extradited and silenced. The Colombian government, whose Customs officials disappeared from the AUC-dominated port of Turbo when the arms arrived there, and the Nicaraguan government, which sold the arms that ended up with the paramilitary, are certainly implicated in the scandal. There are some indications that the governments of Panama, the United States, Guatemala and Israel may have been knowingly involved in the scheme as well.

Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona has ordered a counting of Colombian citizens residing in Panama. Colombians can visit here without visas, and many of all social classes have fled here to get away from their country's civil conflict. The Panamanian government has been considering the imposition of a visa requirement, something that the Colombian government is urging it not to do, but Escalona says that the special census is just to get a better idea of the dimensions of the phenomenon and that it should not cause difficulties between Panama and Colombia.

The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), having recently finished a fact-finding mission to the Darien at the request of the Organization of American States, says that most of the Colombians who have fled here are genuine war refugees but lack the legal protections of that status because the Panamanian government refuses to recognize them as such. The biggest concentration of displaced Colombians in Panama is at Jaque, where people have fled from the fighting around the Colombian town of Jurado. At the moment Jurado is held by the FARC guerrillas, who are facing an offensive by the AUC paramilitary and the Colombian Army aimed at dislodging them. Panama's National Police have increased their numbers in the area to prevent people from fleeing across the border. Earlier, when FARC took Jurado from the AUC, paramilitary supporters who fled to Jaque were tolerated but not given refugee status. The presence of displaced Colombians has caused economic hardships and social tensions in Jaque, which had plenty of problems of its own before the arrival of terrified and destitute Colombians.

The US Senate has confirmed George W. Bush's nomination of Linda Ellen Watt to be the next US ambassador to Panama. A career civil servant, Watt has served in various diplomatic posts and as public relations director for the US Armed Forces Southern Command. She is expected to arrive in Panama in December. The US Embassy here has been operating under chargés d'affaires for two years, which is a common situation when the White House passes from the hands of one party to another.

Backtracking on earlier vows to stand by its contract with US-based UNISYS World Trade Inc, the Electoral Tribunal has sent magistrate Eduardo Valdés on a shopping trip to the United States to look for a company to replace UNISYS as the supplier of Panama's cedula forms. While a Colombian man who was caught with thousands of blank forms obtained from UNISYS employees is now out on bail, the ongoing investigation has implicated both low-level workers and management figures in the scandal. From across the Panamanian political spectrum there have been expressions of concern that the diversion of tens of thousands of cedula forms may be part of a scheme to commit fraud in the 2004 elections.

The Electoral Tribunal has put off a decision on the PRD's move to expel Carlos Afú from the party and the legislature until the Supreme Court decides a challenge to the constitutional provision that allows political parties to do this. This past summer the high court put off a decision on the Afú case until the Electoral Tribunal ruled, which delayed the case until after this legislative year's officers were selected, and with Afú still in office on September 1 that gave Mireya Moscoso's supporters the votes needed to retake control of the Legislative Assembly. The Supreme Court is dominated by Arnulfistas and is likely to find a way around the constitution in order to preserve Mireya's hold on the legislature.

A Dichter & Neira poll commissioned by La Prensa found that only 44.3 percent of Panamanians expressed "some confidence" or "high confidence" that the Electoral Tribunal would do a good job in the 2004 elections, as compared to 85.2 percent who said the same with respect to the 1999 elections when asked in 1998. The ongoing scandal about diverted blank cedula forms is surely behind most of the public doubts. Also during the course of this year the tribunal has also repeatedly delayed action on the PRD's effort to expel legislator Carlos Afú from the party and the Legislative Assembly; and removed former La Chorrera mayor Brenda de Icaza, the country's top-ranking independent elected official, and banned her from the 2004 elections for firing a city employee who had taken leave to run for the legislature. These latter moves have also prompted public criticism and contributed to doubts about the institution's political impartiality.

After it had passed on first and second readings, legislator Gloria Young's proposed new law to criminalize sexual harassment was tabled by the Legislative Assembly on November 12. That effectively kills the proposal for this legislative session, but Young, an Arnulfista from San Miguelito, says she'll bring it up again.

When asked who did a better job in the time they held the Panama City mayor's office, the people responding to the Dichter & Neira poll by a 53.7 to 33.3 percent margin said that Mayín Correa, who was ousted in 1999 by current mayor Juan Carlos Navaro, peformed better than her successor. However, when asked whom they preferred in a possible 2004 mayoral contest, 36.7 percent said Navarro, 11.6 percent said Correa, 9.6 percent said legislator Sergio Gálvez, 3.1 percent said law professor and former mayoral candidate Miguel Antonio Bernal, and 1.1 percent said legislator and radio show host Andrés Vega. The poll found 1.4 percent favoring other candidates, 12.7 percent saying they support nobody and a large 23.7 percent undecided group. Despite the apparent wide Navarro lead at this point, the poll suggest a wide-open and probably close contest for mayor in 2004. Mayín Correa has not announced her intentions but is acting as if she will be a candidate, Sergio Gálvez is distancing himself from the Cambio Democratico party that he represents in the legislature and hopes to get the Arnulfista nomination, Vega is a member of the PRD like the mayor and probably won't run and Bernal hasn't revealed whether he intends to run for office in 2004. Navarro and Gálvez are the only two announced candidates, with the former polling at about the level where he's getting the solid PRD vote and not much else. Typically most undecideds are decided against the incumbent but haven't chosen an alternative, but another group of undecideds consists of people who dislike the party the controls the national government but are afraid or otherwise unwilling to say so. The discrepancy between job performance estimates and preference likely has something to do with the fact that Correa served at a time when the national economy was healthier than it has been in Navarro's term, and thus the city had more resources and fewer problems during her administration.

