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The Panama Canal Authority reports that, measured in terms of the average time it takes a vessel to transit canal waters, tons of ships and cargo per day passing through the waterway, and year-to- date accident reports, the third quarter of fiscal year 2003 has been the most efficient period in the canal’s 89-year history. The authority attributes the achievements to the completion of the Culebra Cut widening, the implementation of better operating procedures and technological improvements.

Panama Canal administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta, pointing out that the necessary preliminary studies are still underway, says that any decision about whether to expand the canal by building a third set of locks that can accomodate post-Panamax-sized vessels and creating a new lake to provide the water to run the new locks will be submitted to a public referendum for approval or rejection. The project is controversial for a number of reasons, with some critics arguing that it would be too expensive to amortize with the revenues it creates while others maintain that what Panama really can’t afford is to let the canal become obsolete.

By treaty, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in San Jose, Costa Rica is the court of last resort for many Panamanian legal disputes. Sme 270 workers at the old IRHE state-owned electric company who were fired for participating in political protests during the Endara administration, having lost in the Panamanian court, appealed to the regional tribunal, which in 2001 ruled in favor of those who lost their jobs and ordered the Panamanian government to compensate them for lost wages. The Moscoso administration made part payment, demanding that the workers renounce their claims for full compensation under the judgment to get anything at all. Now, however, the government has hardened its line, leaving it to a Ministry of Economy and Finance spokesman to announced that after the fact it’s disputing the commission’s right to decide cases that arise under Panamanian law.

Reports by the Pacific News Service and from fan groups have it that the American “reality TV” game show Survivor, whose latest season is being filmed in the Perlas Islands, is way behind schedule. There’s no specific word on what the problems may be, but Panama did get unusually heavy rains at about the time when shooting was to begin.

The Panamanian TVN television network and its Mexican counterpart Canal 40 are videotaping a soap opera at the old Hotel Central in the capital’s colonial-era Casco Viejo. The result will be the first telenovela shot entirely in Panama, and a milestone for this country’s cultural exports.

When foreign musicians perform in Panama, they are taxed five percent of their pay. Pursuant to a 1974 law, the proceeds are split among this country’s three musicians’ syndicates. Now the Moscoso administration is proposing to repeal this law, arguing that it hinders the development of Panama’s entertainment industry. The proposal is coming from the Education Ministry, which oversees the program, but would have to make its way through the legislature. It’s probably a low-risk proposal for the government, as Mireya Moscoso is not very popular among Panama’s musicians anyway.

The Moscoso administration has ended negotiations with business and labor representatives aimed at shoring up the long-term possibilities of the Social Security Fund’s retirement system. Vice- Minister of Economy and Finance Domingo Latorraca told La Prensa that the administration will formulate its own plan to submit to the legislature, and that it will probably include an increase in the minimum requirement of 15 years of payroll deductions paid into the system to qualify for a pension and the sale of some of the fund’s assets. He also suggested the consolidation of many public assets into a fund to be administered by his ministry. With less than a year before elections are to be held, the odds are against any such plan being passed by the Legislative Assembly. In the event that a proposal of this sort does prosper in the legislature, the nation’s labor movement would likely respond with strikes and mass protests.

The Social Security Fund, which faces long-term actuarial problems with its retirement fund and an acute short-term income problem due to Panama’s weak economy, is getting a little bit of relief from the government. It’s not, as had been requested, a grant from the general fund, but an early repayment of a $108 million loan that the Endara administration obtained from the fund in 1992. The loan’s expiration was originally set for 2007. Over the years the national government has run up a tab of some $655 million in loans taken out from the Social Security Fund.

Arguments about whether the Moscoso administration does or does not want to privatize health care and whether the Social Security Fund is or is not mismanaged may have taken a new little twist as the result of a surprise inspection. Inspectors from Seguro descended upon the San Miguel Arcangel Integrated Hospital (HISMA), a Health Ministry facility in San Miguelito that is largely run by private contractors rather than public employees. It turns out that 11 of the Health Ministry’s 16 private contractors are not paying into the Social Security Fund as required by law.

