A court in Colon has ordered the arrests of three Greenpeace activists who boarded the British nuclear waste ship Pacific Swan just inside the Colon breakwall in 1998. The activists stole up in a cayuco, climbed the ship's anchor chain and scaled the ship's superstructure, from which they unfurled a protest banner. The point of the protest was to show that nuclear waste shipments are vulnerable to terrorist attack and ought to be banned for that and other reasons. The protesters were removed from the ship when it reached the Gatun Locks but were not arrested at the time. Now prosecutors and judges want the activists tried for attacking the canal's security and have issued a warrant and asked for INTERPOL's assistance in locating, arresting and extraditing them. Greenpeace has not yet responded, but the court has just handed the group an opportunity for one or more of the suspects to surrender to Panamanian authorities and set the stage for an international show trial at which the safety of nuclear cargoes passing through the canal would be the main issue of public discussion. Were a judge to rule the issue irrelevant at trial and exclude discussion of it, then the arbitrary nature of Panamanian justice would come to center stage --- if the protesters were no threat, then a charge of endangering canal security would be proven false, but if they were a threat, then the government's arguments that nuclear shipments are safe would be proven false.

Ubaldo Davis, who publishes the La Cascara News weekly comic tabloid and produces TVN's Saturday night La Cascara television show, has lost his appeal of a criminal conviction based on the theory that all satire is criminal because by its very nature it isn't literally true. The lower court had sentenced Davis to 14 months in prison on a criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria) convictio for a La Cascara News cover that suggested a sexual liaison between President Moscoso and former Government and Justice Minister Winston Spadafora, who has since been elevated to the Supreme Court. The Second Superior Tribunal of Justice has affirmed the sentence, but changed the nature of the crime for which it was imposed. Under the modified sentence, Davis stands convicted of "injuria," without the "calumnia." That is, the appeals court has ruled that it's a crime to injure the president's reputation, and even though Davis never got the opportunity to defend himself against such a charge before a trial court, has convicted him of that. In Panama many journalists have expressed their support for Davis and adopted his cause as part of the overall fight for freedom of the press in this country, but journalists' organizations both here and abroad have not spoken up for his rights because he's a satirist rather than a journalist.

While the identities of secret agents "El Pintor" and "Oficial Renco," who had been following anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro around for months, remain undisclosed to the public and prosecutors, the only jailed suspect in the alleged plot to destabilize Panama through "ideological falsity" has made bail and one of the beneficiaries of presidential nepotism has fallen under suspicion. Jaime Cucalón, from whose business it is alleged that a bogus list of 117 persons whose phones were to have been tapped was faxed to various news media, is out of jail on a $250,000 bond. Cucalón says he knows nothing about and had nothing to do with the alleged faxes, and further claims that there was no fax machine attached to the phone line through which the faxes were allegedly sent. Meanwhile, prosecutors want to question one Plinio Villalaz Moscoso, who works for the Moscoso administration at the Ministry of the Presidency. There is some suspicion that the allegedly bogus memo, under the apparent signature of Minister of the Presidency Ivonne Young, was created by people within the Moscoso administration with the intention of putting it into the hands of Montenegro, who would then be expected to take it seriously, publicize the document and end up looking like a paranoid fool. According to that theory of the case, the hoped-for public conclusion would be acceptance of the Moscoso administration's claims that there is no corruption in the government and that charges that there is are the fabrications of sensationalist journalists and malicious political foes. Montenegro already had a reputation for being erratic and gullible before this affair became public, and that image may have been sharpened. However, the Moscoso administration has admitted that it had secret agents following Montenegro, can't produce any incriminating evidence against him, and has made bizarre declarations that are now choice material for satirists and comedians.

Rolando Mosely, a 22-year-old rapper better known as "El Principal," has a hit song entitled "Se está acabando el mundo," which makes a reference to cops who take bribes. For performing that song, he was beaten by officers outside a Via España nightclub. Several days later, El Principal performed the number at the 20/30 Club Telethon. Now National Police Chief Carlos Barés says he's charging Mosely with "disrespect for authority" for having written and performed the song.

