Mireya defies Electoral Tribunal

Whether presidents are on the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week is a philosophical and legal question that was recently important to the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal. The basic rule is that public employees can’t engage in partisan politicking while on the job, because that amounts to the illegal use of government resources for partisan purposes. Some will say that a president is never off duty, and logically extend the rule that applies to nine-to-five functionaries to hold that the president of Panama is precluded from engaging in any campaign activities. Mireya Moscoso, on the other hand, says that her work day ends at four o’clock and that she’s free to campaign on evenings and weekends. Last June the tribunal conceded the narrow issue to the president, issuing the controversial Decree 20 that allows her to campaign while she’s off the job.

However, that argument is now way beside the point. When Mireya Moscoso went to Las Tablas to inaugurate a street improvement project and turned it into a campaign rally for legislator Carlos Afú, the renegade PRD legislator whose defection gave her control of the Legislative Assembly, it was a flagrant use of public funds for partisan purposes by any reasonable definition, regardless of the dispensations granted in Decree 20..

Thus, the magistrates of the Electoral Tribunal passed a resolution asking Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís to investigate the matter.

But what happens when a president flouts the law? It’s up to the legislature to impeach or not impeach, and Mireya controls the legislature. Thus Solís, seeing the suggestion as a sure losing proposition, said he’s not one to start investigations over what he reads in the newspapers and also declined the magistrates’ suggestions.

Then Mireya showed up at the assembly with its president, Jacobo Salas, smirking and holding a sign saying “Legislator Salas, don’t talk to me, look at me or smile, or they’ll denounce us.” She also predicted that if she were impeached for misconduct there would be violent disorders in the streets. Salas obediently proclaimed that on his watch Mireya won’t be impeached.

Meanwhile, an attorney named Omaris Martinau Arboleda, saying that she was acting on her own behalf as an ordinary citizen, filed a criminal complaint with the Attorney General. She seeks to have the three electoral judges removed from office on the theory that their resolution amounted to the crimes of abuse of authority and exceeding the powers of their office.

In the face of such defiance from the president, there has been no more talk from the magistrates about whether and when Mireya can campaign. However, shortly after Mireya and Salas made their declarations, the Electoral Tribunal reversed its earlier ruling that the image of Arnulfo Arias belongs exclusively to the Arnulfista Party and Mireya Moscoso, freeing Guillermo Endara to use it in his campaign commercials. Although Mireya had him purged from the party last year, Endara was a key aide to the late Dr. Arnulfo Arias and one of the founders of the Arnulfista Party.

Mireya’s audacious challenge to the tribunal, backed as it was by her control of the legislature and the implicit threat of political violence, has been the subject of much criticism and commentary in the nation’s press and political circles. El Panama America faulted the magistrates for “opening Pandora’s Box” by tolerating any campaigning at all by the president. La Prensa declared that the president’s actions “leave a bitter taste” with the electorate and call into question the credibility and efficacy of the Electoral Tribunal.

The complaints about the tribunal were accentuated on February 12 when Roberto Lombana, a co-founder of the Electoral Delegates Corps and the president of the vote-counting Junta Nacional de Escrutinio during the 1999 elections, resigned from the Corps. Lombana said that the Electoral Tribunal’s credibility was compromised and raised the possibility that, 14 years after the end of the dictatorship, Panamanian democracy is threatened.

Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Mireya does battle with the Electoral Tribunal
No constitutional referendum in May
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On the campaign trail

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Moscoso defies the Electoral Tribunal, which revokes her dibs on Arnulfo’s image

Moscoso defies the Electoral Tribunal,
which revokes her dibs on Arnulfo’s image