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A July 15 hit- and-run incident that took the life of 18-year-old high school student Ilka Cherigo has brought long-standing controversies about Panama’s bus system front and center in the public debate. The young woman was run over by a bus, one of two that were allegedly racing through the intersection of Calle 12 and Avenida Justo Arosemena and sped away after Cherigo was run down.

A week later police, acting on a tip from an alleged witness, arrested Juan Carlos Quirós, a bus driver from San Miguelito and impounded his bus for further examination at police headquarters. Quirós denies that he was involved in the incident, but meanwhile it turned out that he has a long record of unpaid tickets for moving violations --- more than $3,000 worth, La Prensa reported. That prompted a major public outcry about the authorities’ lax attitudes about dangerous scofflaw drivers, a call by Transportation Chamber (bus owner- driver association) president Esteban Rodríguez to get the bad drivers out of the business, and a series of traffic checks personally led by Transport Authority director Pablo Quintero Luna in which buses were pulled over and in some cases impounded for unpaid tickets, missing permits or safety violations. President Moscoso called for Quintero Luna to “impose order” in public transportation and legislative hearings were promised.

Those sorts of things are the norm when there’s a particularly outrageous bus accident, but this time the protests weren’t as usual limited to endangered pedestrians and bus riders and opportunistic politicians trying to calm them down or playing to their fears.

First, the Catholic Church’s weekly Panorama Catolico newspaper criticized Quintero Luna for letting the situation get out of control and urged President Moscoso to fire him if he can’t impose order. Such direct criticism narrowly directed against an individual holding a public office is quite rare for the Catholic Church.

Then John Bennett, the president of the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE), called for an international bidding process to bring in a private company to replace the present permit system and run Panama’s bus system. The system of “cupos” (permits), both with respect to buses and to taxis, is and long has been notoriously corrupt. Syndicate leaders often charge high fees for permits and offer little in return, and laws limiting the public transportation business to owner/operators and cooperatives are frequently flouted by politically connected individuals who amass multiple permits and hire “palancas” --- drivers without permits --- to work for them. One frequent complaint by many bus and taxi drivers is the sale of so many cupos that existing drivers find it hard to make a living. Then many are the passengers who have lived through the terror of a driver racing another bus without fear of being taken off the road, many are the drivers who have had their cars smashed up by uninsured buses whose owners will never pay for the damages, and every insured driver pays higher rates for such abuses. Bennett argued that the present system has degenerated into a political patronage scam that gives little consideration to safety or public service.

Bennett’s call for change, however, was too radical for those with a vested interest in the way things are. The Transportation Chamber’s Rodríguez warned the APEDE leader not to fish in turbulent waters, and it seems that special roadside checks aside, the political class is in no mood to do battle with the bus drivers. Still, Quintero Luna did admit that the cupo system doesn't work well, so there may yet be a glimmer of hope for change.

Meanwhile, it seems that police and prosecutors didn’t do a very competent job of preserving evidence. As this issue of The Panama News was being produced, paperwork was grinding through the legal process to have Ilka Cherigo’s body exhumed, so that hair and blood samples that weren’t collected at the crime scene might be taken in order so see if they might match any physical evidence from Mr. Quirós’s bus.

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