news

On May 24 a jury found former seminary student Marco Manjarrez guilty of the brutal May 19, 2002 stabbing murder of Monsignior Jorge Altafulla. There was no question about whether the defendant killed the monsignior, but the accused’s sanity was a hotly contested issue. During the trial Manjarrez exhibited sometimes strange behavior, alternately smiling at odd times and breaking down in tears at others, giving sometimes incoherent testimony on his own behalf and attempting to enter contradictory pleas. During his two-year incarceration awaiting trial, Manjarrez attempted suicide several times. Altafulla, while director of the San Jose Seminary, had expelled Manjarrez for unfitness to become a priest. The defense argued that the expulsion caused Manjarrez to become mentally unhinged. Supporting that contention was the testimony of a psychiatrist who described the defendant as suffering from paranoiac delusions. To the jury, however, the murder was prompted by simple motives of revenge rather than mental illness. Throughout the trial and in the two years of preparation for it, defense counsel Rafael Rodríguez portrayed the seminary as a hellish place where sexual abuse was common, a characterization which Archbishop José Dimas Cedeño, the Altafulla family and many Catholics disputed and found highly offensive. Manjarrez faces up to 20 years in an ordinary prison, but because he is a suicide risk and would be a target for abuse by other inmates, will probably not be mingled with the general prison population. Had he been acquitted he might have been indefinitely confined in a locked section of a mental hospital --- or might have been able to just walk out the courthouse door and go on his way.

The Electoral Tribunal says that it has received 973 complaints about violations of election laws this year, the great majority of them alleging that people registered to vote where they don’t live. There have been 18 allegations of vote buying, 54 of illegal use of government funds or property for campaign purposes, 11 of people voting more than once and one of somebody altering the acta from a voting station. There were several other instances of missing actas that turned up and made the difference in election results, but it seems that in none of those instances is anyone alleging criminal intent.

At the request of Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís the lame duck Legislative Assembly will consider lifting the immunity of four of its members suspected of election crimes. Arnulfista legislator Haydée Milanés de Lay is accused of using money from the government’s Social Investment Fund (FIS) to buy votes, while the PRD’s Franz Wever and Arnulfista Francisco Alemán are accused of buying votes with private funds. Arnulfista Carlos Santana is accused of assaulting election officials when he was informed that he had lost his bid for re-election. The current assembly has steadfastly refused to withdraw any member’s immunity, even in notorious cases of admitted bribery and electricity theft aggravated by an armed assault on electric company workers. Santana’s immunity will expire on September 1, but the other three were re-elected and will probably remain immune until the next legislature considers their cases. In the case of Milanés de Lay, however, legislative solidarity may not suffice because Solís has impugned her election before the Electoral Tribunal and the vote in her circuit may be declared void. In addition to vote buying, Wever is being investigated in connection with alleged alterations of four actas from polling stations, which PRD candidate Maribel Coco claims resulted in Wever being improperly given a seat in the legislature that rightly belongs to her.

On May 21 National Police Second Corporal Edilberto Escudero lost his life in the line of duty after being shot while attempting to arrest a prison escapee in an apartment block in the Santa Rita neighborhood. The fugitive, who had escaped from the La Joya - La Joyita prison complex in Tinajitas last February, where he was serving a six-month sentence on domestic violence charges, was also shot and killed in the altercation.

The lame duck legislature is set to consider a Moscoso administration proposal to “modernize” Panama’s immigration laws. The proposal would set up a new Immigration Council, presumably to be headed by Moscoso appointees, institute new registration requirements for foreigners, create a new repatriation fund and change procedures related to tourist visas. The Mireyistas don’t propose to directly change this country’s internationally-condemned policy of refusing refugee status to those who flee here to escape Colombia’s civil conflict or Panama’s restrictions on black, Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants. Nor does it seem that an amnesty for the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants living in the country will be part of the package. However, the proposed new council would have the power to issue amnesties and adjust the current restrictions.

Martín Torrijos doesn’t want a referendum about convening a constituent assembly, and by consent of the various party caucuses the proposal has been taken off the legislative agenda. However, it is likely that the Legislative Assembly will consider some constitutional reforms before it disbands, and if it passes any of those and the new legislature also approves them, they will become part of the constitution. One reform that may be discussed is to allow the possibility of constitutional change by way of a constituent assembly.

A Supreme Court panel headed by Mireya Moscoso appointee Winston Spadafora has struck down the controversial regulation by which the president decreed that for a person to benefit from the Transparency Law opening government documents to public scrutiny he or she would first have to prove a personal interest in the information. In a series of Supreme Court cases the magistrates held that merely being a taxpayer did not confer enough of a personal interest in government spending to have a right to information about it, and that merely being a journalist trying to report the news was not a good enough reason to get public documents about controversial topics. But now, as Mireya is about to leave office, it seems that the next administration will have to work under different rules. It’s probably of little consequence anyway, as Martín Torrijos has promised to rescind Mireya’s information control regulations as one of his first acts once he assumes office.

