Ever since the
project was announced, there have been two prominent public
reactions to the proposed road through Volcan Baru National Park
from Cerro Punta to Boquete. The first has been an overwhelming
public perception, shown in various polls, that the road that
would pave the Sendro Los Quetzales (shown above) is a bad idea.
The second, the subject of an amazing mixture of bochinche, has
been speculation about why the president would do such a thing.
The park that her road would cut in two is, after all, a UNESCO
World Heritage Site and one of this country's most important eco-
tourist attractions.
Panama City
Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, who came to public office by way of
the environmentalist movement, alleged quite simply that Mireya
wants the road because she owns land along its route. The
president denied this and threatened to file charges of calumnia
e injuria (criminal defamation) against him. (So far she has
done no such thing.)
On November 19,
El Panama America published the results of its search through
Registro Publico records about the subject. According to the
record on file with the public, a company named ARKAPAL, SA,
whose president is one Mireya Moscoso and whose treasurer is one
Mirna E. Pitti, recently elevated from manager of Mireya's
coffee business to Minister of the Presidency, owns 927 hectares
of land near the park but even closer to the proposed road.
Within hours
after the story was published in El Panama America, Alfredo
Arias, the director of the Interoceanic Regional Authority
(ARI), showed up at the daily to show them an unrecorded deed.
According to that purported document, ARKAPAL, SA sold three-
quarters of its interest in the parcel in question to Altos del
Baru, SA back in 1985. Altos del Baru, SA is a company formed by
the nieces and nephews of Mireya Moscoso's late husband Arnulfo
Arias, one of whom is Alfredo Arias.
Neither Alfredo
Arias, nor Vice-Minister of Public Works Eduardo Quirós
(who held a press conference to denounce the El Panama America
story) nor Mireya Moscoso herself has commented on who owns the
one-quarter share in the land that ARKAPAL, SA did not sell to
the company owned by Mireya's relatives by marriage. Nor does
the public record show any tranfer of that interest.
By the following
morning, Vice-Minister or Health Alexis Pinzón was on RPC-
TV's "Debate Abierto" talk show alleging that the
publication of El Panama America's November 19 story was an act
of criminal defamation.
The people
around the table, including one of the editors or El Panama
America, apparently did not catch the full enormity of
Pinzón's legal argument. What he was saying is that the
Moscoso administration now considers it a crime to publish the
contents of the Registro Publico if that embarrasses them.
Moreover,
consider the underlying natures of Mayor Navarro's allegation
and President Moscoso's proxy response. He's essentially saying
that a project that is against the public interest is being
promoted because the president has a conflict of interest. She's
essentially saying that there is no conflict of interest because
most (but according to the documents proffered in her defense,
not all) of her interest in the land near the road was sold to
her late husband's nieces and nephews, who include a top
official in her administration.
Meanwhile
several legal challenges to the road are pending and there has
yet to be the required environmental impact statement about that
part of the road that would bisect the park.
Permit or no
permit, and despite one of the lawsuits against the road having
been accepted for consideration by the Supreme Court, the
president says that the road construction is going ahead, and a
coalition of environmentalist groups says that construction
equipment has been massed at both ends of the proposed road.
The anti-road
coalition says that it will stage more protests in Boquete on
November 28, a public holiday marking Panama's 1823 independence
from Spain. However, the police there have denied the alliance a
parade permit and vow that no protests against the road will be
permitted on that day. The last anti-road march, on November 9,
was blocked by a group of police officers, several of people who
own land along the proposed road, some construction workers who
expect to get jobs building the road (although the nation's
construction workers' union, SUNTRACS, opposes the project) and
the employees of Mireya Moscoso's Boquete coffee business.
Also in this
section:
Panama News
Briefs
Powell here to discuss
corruption
PECC scandal touches PRD and
Arnulfistas, but mostly Toro
Mireya outed on family
interest in land along road
