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On April 13 Iraqi captors freed US Army Specialist Shoshana Johnson, a native of Panama, along with six other fellow prisoners of war. Johnson, the only female soldier taken prisoner by the Iraqis in this war, had been captured in an ambush in southern Iraq during the first days of fighting and was then shown to TV reporters by her captors, which is a violation of international law. When picked up by the US Marine Corps after her release, Johnson was suffering from an ankle wound which did not, however, prevent her from walking.

According to a Dichter & Neira poll commissioned by La Prensa, President Moscoso's tilt toward the US side in the Iraq War is unpopular. Some 69.7 percent of those surveyed considered the war unjustified, 27.7 percent thought it justified and 2.6 percent had no opinion. An even larger majority of 89.4 percent said that Panama must not take part in world military conflicts, as opposed to 8.3 percent who think that this country must get involved.

"Update yourself, to be able to vote," say the Electoral Tribunal's TV commercials. Those whose cedulas are not up to date, including with current residences, by the end of this month will not be allowed to vote in the 2004 elections. A special problem is those whose cedulas on their faces are up to date, but on the form that uses the photo of the Panama Canal. Due to the diversion of thousands of these forms from UNISYS to the black market, nobody with a cedula on that form will be allowed to vote. However, now the Electoral Tribunal says that it's running short of money to complete the job of updating the cedulas and thus the voting rolls. They have asked for a special appropriation of $4.6 million to get the job done on time. Tough luck, says the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which cut the Electoral Tribunal's budget last year and denied the request for extra funds to update the voting list in time. Given, however, that that the three Mireyista presidential candidates combined garner just over five percent in the polls, it seems unlikely that even a truly massive disenfranchisement of Panamanian voters would be enough to keep the present ruling faction in power.

As this issue of The Panama News was being uploaded, El Panama America reported that the PRD had decided to postpone its June 29 primary for all elective offices other than the presidency until August 10. In some locales there are likely to be some hotly contested primaries, most notably in the Panama-San Miguelito-Colon metro area in which a lot of newcomers are seeking to unseat incumbent legislators.

After the journalist was convicted for his part in uncovering a story about political favoritism in the awarding of no-bid house deals in the former Canal Zone during the previous administration, President Moscoso said that she would pardon Marcelino Rodríguez. A radio journalist these days, he wrote for El Siglo at the time his case arose. Rodríguez and other reporters obtained and wrote about a list of some 200 connected individuals who got the special deals. One of those named was Administrative Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher. However, it seems that the house in question did not go to the Procuradora but to her sister, and that error was the basis of the criminal convictions of Rodríguez and several others. The president never issued the pardon she promised, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld Rodríguez's sentence of 16 months in prison, which can be avoided by payment of a $1,500 fine. Rodríguez doesn't have the $1,500 to spare and told The Panama News that he may soon be filing his reports from behind bars.

La Prensa editorial cartoonist Víctor Ramos has been given a July 31 trial date for an April 11, 2002 drawing that lampooned former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares's ostentatious lifestyle and the sources of his wealth. Ramos could be sentenced to two years in prison if he is convicted of the criminal defamation charges he faces. In a case brought by Supreme Court magistrate and former Minister of Government and Justice Winston Spadafora against satirist Ubaldo Davis, the Panamanian courts have broadly ruled that all satire is criminal, unless it can be proven to be literally true. Another La Prensa cartoonist, Julio Briceño, is facing similar criminal charges for a cartoon that lampooned the PRD-Partido Popular alliance by portraying Christian Democrat leader and former First Vice-President Ricardo Arias Calderón walking arm-in-arm with the Grim Reaper.

The Panamanian Supreme Court's presiding magistrate, Adán Arnulfo Arjona, says it's "unacceptable" for the United States to judge Panama's judicial system. This in reaction to the annual State Department human rights report, which calls Panamanian justice inefficient, often corrupt and subject to political manipulation. Arjona, who didn't dispute the specific findings, called the report "unbalanced" and inconsonant with the many joint US-Panamanian programs aimed at improving the legal system here.

According to La Prensa's Dichter & Neira poll, which was taken between April 4 and 6, were the presidential election held then Martín Torrijos would easily win, with 44.5 percent of the vote to Guillermo Endara's 25.4 percent. Adding the totals of the three Moscoso-approved Arnulfista candidates José Miguel Alemán (3.9 percent), Marco Ameglio (1.1 percent) and Víctor Juliao (.3 percent), the Mireyista faction would get just over five percent of the vote. Although she controls the party machinery and the political patronage jobs, it appears that the president has lost control over the rank- and-file of her own party, most of whom support Endara.

