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NewsAlso in this section:Panama News Briefs Massive museum theft an inside job Panama News Briefs
No resbalosos allowed at capital's Carnival Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro has issued this year's Carnival rules decree, with various prohibitions. As in the past, the painted shirtless "resbalosos" won't get past the police checkpoints around the Via España party. Neither will people impersonating police officers, firefighters or priests. The wearing of masks that disguise a person's identity, or of the national emblems of Panama or any other nation are also banned. Revelers will not be allowed to throw tiny confetti, grains of wheat or chemical substances that could injure someone's eyes. The use of fireworks by minors or other than between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and midnight is banned. Nudity will get a person busted. Don't even think about bringing a weapon to the celebrations, even if you have a permit for it.
The Nicaraguan Army claims that in the fall of 2001 the Panamanian government had 15 days' prior notice that a large lot of weapons that ended up in the hands of Colombia's AUC paramilitary was being purchased in Panama's name. A report by the Organization of American States says that the purchase order for the weapons, purportedly by this country's National Police, was a forgery. The OAS report on the matter was incomplete in many respects --- for one thing, the deal was approved by the US ambassador in Managua, Oliver Garza, a detail that the report ignored --- but the Moscoso administration claims that the report absolved it of complicity in the shipment of arms to the AUC, which despite official denials acts as an auxiliary for the Colombian Army.
Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona has announced that the governments of Panama and Colombia have met to work out a system of sharing "strategic information" about the "national security" of each country. The Moscoso administration recently ended Panama's long-standing policy of neutrality in Colombia's civil war, taking the side of the Bogota government against the leftist FARC guerrillas.
On February 15 Panamanians participated in the worldwide day of protests against US and British plans to wage war against Iraq, with a march from Plaza Porras to Plaza Cinco de Mayo that attracted hundreds of marchers. The Moscoso administration has had little to say about the wisdom or justice of a war against Iraq, but has announced that there will be unspecified extra security measures taken in light of the probability of warfare that could affect Panama.
National Police Chief Carlos Barés has admitted what his immediate superior, Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona, had specifically denied. US Army National Guard and Reserve units here in Panama to conduct construction maneuvers in the impoverished Ngobe-Bugle Comarca have weapons. The soldiers are not here to engage in warfare, but part of their exercise is practice at maintaining security during combat engineering. Moreover, they have a lot of expensive equipment to guard and there is also a worldwide alert in which all US armed forces are supposed to be prepared for an attack by Osama bin Laden's people. The issue was raised by former President Guillermo Endara and retired Panama Defense Forces General Rubén Darío Paredes, both of whom complained that it's a violation of Panamanian sovereignty to have armed foreign troops at large within this country.
Jaime Moreno, who recently replaced JJ Vallarino III as labor minister, has fired about 20 of the institution's 600 employees. These positions, Moreno says, are unprotected under the civil service rules and he wants people of his choosing to get the jobs.
Procuradora de Administracion Alma Montenegro de Fletcher has criticized the wave of firings that has accompanied a change of directors at the National Maritime Authority. When Bertilda García Escalona took over the authority from Jerry Salazar when the latter became Minister of Canal Affairs, she fired some 150 employees, most of them with 10 or more years on the job. Montenegro de Fletcher warned that most of the fired workers have civil service tenure, were fired without cause, and at some point in the future will have to be rehired with back pay. However, as it stands now García Escalona, a member of the extended Escalona clan that occupies many highly paid positions in the Moscoso administration, will get to hire her friends and relatives and leave the bill for the abuse to the next government.
The Institutional Protective Service (SPI), a 300-person force that guards the president and her ministers and also performs certain intelligence functions, comes with a substantial political plum. The contract to provide meals for SPI members is amenable to fixing in the form of bid specifications that can steer the business to a particular company, and that process can generate kickbacks or other direct or indirect benefits for the person who controls it. So wouldn't you know that control over the SPI meals contract was the bone of contention in an argument between two members of President Moscoso's inner circle, SPI director Alejandro Garauz and Minister of the Presidency Ivonne Young. The president sided with Young, and afterwards all involved denied that there ever was a dispute.
Former Minister of Government and Justice Mariela Sagel has been sentenced to a $3,000 fine and $8,000 in damages for criminal defamation. Sagel accused former corrections director Cristina Torres of granting a work pass to Julio César Miranda, who was serving a sentence for his part in the Noriega-era torture and murder of Dr. Hugo Spadafora. Sagel's lawyers say they'll appeal. It appears that the decision of Judge Maria de Lourdes Estrada was not based upon whether Torres actually granted the convicted murderer a permit to leave prison for work, but because Sagel called Torres "an obscure functionary."