On July 23 University of Panama employees walked off the job again over unpaid wages from 2002, the second time that a university union has gone on strike over the issue. Last year the Moscoso administration cut the university budget by not including funding for contractually obligated pay raises. The university didn’t lay anyone off or otherwise trim the budget to meet the shortfall, and at the end of the year administrative employees walked out during finals week. The Moscoso administration claimed that the university had been paid the money needed to cover the pay raises and Comptroller General Alvin Weeden conducted an “investigation,” which predictably resulted in a report on the eve of the election for university rector that said that the government had paid the university, which then blew the money on other things. Weeden, however, was unable to show a cancelled check or other document to back his claim. Incumbent recto Julio Vallarino, a PRD member, was ousted, but by another PRD member, Gustavo García de Paredes, rather than by a candidate acceptable to the Arnulfista administration. Meanwhile, the previous strike was settled in January with vague promises that the employees would get their back pay. They received some of it, but not all of it, and thus the July 23 walkout by the University of Panama Employees Association (ASEUPA). On August 1 the university workers went back to their jobs without realizing their demand, after the nation’s Ombudsman Juan Antonio Tejada set up a mediation process.

In one of the year’s more impressive bits of Panamanian investigative journalism, La Prensa has looked into the qualities of the nation’s public and private universities and published the results in a special “Ranking Universitario” supplement. The paper did not have the resources and access to conduct anything nearly as exhaustive as the accreditation reviews that US institutions of higher learning must periodically undergo, but it did look into the obvious factors that it could, and because there is nothing like a credible accreditation process here in Panama, came up with the best rating system that the country’s universities have. The paper found that with a few worthy exceptions, higher education in Panama ranges from mediocre to horrible. With the exception of the rector of the Universidad Interamericana, top university administrators were not amused and issued a statement blasting La Prensa for publishing a “subjective” study. The controversy has prompted Arnulfista legislator José Blandón to call for hearings when the assembly goes back into session in September. There may be legislation to reform the process by which the University of Panama issues charters for private universities and controls their curricula. There won’t be any significant new investment in higher education during what remains of the Moscoso administration.

The Banco Nacional has granted a $2 million loan for the construction of a new bus terminal for Bocas del Toro. The SUCABEAR construction firm has won the contract to build it. The bank also approved a $1 million loan to improve the Bocas bus fleet and $400,000 to build subsidized housing for the province’s bus drivers and their families.

Multicentro, the posh new shopping center at the mouth of the open sewer known as the Matasnillo River, will probably have to go back to the drawing board for its ingress and egress plans. The development is located on a dangerous curve across from the entrance to Punta Paitilla, and promoters figured that they’d just grab a little public property to make it easier for customers to come and go, filling in a bit of Panama Bay in order to build an overpassing ramp that would allow people to come and go from a straighter part of Avenida Balboa. To build this ramp, the developers cut down some recently planted palm trees, trashed the recently rebuilt fence along the seawall, and began dumping truckloads of stone. But not so fast, said Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro. For lack of a municipal construction permit, he ordered a halt to the work. Moreover, it seems that there is no environmental impact study, which would be required of a project of this magnitude. The landfill did have the blessing of the National Maritime Authority and the Panamanian Society of Engineers and Architects (SPIA) has offered to mediate in an attempt to rescue the shopping center project while addressing the mayor’s and local residents’ concerns.

The City of Colon, having taken on the responsibility for waste management as part of the old Metropolitan Waste Authority’s (DIMA’s) “municipalization” in 1999, couldn’t handle the job and made the controversial move of privatizing the service, hiring a company called Aguaseo SA to make the smelly garbage go away. At the time the move was controversial for several reasons, one of which was that it was alleged that political connections had something to do with the awarding of the contract. Now the arguments about Aguaseo are about to get much more strident, because the company proposes to turn 100 hectares of the former Canal Zone old Mindi dairy into a garbage dump. Critics point out that garbage would be buried very close to wells from which the Mount Hope water treatment plant takes some of the water it treats and supplies to Colon residents. People who have invested their money in nearby residential areas, or in Colon tourism development, are also questioning the plan.

According to a Comptroller General’s report on traffic accidents, on the average in Panama there’s a crash every 12 minutes, resulting in a fatality every 22 hours. The most dangerous place, it seems, is Panama City’s Avenida Central, and the most dangerous time of the day is at three in the afternoon.

The government has paid $1.8 million for a new legislative palace whose construction has been indefinitely put on hold. The building site that had been contemplated was on public land at Albrook and there never was any construction start, but the money was paid to HNTB, Design-Build Panama Inc. for design and construction that never happened. Administrative Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher opined that the payment was unjustified. Comptroller General Alvin Weeden says he’ll investigate. But let’s see --- who was the lawyer who drew up the contract in question? Why, none other than Arnulfista presidential candidate José Miguel Alemán.

If you’re building tourist facility in the Anton corregimiento of Santa Clara, it’s much easier to get your plans approved by municipal engineer Luis Medina if they have been designed by Luis Medina. That’s what happened in the case of the Las Tortugas development, for which Medina drafted the plans, and then passed on them in his official capacity.



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Harris case prompts international disputes
The Panama News readership logs

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