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On November 7 the ribbon was cut and commercial power generation began at the Esti hydroelectric project in Gualaca. The $250 million project by the US-based AES Corporation can generate 120 megawatts of energy, equal to about 10 percent of Panama’s electricity consumption.

The Inter- American Development Bank, whose president Enrique Iglesias was recently in the country for several days, has signed contracts to loan Panama some $111.5 million for various projects. The big-ticket item is rehabilitation, widening and bridge construction work on the Pan-American Highway between Divisa and El Pajal, and $8.5 million is earmarked for urban renewal and social programs in Colon. The bank is still undecided about whether it will go ahead with financing for the expansion of Colon’s France Field airport as part of the controversial CEMIS project.

Despite the Supreme Court’s acceptance of a prosecutor’s lawsuit alleging that the Boquete - Cerro Punta road project, which would cut through Volcan Baru National Park, violates a number of environmental laws, the Moscoso administration has vowed to go ahead with the project. A group of students and professors from the Chiriqui branch of the University of Panama tried to stop work over the holiday weekend by interposing a human chain on November 9, but the protest was quashed by police.

It may be at the center of a scandal over allegations that legislators were bribed, but the CEMIS project is a key interface that would allow a multi-modal freight handling system to tie together the ports of Colon Container Terminal, Manzanillo International Terminal, Cristobal and Balboa, as well as the Colon Free Zone and an expanded France Field airport. More to the point, it is seen as a rare potential source of jobs for economically depressed Colon. Thus on October 22 more than 1000 people, most of them either unemployed or representing labor unions, marched peacefully through Colon to demand the construction of the CEMIS project. Financing for the project has been stalled by the allegations of corruption in the procurement of the development contract.

Incoming University of Panama rector Gustavo García de Paredes has ordered a series of preliminary budget cuts and cost-saving moves, including restrictions on the use of university vehicles, the elimination of international travel at the school’s expense, reduced electricity usage and cuts in administrative salaries. More cost-cutting measures will be forthcoming at the cash-strapped university.

The Museum of National History, which occupies several rooms at the Demetrio H. Brid Municipal Palace, is open again after several months of remodeling. Many of the nation’s most important historical documents and objects, from pre-Columbian artifacts to the original Acta de Independencia, from the first Panamanian flag to the original Carter-Torrijos Treaties, are displayed there. The museum is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.

As part of her official celebration of Panama’s independence from Colombia, President Moscoso presided over the November 1 ribbon cutting inaugural of the unfinished Multicentro shopping mall, which is owned by Colombian businessman Jacobo Torres. Mireya brought along her guest Sean Connery, who usually gets a hefty fee for appearances at such events.

The Public Services Regulating Board (Ente Regulador) has ordered an investigation of an April 27 power outage in Panama Oeste that caused the deaths of more than 16,000 chickens being raised by farmer Carlos Salcedo. The board finds enough evidence to believe that the Union Fenosa power company breached its duty to limit power outages, although the utility argues that the problem was caused by a lightning strike beyond its control. Salcedo loaded the dead chickens into a dump truck with the intent of dumping them in front of the Union Fenosa offices, but he was stopped by police at the Bridge of the Americas. The board’s investigation may lead to compensation for the dead chickens, a fine for Union Fenosa, or both. Salcedo claims some $300,000 worth of damages due to the outage.

Reinier Plooyer, a Dutch citizen, has been fined and had three dams that he had built on Bocas del Toro’s Isla Colon breached by the government. Plooyer’s earthen dams had obstructed water flow to the IDAAN reservoir on Big Creek, which caused local water shortages. The dams were built on the Dutchman’s property, but without the necessary permits or environmental impact studies.

On November 4 police arrested a Nicaraguan couple who had just crossed into Panama from Costa Rica at Paso Canoa, and confiscated 36 one- ounce Canadian gold coins from them. The crime? No crime. The police, who showed the confiscated gold on television, say the Nicaraguans were arrested for questioning about where they got the gold. Meanwhile, the gold has been handed over to the Immigration department, from whence it is unlikely to be able to be retrieved without costly and lengthy litigation for which the couple is unlikely to be given visas to attend.

On October 30, Colon city planner Isacio Mena says that he went to his office and found that someone had forced open the door and stolen the computer hard drive on which all of the department’s budget records and many documents related to various development projects were stored. This is the second computer theft that has deprived the Colon city government of documents that were not backed up to take place this year, the previous theft having taken place at the municipal engineer’s office. The PTJ are investigating.

Three construction workers were buried alive and killed on October 24 while installing a pipe in an nine-meter-deep trench at the Estrella Azul loading dock in Pueblo Nuevo. The men were employed by a construction contractor, Administradora de Proyectos de Construcción (APROCOSA), and despite a safety law requiring a retaining wall whenever people work in an excavation more than 1.6 meters deep, were in the trench without any such safeguards. The SUNTRACS construction workers’ union blamed APROCOSA for violating safety standards. The Labor Ministry blamed SUNTRACS for failing to enforce safety standards. APROCOSA denied any wrongdoing and pointed out that the workers’ families will each receive $21,000. There have been no arrests for negligent homicide, nor are there likely to be any.

It seems that Dorita de Reyna, now an RPC-TV talking head but then President Ernesto Pérez Balladares’s press aide, rented an apartment to Ports Engineering and Consultants Corporation (PECC), when her husband Rubén Reyna was deputy director of the National Port Authority, with which PECC had a contract to maintain certain lighthouses and buoys. Shortly after that contract was signed, the port authority was merged into the new National Maritime Authority and both Reyna and the former port authority’s director, Hugo Torrijos, left government service. Now Comptroller General Alvin Weeden alleges that a lot of the work that PECC was supposed to do in the years after Torrijos and Rubén Reyna left office wasn’t done, that the government (including the Moscoso administration, so it seems) overpaid PECC, and that Torrijos and Reyna were owners or employees of PECC. The whole argument between the company and the government has been percolating in the courts, and in general the government doesn’t seem to be doing very well. Now that it’s election season and Hugo Torrijos is working on his cousin Martín Torrijos’s campaign, Weeden has ordered the former’s assets frozen. But Hugo Torrijos says that he never worked for nor owned any stake in PECC and none of the documents that Weeden has shown to reporters say otherwise. Rubén Reyna admits that he did some consulting work for PECC after he left the government, but claims that this sort of thing is done in the United States and this makes it acceptable. (Actually, it is illegal for most US federal government employees to go to work for a company with which he or she conducted business on behalf of the public.) Meanwhile PECC’s American president Charles Jumet claims undue harassment and says that his company has suffered from shakedown attempts by Panamanian government officials. Weeden claims that Jumet is a front man for Panamanian owners and that the company evaded taxes by fraudulently padding its expenses, but has offered little proof of this. So what’s the upshot? Most likely campaign mud that doesn’t stick very well.



Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Holiday business
Strike notes
Losing ticket
Colombian tort claim in an Alabama court
The Panama News online readership continues to grow

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