Panama News Briefs

Panamanian and US investigators are looking into the cause of a July 2 air ambulance crash at Tocumen Airport that left seven people dead. The jet, which was en route from Ecuador to the United States and had stopped in Panama for refueling, dove back to the ground as it was taking off for the second leg of its flight, killing an airport worker next the runway and then crashing into a hangar. All six people aboard were instantly killed. The dead include Panamanian Santiago Velásquez, 35, Italians Paola Di Gregorio and Alessia Mairati --- a mother and daughter aged 40 and 17 respectively, and Americans Morris Morrow (59, the plane's pilot), Hayward Daisey (59), Steven Herbert (21) and Barry Scott White (37). So far terrorism and engine failure have been ruled out, but analysts from the US Federal Aviation Administration are still examining the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders in search of clues to the accident's cause.

The dispute between Panama and the United States over the latter’s refusal to clean former US military firing ranges here got a new and tragic face on June 29. Sabino Rivera, a 42-year-old unemployed father of nine children, ignored the warning signs and went onto the range in search of wild finger bananas to feed his family, as he had done before. This time he stepped on an unexploded mortar round, which literally blew him to bits. The 1977 Panama Canal Treaty required the United States to remove “all hazards” from the former Canal Zone, “insofar as is practicable.” The US government waited until 1998 to begin such cleanup efforts as it made, then declared that it was “impracticable” to clean the ranges by the time that the US military was scheduled to leave in 1999. Successive Panamanian administrations have complained that this was a treaty violation. The Moscoso administration, however, has demanded neither a clean-up nor remuneration for its own clean-up operations, but rather a check for several hundred million dollars for the Panamanian government to spend as it pleases. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations maintained that the United States complied with all of its treaty commitments and have rejected Panamanian claims. The Moscoso administration has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Washington lawyers and lobbyists, without results and without any lawsuits being filed. There is a chance that the Rivera family will end up as plaintiffs before a US court, and that Panama’s claim will end up before the World Court. In the latter instance it will depend on the incoming Torrijos administration’s approach to the dispute.

A bid by the PRD and the Partido Popular to put the latter party’s Teresita de Arias, who was defeated in the May 2 election, back into the assembly was rejected by the Electoral Tribunal on June 22. The move, backed by Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís, was based on the following logic: Partido Popular president and legislator Rubén Arosemena, running both for re-election to the legislature and for second vice-president, in both instances running on both the PRD and Partido Popular tickets, won both posts. Under a deal between the two parties and Panama’s arcane system of electing legislators from multi-member circuits, he received “quotients” from both parties, even though he didn’t finish in first place, managed to win a seat in the legislature. No other Partido Popular legislator won a seat --- in fact the PRD’s junior coalition partner just barely retained its ballot status. Arosemena resigned his seat in the new assembly in favor of his suplente, Jorge Hernán Rubio. Then it was alleged that, as Arosemena and Rubio got most of their quotients from PRD voters, Rubio would be a PRD deputy, leaving the Partido Popular without representation. But the law provides that a party that gets enough votes to retain ballot status has a right to a legislator, with that seat going to the top vote-getter for the party. If one does not count Arosemena, that would have been Mrs. Arias. But despite the prosecutor’s plea, the tribunal counted Arosemena and Rubio as Partido Popular members and didn’t give Teresita de Arias a seat in the next legislature.

On June 24 the Legislative Assembly’s Credentials Committee --- Legislator José Isabel Blandón and three suplentes standing in for legislators who can now spuriously claim that they didn’t support immunity --- voted unanimously to reject a motion to lift the immunity of deputies Haydée Milanés de Lay and Carlos Santana. Both were accused by private individuals, the former for allegedly falsifying documents to establish Panamanian citizenship despite having supposedly been born in Colombia, the latter on an assault and battery complaint. The assembly’s regular session ran out before the committee could take up complaints about four other legislators, which left their immunities intact as well.