Reporters Ana Teresa Benjamin, along with former editor Gilberto Sucre and current editor Fernando Berguido, all of La Prensa, have had criminal defamation charges against them dismissed. They were accused of calumnia e injuria by several attorneys for the Social Security Fund for a financial supplement article about the institution's reticence to provide certain information about its activities and expenditures. In another case, La Prensa reporters Julio César Aizprúa and Rafael Pérez G., along with farmers Edith Sierra and Víctor Coronado, were acquitted of criminal defamation charges brought by the Agriculture Ministry's director of commercial policy, Guillermo Salazar, for a series of articles about abuses in farm subsidy programs.

Public Works Minister Víctor Juliao threw his hat into the ring for the 2004 Arnulfista presidential nomination on December 22. Bumper stickers promoting his campaign appeared around the city that same day. Juliao is the second announced candidate for the Arnulfista nomination, following former Health Minister Dr. José Terán into the ring. Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán is unofficially in the race, having announced that he will step down to run for higher office. Polls show that banker Alberto Vallarino is the overwhelming favorite of Arnulfista voters, but election laws have been modified to allow parties to eliminate presidential primaries and President Moscoso is expected to hand-pick a member of her entourage as the 2004 Arnulfista standard-bearer. A number of Arnulfista elected officials have said that if this happens, they will support Vallarino in a "third force" bid for the presidency. On the way to the presidency, Juliao would have to face questions about pervasive bid-rigging on public works projects, including most notoriously the abuses that led to the withholding of Inter-American Development Bank support for the paving of the Pan-American Highway between the Bayano Bridge in eastern Panama province and the town of Yaviza in the Darien.

Due in part to a constitutional provision that candidates for public office must abandon their appointed public posts at least six months before an election, President Moscoso has announced that she will make a series of changes in her cabinet shortly. Certainly on their way out are Public Works Minister Víctor Juliao and Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán, and there is widespread speculation that Comptroller General Alvin Weeden and several others will also go. As of the time that this issue was uploaded, the president had announced that she would make changes but hadn't announced what those would be.

When he was the World Boxing Organization's 115-pound classification's world champion, Pedro "Rockero" Alcázar was in demand. Politicians, beginning with Mireya Moscoso, quickly moved in to have their pictures taken with him. Rockero, born to a large family in the rural Darien, was one of many humble Panamanians whose births were never officially recorded. But he was a national hero, until this past June 22 when he was defeated in Las Vegas by Mexican Fernando Montiel and died of a cerebral hemorrhage the next day. There's a boxing purse and the proceeds of a life insurance policy --- about $140,000 in all --- to pass on to the fallen champion's three small children. However, the Electoral Tribunal says that it can find no record that proves that Alcázar was a Panamanian, it won't take documentary evidence or do blood tests to prove that he was the father of his children, and since his papers weren't in order, his family has nothing coming to them. The Panamanian passport on which Alcázar traveled to Las Vegas, the late boxer's educational records in Panamanian schools and the photos of Alcázar with Mireya Moscoso don't count. If the family spends a large part of the inheritance and insurance benefits to pay bribes and lawyer fees, they might receive a small part of what they are owed. A move is afoot to put the purse and the insurance proceeds at the disposal of a Nevada court.

On December 28 a PRD-Arnulfista coalition headed by legislators Vincete Magallón and Francisco Reyes has killed this year's version of a proposal to create a Legislative Code of Ethics, which had been introduced by Arnulfista Lenín Sucre and PRD deputy Elías Castillo. The members of the multi-party anti-ethical coalition objected that the proposal would bar them from accepting payments from private companies and foreign governments. The proposal had been passed on first reading by the Legislative Assembly's Ethics Commission, but was killed when it hit the assembly floor.

On January 6 the immunity of Legislative Assembly members will lapse until five days before the start of the next regular legislative session in March, unless President Moscoso calls for a special session. Attorney General José Antonio Sossa has taken the position that he will not investigate allegations that a number of legislators were bribed to approve the CEMIS multi-modal transportation and industrial development project, nor other charges that at least PRD legislator was bribed to defect from party ranks and support President Moscoso's Supreme Court nominees, while the deputies have immunity. There have been a few brief intervals in the legislature's immunity since the controversies arose last January, plus a few deputies have voluntarily waived their immunity and given access to personal records and made sworn statements to prosecutors. Now there are leaks in the daily newspapers and on television news programs, attributed to prosecutors, that in deputies' bank records that have been obtained there were a number of unusual large cash transactions on the day of and the next few days after the alleged acts of bribery. It is likely that assembly members will be called to explain these transactions under oath.