Supermarket baron and Canal Affairs Minister Ricardo Martinelli, more or less the owner of the Cambio Democratico party, says that there will be no move to oust Panama City mayoral hopeful Sergio Gálvez from his seat in the legislature if Gálvez switches to the Arnulfista Party. However, Martinelli said that he's leaning toward supporting Mayín Correa for mayor.

Entertainer and activist Rubén Blades told a concert audience in New York that he will retire from music and acting at least for a while if PRD leader Martín Torrijos is elected, in order to return to Panama and dedicate his efforts toward public service. The unsuccessful 1994 presidential candidate supported Torrijos in 1999 and said of the presumptive 2004 PRD standard bearer that: "His father was a dictator, but he's a good guy." Blades expressed a desire to work on a national tourism strategy, improve housing for the poor and a major renovation for his native Panama City.

Longshot Arnulfista presidential hopeful José Manuel Terán has denounced cannibalism. That's how he described the firing of a functionary with the Ministry of Public Works in Chiriqui, whom Terán says was let go from his job for supporting his campaign. President Moscoso, who at the beginning of her term was often escorted to social events by Dr. Terán, says she doesn't support him for her party's 2004 presidential nomination.

The Solidaridad party, which bears the colors of Cerveza Balboa, may once again have its 1994 presidential candidate and former beer baron Samuel Lewis Galindo at the helm. The party has been badly divided over alliances within the Legislative Assembly and leaders of the various factions have asked Lewis Galindo to end his political semi-retirement and retake the reins of the party he founded.

INAC says that it believes that Acla, the lost settlement established by Spanish conqueror Vasco Núñez de Balboa and the place where Pedrarias the Cruel had Balboa beheaded, has been found. British archaeologist William Patterson found ruins during an exploration of the Darien in 1979 and now it seems that further exploration has revealed them to be part of Acla. INAC says that the search is on for some of the old way stations along the jungle trail between Acla and the place on the Gulf of San Miguel at which Balboa was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. The old settlement is said to be near the Kuna Yala community of Puerto Escoces, where there was an ill-fated Scottish settlement and an interesting historical site in its own right, and BBC is negotiating with local indigenous authorities to film a documentary about the ruins in both places.

A Mexican jet that landed at Albrook on October 28 after experiencing engine problems got a closer inspection by police and prosecutors after a tip was received, and it turned out that some $3.1 million in cash was hidden in one of its fuel tanks. When RPC television reporter Vilma Figueroa and videographer Néstor Pérez went to Albrook to get a picture of the plane and report on the find, they were arrested and after a brief detention fined $25 each for violating airport security. The journalists said they went to the gate controlling access to the hangars but there was no guard on duty there and the gate was open, so they went in.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission, by treaty a court of appeal for cases arising from Panama, has agreed to hear the appeal of attorney Tristán Santander, who complains of illegal government eavesdropping on phone calls between himself and his client. The case began when Attorney General José Antonio Sossa revealed the contents of such a call. Santander accused Sossa of illegally wiretapping him and sued. Sossa charged Santander with criminal defamation, and the courts found him guilty and sentenced him to prison. Meanwhile, Santander's lawsuit was thrown out. Sossa's defense is that neither he nor his ministry ordered the wiretaps, but rather a member of the Santander's client's family authorized them and the government merely used the tapes. At the time when Santander made his declaration for which he has been convicted, Sossa's claim that the wiretaps had been made under a third party's authorization had not been publicly made, and Santander accused Sossa under the presumption that if the Attorney General had wiretap tapes of his conversation with a client, the Attorney General must have intercepted his phone calls. Directly or indirectly at issue before the court in San Jose will be the government's ability to use wiretap data indirectly gathered through private eavesdropping, Panama's criminal defamation laws and Sossa's ethics.

The western end of the new bridge across the Panama Canal will be in the impact area of the former Empire Range, where the US Armed Forces conducted war games for many decades and left plenty of unexploded and still dangerous shells, bombs and grenades. The Moscoso administration's diplomatic efforts to get the United States to remove the unexploded ordnance, arguably an unmet requirement of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties, have come to naught, so the government has hired the Louis Berger Group to clear the military detritus from the bridge's western approach. The US-based consortium will be paid $2.6 million for the work. There is a possibility that the United States and Panama will at some point end up before the International Court of Justice to argue about whether the US should reimburse Panama for the expense.

The Instituto Oncologico Nacional says that it's working on a national plan for prevention and early detection of cancer. Nearly 2000 Panamanians die of cancer every year, and we have an unusually high rate of gastro-intestinal and colo-rectal tumors. Thus a campaign to urge Panamanians to adopt healthier dietary habits is likely to be at the center of any anti-cancer campaign. But meanwhile in the Independence Day parade, the Instituto Fermin Nadeau, a public high school, marched behind a banner bearing the logo of cigarette maker Phillip Morris. The Moscoso administration has brought Phillip Morris into the nation's public schools to deliver the message that smoking is a grown-up thing to do.