All but one of the 78 legislators elected on May 2 have received their credentials, although some of them remain under investigation by the Electoral Prosecutor on suspicion of various election law offenses. The one who didn’t get credentials was Darien incumbent Haydée Milanés de Lay, whose election was impugned by the Electoral Prosecutor and who goes on trial July 13 for allegedly using public funds to buy votes. Two other incumbents who won re-election face investigations for other suspected election offenses, while 11 lame ducks who were defeated also face a similar fate. The current Legislative Assembly has refused to lift any of its members’ immunity, but for those who were not re-elected, that protection runs out on September 1. The incoming PRD-dominated assembly may take a different view on allegations of its own members’ corruption than the present Mireyista-dominated legislature has. The Mireyista-dominated Supreme Court has held that not only may a legislator not be tried or punished without the assembly first lifting immunity, but that no investigation may be done of the conduct of an immune legislator and further that a legislator may not voluntarily set aside his or her immunity without his or her colleague’s consent.

In 1999 Ernesto Pérez Balladares budgeted no money for the inauguration of his successor and did not attend her inauguration. Now Mireya is following suit. But unlike President Moscoso, who obtained private funding for her inaugural celebrations, Martín Torrijos says that he won’t be throwing any festivities. Citing an ongoing crime wave, the organization of the next legislature and a crowded agenda of urgent business, he told El Panama America reporters that September 1 will be a day of work, not celebration, for himself and his administration.

It appears that Mireya’s “Ecological Road” past properties that she and her relatives own, which would bisect Volcan Baru National Park and connect Boquete and Cerro Punta, is now a dead letter. The highly unpopular project doesn’t have a permit from the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and won’t get one in time for the road to be built before President Moscoso’s term in office is history. But just the same, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit by the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON), which challenges the project on the ground that the contract between the government and the Constructora Urbana SA construction company (CUSA) was illegally made without the required bidding process. The high court ducked a number of other legal challenges to the road, mostly for reasons of procedure or standing, including an important argument that it’s illegal for an administration to modify a law creating a national park by decree rather than by going through the Legislative Assembly.

In her last weeks as president of a flagrantly corrupt administration, Mireya Moscoso sent the police on a sweep through the impoverished Panama City barrio of San Miguel to arrest more than a dozen people on various charges, and told the nation in nationally broadcast address that she’s for life imprisonment for murder and possibly other crimes. The maximum criminal penalty in Panama these days is twenty years in prison. She also proposed adult penalties on minors who break the law and criminal sanctions for membership in criminal organizations other than her own administration.

Marco Manjarrez has received the expected maximum 20-year prison term for the murder of Monsignior Jorge Altafulla. Manjarrez, a mentally disturbed young man, repeatedly stabbed the monsignior, who had earlier expelled him from a seminary as unfit for the Catholic priesthood. In passing sentence, Magistrate Wilfredo Sáenz noted Manjarrez’s apparent lack of remorse. Manjarrez has attempted suicide at least six times while incarcerated, but is bound for prison rather than a locked mental hospital ward.

The Second Justice Tribunal has thrown out a habeas corpus motion challenging the convictions and prison sentences of four Cuban anti-Castro activists for possession of explosives and conspiracy. The men were allegedly part of a plot to kill Fidel Castro --- and in the process many other people --- by planting bombs at the University of Panama Paraninfo, where he gave a speech during the November 2000 Ibero-American summit. More serious attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges were thrown out during the long judicial process, which included not only charges brought by prosecutors but also private criminal accusations brought by several of the student, labor, indigenous and leftist groups that sponsored Castro’s appearance at the university. These private parties say they’ll appeal the sentences --- prison terms of seven or eight years --- because they consider them too light. Most of the activists are in their 60s and 70s and will be eligible for parole in a year or two, having served most of the required two-thirds of their sentences before having come to trial. By their lawyers’ mathematics, they have already served the time required of them and must b released. Aside from that, the convictions themselves are under appeal. The activists have a well-organized defense effort, mostly funded by Cuban exile groups in the United States.

Usually crimes against individuals don’t get protesters out to block the streets. However, the kidnapping and subsequent murder of Colon attorney Cristian Rojas Viveros was one of those rare occasions. Despite the payment of a $75,000 ransom the man was killed, and local residents blocked the Trans-Isthmian Highway to demand justice. The police arrested a former employee of the Rojas family’s Colon Free Zone business, who had been fired several years before, and said it looked like a revenge killing. But then at least two other people who were working at the business were hauled in, members of the victim’s family were questioned and ultimately seven individuals were held in jail and two more sought by police, in what looks like it may have been an economically motivated inside job at the family business rather than a case of simple revenge.