Judge Jorge Isaac Escobar has summarily jailed RCM TV commentator Carlos Zavala for six days, after the latter suggested corruption on the part of the former in the handling of two high-profile bankruptcy cases. The summary jailing was ordered under a legal section allowing judges to hold people in contempt for acts committed while the judge is exercising his or her legal functions, even though the allegedly contemptuous statements were made outside the presence of the court.
President Moscoso has flatly denied Supreme Court Magistrate Alberto Cigarruista's claim that commitments were made to members of the Legislative Assembly in order to obtain the approval of high court nominees. Mireya also warned Cigarruista to shut up about the process. Though Attorney General José Antonio Sossa and the Supreme Court have stymied the investigation into allegations that cash bribes were paid for approval of the nominations, it is a matter of public record that one of the PRD legislators who broke ranks with his party caucus was rewarded with the presidency of the Legislative Assembly, another was made chairman of the legislature's Agriculture Committee and alternate legislator Tomás Gabriel Altamirono Duque's family business has retained the lucrative contract to print the nation's lottery tickets.
Prosecutor Cristobal Arboleda has petitioned a Colon criminal court to put Mayor Matilde Rosales de Ardines, four members of the city council, the city treasurers and two American financial securities hustlers on trial for what is alleged to be a multi-million-dollar fraud. In 2002 the city of Colon had attempted to issue $300 million in city bonds --- something that's not allowed under Panamanian law --- and the FBI subsequently discovered that the brokers that the city had dealt with were trying to issue certificates in the United States which bore the fraudulent representation that the instruments were backed by the Panamanian national government. The accused Colon officials deny any wrongdoing and argue that the law with respect to municipal borrowing is not clear. The mayor has twice been removed from office and then reinstated over the affair, with each change accompanied by a wave of political patronage hirings and firings that have led to heated confrontations and the impaired functioning of city departments. The mayor has also gone into and out of jail and house arrest in connection with the case.
The Supreme Court, with two members abstaining, has absolved Maritime Tribunal Magistrate Calixto Malcolm of charges of unethical conduct for a procedural ruling that he made. The law firm of Carreira, Pitti & Garibaldi, unhappy with one of Malcolm's decisions, brought the charges. The high court ruled that Malcolm's decision was erroneous, but that the remedy was to appeal it, not to charge the judge with unethical conduct. While the dispute was pending the judge had been removed from the bench.
President Moscoso has accused the nation's ombudsman, Juan Tejada, of firing the wife of alternate legislator Adolfo Valderrama after that lawmaker quit Tejada's Partido Popular in order to join the Arnulfista Party. However, Tejada says that Valderrama's wife never worked for the Defensoria del Pueblo in the first place. Tejada's office is run on a political patronage system according to an agreement between the PRD and former Christian Democrats (now Partido Popular). The Moscoso administration is run on a political patronage and nepotism system.
The relatively inexperienced son of late military strongman Omar Torrijos, a neurosurgeon who has served in several cabinet posts, a former labor minister and a political newcomer have all thrown their hats in the ring for the 2004 PRD presidential nomination. The primary will take place on March 30 and Martín Torrijos is heavily favored to beat Dr. Francisco Sánchez Cárdenas, Mitchel Doens and Carlos Lem.
Former PRD legislator Mario Rognoni, who served as press aide for puppet President Manuel Solís Palma when Manuel Antonio Noriega ran Panama, has returned to his old job. Rognoni, part of the PRD old guard that has been shunted aside by the younger followers of Martín Torrijos, has left his old party and signed up as a Liberal. The Moscoso administration has had terrible press relations, and for much of its time in office has not had anyone in place to answer reporters' questions. Rognoni won't be the administration's first high-profile press aide, however. Early in her term in office the president hired former RPC-TV anchor Lissette Condassin to handle her press affairs, but Condassin was rarely kept informed about what the administration was doing and soon left for a public relations job with cigarette maker Philip Morris.
Five Cuban citizens, three men and two women, are in Panamanian custody on immigration charges after landing here during a roundabout attempt to go to the United States. They have requested political asylum. The would-be refugees left Cuba for South America with the Castro government's permission, then tried to make their way by sea from Brazil to the United States. However, one of the Cubans became ill during the voyage and that prompted them to land in Panama. A number of Panamanians lent their help to the illegal migrants, but eventually they were arrested in Chiriqui, near the Costa Rican border.
On February 23 a car driven by Second Vice-President Dominador Kaiser Bazán hit a pedestrian couple on Tumba Muerto near the Novey hardware store. The vice-president summoned an ambulance to the scene, which took a 45-year-old man and 53-year-old woman to a local hospital. The woman was admitted in serious but apparently not life-threatening condition, while the man was released after treatment for minor injuries that did not require his hospitalization. Transito Police are investigating the cause of the accident. The aptly named Tumba Muerto (also known as Via Ricardo J. Alfaro) is one of Panama City's most dangerous roads, due to heavy traffic, few restrictions on entry or exit points and inadequate pedestrian crossings.
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