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The Supreme Court, in a decision written by an alternate magistrate whose position on the high court was called into question due to allegations of bribery to obtain the appointment’s ratification, suppressed all avenues of legal inquiry into that bribery allegation and also probes into charges that members of the Legislative Assembly were bribed to approve the CEMIS airport expansion and multimodal cargo handling project. By a 6-3 vote the court approved the Legislative Assembly’s resolution ordering an end to investigations against its members. That effectively ended the case that arose with allegations that the Moscoso administration bribed at least one PRD legislator, Carlos Afú, to approve the Supreme Court nominations of Winston Spadafora and Alberto Cigarruista, and with them their respective suplentes Jacinto Cárdenas and Virgilio Trujillo. Spadafora and Cigarruista did not participate in the vote, but their suplentes, who had the same conflict of interest, did and proved to be the margin by which the court acted as it did. (Cárdenas was the author of the decision.) The court also ended the investigation of alleged bribery of legislators to approve the CEMIS project, which would expand France Field into a major freight handling terminal and an international airport for Colon, and provide a container handling interface among the airport, the Colon Free Zone, the Panama Canal Railway and Colon Container Terminal and Manzanillo International Terminal seaports. Voting against the decision were the high court’s presiding magistrate, Adán Arnulfo Arjona and magistrates Arturo Hoyos and Rogelio Fábrega Zarak. Siding with Cárdenas and Trujillo were magistrates Graciela Dixon, Aníbal Salas, José Troyano and César Pereira Burgos.

“Environmental demilitarization” is a multifaceted diplomatic issue between Panama and the United States. Most attention is paid to firing ranges in the former Canal Zone, which still contain dangerous unexploded ordnance but which the US government says it has no obligation to clean under the Panama Canal Treaties because it’s “impracticable” to do so. The other major problem with leftover American munitions in Panama --- which is also in smaller part rightfully an issue between Panama and Canada and Panama and the United Kingdom --- is the matter of chemical weapons that were tested on San Jose Island in the Perlas Archipelago during and just after World War II. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the powers that left chemical weapons behind in other countries --- such as was done in the case of many dud chemical bombs that were left on the island when the Americans withdrew in 1947 --- have a duty to clean up the mess. According to a report in La Prensa’s Martes Financiero business supplement, this past August the US government offered Panama $2 million, expert assistance and the necessary equipment to clear the island of old chemical weapons, but the Moscoso administration has rejected the offer.

Purportedly to protest US Ambassador Linda E. Watt’s discourse on Panamanian corruption before the Chamber of Commerce, the Legislative Assembly has stalled ratification of a bilateral treaty by which Panama would promise not to turn Americans accused of war crimes, genocide or other major human rights violations to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Bush administration’s policy on this matter is unpopular throughout the world and even in the United States, but the Americans have managed to obtain a number of such bilateral treaties by passing a law barring US military aid to countries that have not ratified such accords. Panama, of course, has no military, but US military advisors do train Panamanian police in jungle warfare at the former Fort Sherman, and our police air and sea patrols have been bolstered by donations of aircraft and patrol boats from the United States. Should the US designate such assistance “military,” then there would be a Panamanian arm to twist in the dispute. Notwithstanding such potential pressure points, Panama’s bar association, the Colegio de Abogados, opposes ratification of the treaty because it considers that it would be a setback for the principle of the international rule of law.

Citing unidentified sources, National Police Chief Carlos Barés has alleged that student militants attempted on September 11 to set fire to the University of Panama’s chemistry building, so as to create a toxic chemical cloud over Panama City. However, the police were outside the university and the campus radicals inside, and there would have been nobody to stop any attempt to torch the building. Moreover, according to exact sciences faculty dean Ramiro Gómez, the building never stored chemicals that could cause such a catastrophe. Gómez dismissed the police chief’s charge as “absurd” and noted that in his 35 years at the university, even during the violent protests against the Noriega regime, student activists never commandeered the chemistry building in search of weapons materials.

In the wake of confrontations between small groups of student radicals and riot police around the University of Panama on September 11 and 23, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa warned that the university’s constitutional autonomy does not mean that it’s an extraterritorial jurisdiction beyond the reach of Panamanian law. This prompted protests about an alleged power grab by Sossa, and National Police Chief Carlos Barés’s apparently bogus claim of a radical plot to set fire to the chemistry building and thus cover Panama City with a toxic cloud served to further inflame the controversy. However, in one of his first acts after being sworn in as the university’s new rector, Gustavo García de Paredes sat down with Sossa and signed an agreement by which the former agreed to do his best to assure that student protests remain peaceful and the latter agreed to respect the university’s autonomy. Whether the various student leftist factions will consider themselves bound by the agreement remains to be seen.

Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian will be coming to Panama for our Independence Day celebrations. Because of Chinese diplomatic pressures, Taiwan’s presidents don’t get to travel abroad very much, and when they do they are rarely permitted to pay official visits. However, this visit will be official and Chen says that he expects that Taiwan-Panama free trade pact that he and President Moscoso signed last August to have been ratified by his country’s congress before he arrives.

Prosecutor Giovanni Olmos has taken the Moscoso administration to court to have two Cabinet Council resolutions that authorized the construction of a controversial road through Volcan Baru National Park set aside. The legal objections interposed are that the resolutions improperly awarded the road contract to Constructoras Urbanas SA without a bidding process and that the project was approved without many of the legally required procedures regarding an environmental impact study. If the project’s construction can be delayed until the Moscoso administration leaves office it will die, because both candidates with a chance to become the next president, Martín Torrijos and Guillermo Endara, vow to kill it.

The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry, alleging that Panama’s post office has been illegally opening and otherwise tampering with mail sent to Daira Ortíz, the secretary of the party’s Honor and Discipline Committee. The committee has been trying to remove renegade legislator Carlos Afú from his seat in the assembly --- as it is the party’s constitutional right to do --- and if the move succeeds then Mireya Moscoso probably loses control of the legislative branch of government. The complaint names Director General of Mails and Telegraphs Cynthia Guerra as the person ultimately responsible for the abuses in the institution she directs.

The Supreme Court has been unable to print up its decisions lately, it says because somebody downloaded a computer virus into one of its computers, and the problem then spread throughout parts of the court’s internal network. Special measures to disconnect computers from one another and restrict court employees’ uses of the Internet have been instituted to contain the problem.

The National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) says that during its beach cleaning efforts on the weekend of September 27 and 28, its volunteers removed more than 35 tons of refuse from shorelines around the country. About 85 percent of the trash that was picked up came from beaches in Panama province. Relatively little effort was expended on the Atlantic side, where a Caribbean Sea current that runs from between Trinidad and Venezuela to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula brings trash, medical wastes and other refuse dumped as far away as Aruba ashore in this country.

Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata has announced that the 2003 school year will be extended until December 30 to make up for days lost during a two-week teachers’s strike in September. She also announced that the flagship of the public school system, the Instituto Nacional, would reopen only under the condition that its students participate in no more political protests. Students there, along with their parents and teachers, rejected that condition and staged a protest march to the presidential palace in response to the minister’s threat.

This time, the boxing legend won in a Miami courtroom. Five world championship belts were stolen from the pugilist’s Panama residence in 1993, and not too long afterwards a Miami antiquities dealer tried to sell them to undercover FBI agents. The dealer said that he had legitimately bought the belts, Durán denied it, a jury agreed with the boxer, and now the US federal circuit court of appeals has unanimously upheld the jury’s verdict.

Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Scenes from the Social Security protests
Billy Ford bolsters the Endara ticket
Ambassador Watt's bombshell
On the campaign trail

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