Anti-corruption prosecutor Celia López says that her office handled 758 cases involving alleged public corrupion, amounting to some $7,326,000 allegedly stolen from the public trust, in 2002. The big-ticket items were "botellas" --- phantom employees whose paychecks are diverted to other persons --- and fraudulently purchased tax exemptions. There were 23 convictions, most of them of private citizens rather than public officials and most of which are under appeal.

Colon's endemic youth gang violence resulted in a strange and awful double funeral on December 27, in which local basketball star Gilberto Bryan and his mother, María Luisa de Bryan, were laid to rest at Mount Hope (Monte Esperanza) under heavy police security. The son was shot to death on December 22 by members of the Diamond Blacks, a local street gang that claims the area in which the Bryan family lives as their turf, while walking down Avenida Justo Arosemena between Calle 3 and Calle 4. Two days later, while Gilberto Bryan was lying in state at a local funeral home, his mother was killed in a spray of gunfire from a passing car. During the funeral entry into the cemetery was strictly controlled and police blocked all egress from Arco Iris (Rainbow City). No suspects have been apprehended in either of the shootings.

Endara administration Immigration director Tony Domínguez, who is embroiled in an atttempt to grab the former Fort Randolph and turn it into a controversial tourism, commercial and residential project, may have acquired a bit more financial clout. The Legislative Assembly has approved the Arnulfista activist's appointment to the National Bank of Panama board of directors. Also approved are the appointments of Eduardo De Bello to the Panama Canal Authority board of directors; Ernesto Vásquez's and Juan de González's elevation to the Social Security board; and the nominations of José María Cedeño and Dinisio Araúz as directors of the Panamanian Autonomous Cooperative Institute (IPACOOP).

An appeals court may have given Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán a flimsy excuse to avoid pesky presidential campaign trail questions about the diplomatic passport used by bankruptcy fraud suspect Uttan Nandwani in his international flight from Panama. The diplomatic immunity conferred by Alemán on the head of the defunct Fotokina stores may have become redundant when the Second Superior Tribunal of Justice determined that the preventive detention that applies to people accused of writing a bad check for $100 or selling an ounce of marijuana should not be imposed when the allegation is a mere $60 million bankruptcy fraud. Those members of the Nandwani family who stand accused and still remain in Panama will not even suffer house arrest, but may not leave the country while the criminal charges against them are pending. The guy with the diplomatic passport that Alemán gave him, however, has not been making any public appearances, wherever he is.

Municipal judge José Angel Montero has been stripped of his post by a committee of his colleagues for granting bail to José Lizier Corbetto, a Peruvian citizen accused of helping former Peruvian security chief Vladimiro Montesinos flee from Panama. However, Montesinos was not under arrest here. In fact, while here he ran in rarified circles that included Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán's brother, and was allowed to leave Panama unmolested in "offshore asset protection" hustler Marc Harris's airplane. In October of 2001 Montero granted Lizier Corbetto a $20,000 bond, but this was overturned by a higher court. The 15-member panel of judges voted 9-6 to remove Montero from the bench for this decision.

The de La Guardia brothers, Carlos and Aquilino, are wanted by Panamanian justice in connection with alleged bankruptcy fraud in the collapse of Grupo ADELAG. According some published reports, Carlos de La Guardia fled the country through the Paso Canoa border crossing into Costa Rica over the weekend of December 14-15. There was an arrest warrant outstanding by that time, which should have prevented any legal departure from Panama. However, Immigration says it can't confirm or deny de La Guardia's exit, as the records who comes and goes aren't available. The head of Immigration in Chiriqui, whose job is to see that fugitives don't leave via Paso Canoa, is Rolando Rosas, a member of the extended Rosas clan that owns the MOLIRENA party and takes up many positions on the Moscoso administration's payroll.

Two American passengers on the cruise ship Carnival Spirit attempted to smuggle some 15 kilos of heroin from Colon to the United States, police say. Two Americans, a man and a woman, allegedly working with a Panamanian and two Costa Rican accomplices, attempted to smuggle the drugs onto the ship, which was moored at the Colon 2000 cruiser port, in specially designed undergarments. It seems that police had been following a suspected drug smuggling ring for some time and were surprised by its attempt to use cruise ship passengers as drug couriers, but reacted quickly and made a bust at Colon 2000, with hundreds of tourists looking on.