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President Moscoso used the occasion of her final formal address to the Legislative Assembly, made at the March 1 start of this legislature’s final regular session, to assert that her government has been more successful than that of her predecessor, Ernesto Pérez Balladares. Among other things, Mireya claimed that under her watch Panama’s economy has outperformed those of the other Latin American countries. Many opposition politicians, economists, labor leaders and editorial cartoonists have disputed these claims, with one very common theme being that the president is living a fairy tale existence. Though it does seem that she may have used fudged statistics, the reality is that all of Latin America has been living through hard economic times, so if one compares Panama to the rest of the region our problems don’t look so bad. However, such comparisons are not very convincing to the many Panamanians who once had regular paychecks and now scrape by in the informal economy.

On February 27 Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias called US Ambassador Linda E. Watt into his office to formally complain about the chapter of the US State Department’s annual report on Panama. Arias said that much of the report is “incorrect” and particularly objected to the part about child labor. The Panama section of the report is published in the Opinion section of this issue of The Panama News.

The Electoral Tribunal has extended the existing print and broadcast ban on the publication of opinion polls in the 10 days leading up to national elections to the online press. Violators can be subject to fines of $5,000 to $25,000. It’s legal to take polls in that time, and to take exit polls on Election Day, but not to publish them between 10 days before the vote and the time that the tribunal declares a winner. The Electoral Tribunal didn’t bother asking the nation’s online media beforehand and did not directly inform us of their decision afterwards, and it’s not clear whether they expect us to pull polling data that were published before the 10-day period off of our websites.

No full tax exemption on a Lamborghini? If that touches your heart, don’t cry for the current batch of legislators. On first reading a Legislative Assembly committee has approved a package of reforms designed to limit some of the most unpopular privileges that the assembly’s members enjoy. Under the proposals each legislator would only be able to get one duty-free car per term instead of three, and would only be able to get a maximum of $5,000 in duty exemptions. Also, deputies would be docked pay for absences. However, this proposal is meant to apply to the next legislature, not the current one. Polls suggest that most of the incumbent legislators are likely to be thrown out of office in the May 2 elections.

The National Front Against Corruption, a small group of activists led by retiree Enrique Montenegro, is calling upon voters to reject all current members of the Legislative Assembly in their bids for re-election. The appeal, to be disseminated in some 150,000 leaflets, is based upon the argument that legislators of all factions have been involved in a string of scandals and none of the deputies have stood up and demanded action about them.

With less than a year to go in his term and a national budget squeeze on, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa is expanding the Public Ministry. He’s created five new prosecutor posts at various places around the country, all but one of them to handle juvenile or family law cases.

On March 5 police swooped down in a series of raids, seizing at least 27 kilos of cocaine and 15 suspects of Colombian nationality. One locale that was raided was the Beer House bar, which is close to the special drug prosecutor’s office. The raids came after a joint investigation involving Panamanian, US and Colombian law enforcement agencies. According unnamed sources cited in El Panama America, this drug smuggling ring was linked to Colombia’s left-wing FARC guerrillas.

The cops are cracking down on street gangs in El Chorrillo and Santa Ana, and in the process they have adopted a fashion statement from Alberto Fujimori’s Peru: the police that are raiding tenements in these neighborhoods are sporting AK-47 assault rifles and wearing ski masks so that they can’t be identified for retaliation or complained about in case of police brutality.

Roberto Camaño, the fourth corregidor that the Anton corregimiento of Rio Hato had in less than a year, has been forced out of office. The city council had been criticizing him for his attempts to evict the fishing village of La Pacora, which has existed for at least 60 years, for supposedly squatting on land that someone wanted to turn into a tourist resort. Of course, a family that has occupied a piece of land for that many decades has squatter’s rights, but in the Santa Clara - Rio Hato area land thefts by the rich and politically connected have been all the rage lately, and often these land grabs have been accompanied by the alteration of official land maps. The technicality upon which Camaño was forced out was that, contrary to the law, he doesn’t actually live in the corregimiento. He was replaced by Aristides Rodríguez.

Panama’s election laws ban campaigning in government buildings. So does that mean that candidates can’t press the flesh in a public market, or that a person who rents a stall in one of those places can’t wear a t-shirt, hat or button plugging his or her favorite candidate? Panama City’s Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro says that it means exactly that, while Arnulfista challenger Marco Ameglio calls that a ridiculous interpretation. Navarro has complained to the Electoral Tribunal about Ameglio campaigning in such fashion, and Ameglio is denouncing it as harassment.

Monsignior Oscar Brown, the Catholic bishop of Veraguas and the president of the Episcopal Conference of Panama, used his homily at the annual Atalaya pilgrimage to apologize on behalf of the church for the misconduct of some of its priests. In the past year there have been a couple of priests convicted of having sexual relations with minors and there have been a few allegations of abuses at a seminary. “The church is holy in its structures but sinful in its members,” Brown said.

The Pope has elevated two priests to positions as auxiliary bishops in the Archdiocese of Panama. Reverend José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta, an Augustine vicar, and Reverend Pablo Varela Server, who was rector of nation’s Catholic university, USMA, were assigned to fill bishoprics that had existed for Eastern Europe but which have been reassigned to Latin America.

So far in 2004 there have been six cases of hantavirus infection reported in Los Santos province. The rodent-borne disease, which can be deadly, has been endemic in the Azuero Peninsula for at least four years and the country has seen several deaths from it. People who clean areas that have been infested with rats or mice and breath in powdered residues of feces or urine are especially vulnerable to the infection. The best prevention --- which does not afford perfect protection --- is to eliminate food and water sources and nesting areas for rats and mice around areas where people live or work.



Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Mireya and friends won't get PARLACEN immunity
Sossa presses his attack on the Panamanian press
On the Campaign Trail

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