The University of Panama administration’s attempt to discipline and possibly fire law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal will not only go through the usual delays of a Supreme Court case. The high court has not only agreed to hear lawyer and radio talk show host’s constitutional challenge to the move, but also taken the somewhat unusual move of referring it to Administrative Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher for her opinion on the matter. Bernal is being represented in the matter by former Supreme Court magistrate and University of Panama Law Faculty colleague Aura Guerra de Villalaz. Bernal is being accused of misconduct for criticizing the rector’s budget cut priorities.

According to a report in La Prensa, some 400 lawyers are facing charges ranging from simple negligent malpractice to criminal activity for which they might be sent to prison, but the nation’s bar association, the Colegio de Abogados, is not in a good position to confront the profession’s ethical problems. At present the most severe penalty that the Colegio may impose is a two-year suspension, and meanwhile the docket of its disciplinary committee is jammed up with a serious backlog of cases.

It seems that Coiba Island and its surrounding waters and islets will get the national park protection that environmentalists have been advocating. If, that is, the Legislative Assembly does not amend the measure it passed on second reading before the required third vote and passes it as is, and the president signs it, and no decrees are issued carving out exceptions for the large-scale hotel developments that park advocates fear. Environmentalists are generally happy with the version that passed on second reading, except that they want more of the coral reefs surrounding the island included in the park.

The 9/11 Foundation, composed of New York City firefighters, has donated two surplus fire trucks to Panama’s bomberos. There are several Panamanian-Americans working for the New York Fire Department, as many people in the Crown Heights area trace roots back through the isthmus, and New York firefighters have received warm receptions while marching in bombero parades here. The foundation sent a team to Panama to look at our firefighting system and render appropriate assistance, and these two trucks are some of the results.

The Rosas family and its MOLIRENA party subsidiary got resoundingly thrashed in the May 2 elections, but nevertheless they are still running Panama’s public education system as their property and, as in MOLIRENA, continuing their pre-election purges. Now Jaime Ruiz, the rector of the Instituto Nacional, has been removed by Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata. The ministry has made no public explanation of the move, but more than one year ago teachers at the institute, which is the public school system’s elite high school for excellent students, complained of financial irregularities. Rosas de Mata has also removed Aristides Sánchez, the principal of the Instituto Fermin Nadeau, which is also being audited for possible financial mismanagement.

On May 17 Rogelio Meléndez, who had worked as a janitor for the Education Ministry in Panama Oeste for 23 years, chained himself to ministry’s regional office building to protest what he called a politically motivated firing. Meléndez had complained that his boss, Higinio Domínguez, had used public resources in an unsuccessful bid to get elected to the legislature on the MOLIRENA ticket. Meléndez, who belongs to the PRD, claims that the firing came after five years of harassment and transfers designed to make him quit his job with the ministry.

MOLIRENA’s youth organization has passed a resolution demanding that party boss Jesús “Maco” Rosas step down and that a convention to elect new leaders and restructure the party be held within 60 days. The party just barely retained its ballot status in an election where it went down with the Mireyista ship.

President Moscoso has vetoed legislation that would have made the Panama Canal Administration Building, the top of Ancon Hill and General Omar Torrijos’s mausoleum at Amador national monuments. The general’s remains were stolen from the mausoleum and never recovered as a part of the 1989 US invasion, and now ARI has proposed to raze the mausoleum to make way for a commercial development.

Neighbors of a vacant lot next to a Panama City supermarket complained to health authorities of a vile odor that they couldn’t identify. Upon investigation, it turned out to be a dead elephant. The Hermanos Gasca circus, a Mexican company, secretly buried the corpse of a 24-year-old Asian elephant in a shallow grave on the lot, without bothering to get any of the required city or health permits. The circus is facing the prospect of a fine of up to $5,000.





Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
USAID cuts off Panama's courts
Torture pictures and the law
Endara predicts new constitution despite PRD opposition
Young illegal immigrants easy prey in the USA
American Democrats gather in Panama

Back to top

Panama Information, Hotels of Panama - Executive Hotel
Panama Information, Real Estate in Las Cumbres - Villa Concordia
Panama Information - Online guide to information about Panama - www.panama-information.executivehotel-panama.com
Panama Tourism - Online info for the Tourist Panama - www.travel-to-panama.com
Panama Pictures - Collection of pictures of Panama - www.panama-pictures.com