Prosecutors have charged one Ricardo Hines with the January 8 gangland-style ambush of Panamanian diplomat Manuel Cérvides Lacayo, based on the purported testimony of one purported witness, Daniel Julio Pineda. However, Pineda says that the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) used threats of prosecution for other crimes and promises of $5,000 and a safe conduct to another country to get him to falsely name Hines. Moreover, Hines's lawyers note that Pineda has learning disabilities and little education, to the extent that he would not be able to make the incriminating statement against Hines that police attribute to him. The "investigation" continues, as at least three men took part in the slaying and no motive has been identified. Four Colombians who rented a Panama City apartment from the late Panamanian consul in Guayaquil have been released from custody and Cérvides Lacayo's son has been interrogated by the PTJ.

At a January 11-12 special convention in Penonome, the Arnulfista Party revised its statues to eliminate presidential primaries and provide for the revocation of legislators' mandates if they deviate from the party line. In a fiery speech to the convention, President Moscoso noted that her late husband Dr. Arnulfo Arias "was betrayed on various occasions" and that wayward party members will be held accountable for their betrayals. A Dichter & Neira poll commissioned by La Prensa indicates that if elections were held now, the Arnulfistas and their allies would win 15.8 percent of the national vote.

After more than one month's delay, an OAS report on a large arms shipment from the Nicaraguan police to the Colombian AUC death squads has been released to the governments of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Colombia, and then leaked to the press. The OAS faults Nicaragua for failing to follow international law regulating arms trade, calls an Israeli arms merchant the main criminal in the affair, calls the Colombian government whose customs agents let the arms enter the country through the port of Turbo the victim and finds that the Panamanian government was not involved in the transaction. The paperwork for the deal indicated that the arms were sold by Nicaragua through Israeli middlemen based in Guatemala and Panama to Panama's National Police, but the Panamanian documents were forgeries. The US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Oliver Garza, has admitted that he approved the arms shipment, but he says that he thought it was bound for Panama, not the AUC. The OAS does not take Garza or the US government to task for neglecting to check that arms trafficking regulations were followed before approving the deal. Panama was obliquely criticized for denying OAS investigators access to jailed Israeli arms merchant Shimon Yelinek.

President Moscoso has signed legislation mandating the teaching of English at all levels of the educational system, and allowing qualified foreign teachers of English as a second language to live and work in Panama so long as we have a shortage of such personnel here. The law will have little immediate effect, because the national budget does not include funds to implement it.

Former Panama City Mayor Mayín Correa, who may run for her old job in 2004, has an appointment with a magistrate first. She is accused of calumnia e injuria --- criminal defamation --- in connection with her 1999 campaign trail statement that she was offered one million dollars to support former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares. Though she didn't specifically alleged that Toro himself made such an offer, the former president brought the defamation charge against her. In a later statement, Mayín said that the offer was made by one of Pérez Balladares's supporters. If found guilty, Correa might be stripped of her right to vote or run for office in 2004.

On January 25 police arrested more than 50 protesters, most of them Ngobe, for blocking the Pan-American Highway and throwing stones at police to oppose hydroelectric dam projects on the Vigui and Tabasara rivers in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca in the Chiriqui-Veraguas border area. A number of those arrested were children participating in the protest with their parents. The protesters' immediate concerns are environmental, but underlying the confrontation is a long-standing demand that the national government refrain from large development projects in the semi-autonomous indigenous commonwealth unless the comarca authorities agree to them and the indigenous communities share in the benefits.

Vera Bomford, the British-born retired dance instructor and well-known friend of abandoned dogs, died at the Arnulfo Arias Medical Center in Panama City on the evening of January 12. An active member of the Theatre Guild of Ancon and caretaker of many dogs at her home in Veracruz, Bomford was an important player in the dance and theater scenes in the old Canal Zone and in Panama City. She was survived by a brother and many friends, human and canine. A memorial service was held for her at the Balboa Union Church on January 18.

On January 23, Partido Popular (former Christian Democrat) National Political Committee member Luis Eduardo Camacho and about 100 other party members quit the organization en masse. They dislike the party's alliance with the PRD and are expected to throw their support behind a "third force" presidential candidate.

Calling the recent intra-party elections in MOLIRENA and subsequent purge from government jobs of those who supported the losing side "disgraceful," former Vice-President Guillermo Ford, who resigned as Panama's ambassador to the United States last year, has called upon his party to "put on long pants." Ford was edged out of the party leadership by an alliance of the Rosas clan and Arturo Vallarino's supporters, and in the past year there has been an acrimonious falling out between the Rosases and the Vallarino faction. Ford also criticized the party's intention to ally itself with the Arnulfistas again in 2004, without considering other options.