The Kuna General Congress has passed a resolution demanding the prosecution of members and leaders of Colombia’s AUC paramilitary for their 2002 invasion of Paya and Pucuro, in which three Kuna sahilas --- roughly equivalent to municipal council members --- and one other person were slain. Although the AUC leaders who ordered the crime bragged about it to Colombia’s media, the Moscoso administration not only didn't file a diplomatic complaint or press criminal charges, but in fact jailed a man who ran from Paya to Pucuro to warn of the attack and avoid further assassinations. To further show her solidarity with the Colombian death squad cause, Moscoso did not order Panamanian flags flown at half staff for the murdered public officials and sent neither a government representative nor a wreath to the funerals.

The Supreme Court has granted bail to one Yina Tatiana Vásquez, an alleged member of Colombia’s right-wing AUC paramilitary who was jailed in connection with the seizure of 274 kilos of cocaine and 40 AK-47 assault rifles near Chepo in 2002. Theoretically, there is no bail in drug cases. However, the Supreme Court has a Mireyista majority and it has been Mireya Moscoso’s apparent but unadmitted policy to support Plan Colombia and the AUC paramilitary, which has conducted a series of bloody attacks on Panama.

It has become a favorite pastime of Panama’s overgrown yuppie puppies, who apparently consider American retro-behavior as the height of fashion. Every weekend young men go squealing their tires on the streets of Panama City, often in their parents’ cars. Despite numerous complaints by city residents and occasional crackdowns by Transito cops, the street racing just moves from one area to the next. So on the evening of June 27, 28-year-old Keingi Tapsuro Oday and 23-year-old Jack Gasal Micha were racing on Calle 50 in San Francisco when they came around a curve near the Tamburelli’s pizzeria and went flying off the road, smashing into the restaurant and its parking lot. Gasal Micha was killed and Tapsuro Oday seriously injured. Five cars in the parking lot were damaged or destroyed, the restaurant’s facade was smashed in and a diner suffered non-life-threatening injuries. And so Transito announced that more special operations will be mounted to suppress street racing and that those who are caught participating in the dangerous and annoying pastime will be subject to stiff fines.

In the rush before its last regular session ended, the Legislative Assembly passed a law to turn Coiba Island and its adjacent waters and islets into a national park. However, for the second time Mireya Moscoso vetoed the legislation. This time around she objected to only one section, which restricted development on several bits of land on islands outside the park’s limits. But the legislature repassed the law without the offending section, and it seems that the president will sign it. The environmentalist National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON) says that it’s pleased by the creation of the new park. Coiba, largely untouched by human hands, is at the center of a vast set of coral reefs and because of its isolation and ocean currents running from there to the Galapagos is home to a number of unique plant and animal species.

On June 23 students from the Cirilio Martínez elementary school in Pedregal and their parents blocked the road to Tocumen Airport for about four hours because the floors of their school were covered with raw sewage. The underlying problem was that the septic tanks had overflowed, spilling sewage onto the floors, and the Education Ministry didn’t think that the situation was urgent enough for immediate attention.

Guillermo Endara was the Solidaridad Party’s standard-bearer in the May elections, but he and his running mates weren’t actually members of that party. Expelled by Mireya Moscoso from the Arnulfista Party and annoyed by the infighting over the substantial government subsidies that his second place finish won for Solidaridad, Endara now says he intends to carry on the panameñista tradition of Arnulfo Arias through a new party, the Vanguardia Moral de la Patria. The new group will have to sign up a bit more than 53,000 members to get a spot on the ballot for future elections.

With $80,000 from the German government and 19th century designs from church archives, the Catholic Church has replaced eight sets of massive balsam wood and brass doors at the Catedral Metropolitano in the Casco Viejo. The designs of the original cathedral doors, which date back to the late 17th century, have been lost. It is estimated that the new doors will last 200 years.

The Moscoso administration won’t be sending a representative to the July 19 meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Sorrento, Italy. This is seen as a victory by environmentalists because at the last IWC meeting Panama’s representatives supported Japan’s motion to resume some commercial whaling and opposed anti-whaling nations’ proposals to create an Antarctic whale protection zone. Panama has no commercial whaling, but does a little bit of whale watching tourist business around Coiba Island. In his campaign Martín Torrijos said that his government would oppose whaling.

Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Spate of murders and disappearances provokes protests over violence against women
Special legislative session to consider constitutional proposals
Old ship --- maybe Columbus's Vizcaina --- resurfaces in the news
Allegations from Honduras about al Qaeda plot to attack the canal
Double standard on criminal records?

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