They didn't take him away --- he'd be a bulky object to move. On April 10 a delegation from the Arnulfista Party did, however, catch up with former President Guillermo Endara at one of his favorite hangouts, the El Trapiche restaurant on Via Argentina, to inform him that he had been expelled from the party that he helped to found. "I laugh," said Endara, who has been nominated as the Solidaridad party's presidential candidate in the 2004 elections.

In a move that has been the subject of jokes and editorial cartoons, President Moscoso has nominated her erstwhile aide turned harsh critic Miguel Antonio Bernal for a post on the international court in Arusha, Tanzania that’s trying cases arising from the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The president won’t be rid of him so easily, Bernal told The Panama News, but he left open the possibility that if his nomination is approved he may accept a position with the court in Arusha. Bernal is a Paris-educated legal scholar, practing attorney and member of the University of Panama law faculty who has also taught at other Panamanian and US universities. An implacable foe of the former military dictatorship, in 1999 he finished a close second in a three-way race for mayor of Panama City. Although the Moscoso administration has moved to take his popular radio off the air on the grounds that his degrees in law rather than journalism make him unqualified to practice journalism, Bernal has also won awards for his work as a correspondent for Le Monde Diplomatique.

Based on Mireya Moscoso's regulations requiring people seeking information about the government to have a personal interest in the data requested in order to have standing under the Transparency Law, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote rejected activist Guillermo Cochez's attempt to learn the identities and pay scales of the people working for the Ministry of the Presidency. Over the course of her administration there have been many reports that the ministry, which is headed by Mireya Moscoso's sister-in- law, has been packed with friends and relatives of the president who receive high salaries. Given the Arnulfista- dominated high court's decision, it's not easy to confirm or rule out such reports.

In the editorial of its edition for the weekend of April 12-13, the Catholic Church's weekly Panorama Catolico blasted public officials' refusals to divulge information about goverment functions and court decisions upholding those denials. Citing decisions to deny the public information about which restaurants and supermarkets have been found in violation of health codes, and about the identities, salaries and travel expenses of public officials, the church argued that "The negative responses to the petitions, including those by the Supreme Court, may have legal substance but they can never achieve public credibility."

On the April 6 edition of RPC-TV's Enfoque television talk show US Ambassador Linda Watt said that the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty expired at the end of 1999, that the United States complied with its obligations and that the subject of whether the Americans bear any responsibility for cleaning up the unexploded ordnance left at former US military sites is closed. However, President Moscoso and Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias say it's not so and claim to have a letter for US Secretary of State Colin Powell that says it's not so. The public position of the US government is that it won't clean the firing ranges pursuant to Panamanian claims under the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties, but it may do some cleaning of chemical weapons left at Isla San Antonio after tests there in the 1940s, an obligation that may arise under the Chemical Weapons Convention rather than the Panama Canal Treaties. Panama could take its firing range claims to the World Court, but the US could ignore any adverse ruling or retaliate against Panama in any number of ways. Part of Mireya's domestic political problem with regard to this issue is the widespread suspicion that what she really seeks is a payoff of several hundred million dollars which will not be used for the clearance of leftover explosives.

The Moscoso administration has removed two of Panama's consuls in the United States. Gone from the Washington post is Maylene Marrone de Ruíz, a career diplomat who had served as the consul in the US capital since 1994. She has been replaced by Juan Vásquez, who is related by marriage to the Moscoso family. Gone from the consulate in New Orleans is Gabriel José Bazán Kotat, son of Second Vice-President Dominador Kaiser Bazán and nephew of former First Vice- President Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque. An audit of the New Orleans consulate is reportedly underway.

Political wall murals are one of the usual features of a Panamanian political season. However, the PRD overdid it at Renta 10, a Calidonia tenement owned by the Social Security Fund. There party activists painted one end of the building with a huge mural. Despite the PRD supporters who may live there, it's public property and Seguro Social director Juan Jované objected to the Electoral Tribunal. The offending mural, which promoted the candidacies of Calidonia representante Ramón Ashby Chial, mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, legislator Franz Wever and presidential hopeful Martín Torrijos, was quickly painted over.

The National Institute of Culture (INAC) is pretty much paralyzed by the scandal about the theft of 292 gold huacas from the Museo Antropologico Reina Torres de Arauz in what had to be an inside job. It has also come under international criticism for the shoddy restoration work being done at one of Panama's colonial- era treasures, the San Francisco de las Montañas Church in Veraguas. According to some investigative reporting by La Prensa, it turns out that the company that got the no-bid restoration contract, Leso Construcciones, SA, has as its general manager one Cecilio L. Sosa. Sosa is the brother of INAC secretary general Beatriz Ledezma Sosa. She's living in a jail cell at the moment, as she is one of six INAC employees held for alleged complicity in the museum theft. Because the company is an "SA" --- Sociedad Anonoma --- it's not know whether Beatriz Ledezma Sosa herself actually owns it.

Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Martín Torrijos kicks off his campaign

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