The national government and various Chinese fraternal societies and community groups have signed an agreement to hold a special census to determine how many illegal Chinese immigrants are in the country. Right wing groups in the United States have alleged that up to one million Chinese Peoples Liberation Army troops have been smuggled into Panama and that the Peoples Republic of China runs the Panama Canal. The allegations are absurd, but since the regular census does not take national origin, ethnicity or race into account, Panama lacks official figures to disprove them. Within Panama, and particularly within the Arnulfista Party, accusing illegal Chinese immigrants of taking jobs and business opportunities from Panamanian citizens is also a popular sport. From the public policy point of view, the government needs to know in rough terms how many people are involved before it can intelligently weigh such options as a mass amnesty or large-scale deportations. The agreement between the government and the Chinese community groups assures that nobody will be penalized for answering census takers' questions and on the other hand the government says that the count will not be a prelude to the legalization of a new bloc of voters for the 2004 elections.

The Ministry of Government and Justice is proposing legislation to provide prison terms for the illegal carrying of concealed weapons. In Panama concealed weapons permits are relatively easy to obtain for those who can afford them --- a police record without any serious crimes, a drug-free urine sample, a psychiatrist's examination and various fees are required --- but a lot of people carry hidden weapons without permits. In 2002, Panamanian cops seized 1,865 illegally carried firearms. If caught, the fines for carrying concealed weapons without a permit range from $250 to $500. The Moscoso administration wants to increase the penalties to include prison terms of up to three years.

Three-year-old Giovanni Murillo and his mother, Kathia Guerra, were run over by a speeding BMW as they crossed Via Ricardo J. Alfaro in front of Panama Technological University on January 21. The youngster was killed and the 28-year-old mother seriously injured. The driver, the 17-year-old son of municipal judge and Ministry of Youth employee Itzel Latorraca --- part of the extended Latorraca clan that occupies a number of posts in the Moscoso administration --- fled the scene and went to classes at USMA, where classmates say that he smiled as he talked about the incident shortly after it happened. The driver has not been arrested, and students at the University of Panama (where Kathia Guerra is an accounting student) and Panama Technological University plan a protest at the scene of the crime at noon on January 28.

The principal of Artes y Oficios, one of Panama City's most unruly public high schools, says that all students at the school will be subject to mandatory drug testing. The principal, former MOLIRENA legislator Raymundo Hurtado Lay, says that this ought to restrain the brawls with students from other schools, blockages of the Trans-Isthmian Highway in front of the school and vandalism of school property for which Artes y Oficios has become notorious. The plan has met with criticism from people concerned about civil liberties and from educators and sociologists who are skeptical about its effectiveness. The Ministry of Education would have to approve the plan, which is not funded in the 2003 national budget.

On January 21 leftist students from Though and Transformative Action (PAT) and the University Revolutionary Action Front (FUAR) scuffled with security guards outside the administrative offices of the Colon Regional University Center (CRUC), the University of Panama's Colon branch. Last November an alliance of PAT and FUAR won the 2003 student government elections at the campus, but the defeated party, the Union of Independent Students, have not given up control of the student government offices. CRUC director Dorindo Cortez says he's trying to negotiate a peaceful turnover of the student government offices.

The Truth Commission has announced that two more bodies of activists who disappeared during the dictatorship have been identified by DNA tests performed at the Reliagene Technologies lab in New Orleans. Partial skeletal remains found at the old Puma infantry barracks in Tocumen and at the cemetery in Concepcion belong to Ever Quintanar Guzmán and Lindbergh Augusto Gante, respectively. Both took part in the abortive guerrilla resistance to the October 1968 coup. Attorney General Sossa has steadfastly refused to open or reopen criminal investigations in these kinds of cases.

The Moscoso administration has issued a stern protest about a foreign attack on Panamanian interests. It wasn't about paramilitaries allied to the Colombian Army attacking the Darien. Panamerican Beverages Inc. is a Panamanian corporation with head offices in Miami and mostly Dutch and Costa Rican owners, and it runs the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Venezuela. The company has joined the business lockout designed to overthrow the Venezuelan government, and on January 17 troops occupied the plant along with several other closed food and beverage producers. Venezuela's American Chamber of Commerce called it a violation of private property rights and an abuse of authority, but the Chávez government called it an "administrative procedure" in the face of an illegal management lockout. The Moscoso administration did not, on the other hand, issue any diplomatic protest about the recent paramilitary invasion of Panama.

It wasn't about Colombian death squads entering Panama and murdering Kuna caciques. Mireya Moscoso's cabinet didn't even acknowledge that the state-sponsored political assassination of Panamanian citizens is a problem. However, on January 22 the cabinet did declare a national emergency --- because next June's Miss Universe pageant, which is receiving a $9 million government subsidy, has not found the private sponsorship that pageant owner Donald Trump had hoped to receive.