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By treaty, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission is the highest court of appeal for many cases from Panama, as well as several other Latin American republics. Thus a decision in the criminal defamation case of Mauricio Herrera, a reporter for Costa Rica’s La Nacion newspaper, may serve as a precedent to strike down Panama’s libel and slander laws. Herrera was convicted in 1999 for a series of articles critical of Costa Rica’s delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the time, fined $137,000 and registered as a convicted felon. The trial court refused to hear Herrera’s defense that the stories were based on accounts published in the Belgian press and were factually true. The commission struck down the conviction, awarded Herrera $20,000 in attorney’s fees and ordered Costa Rica to revise its laws and procedures about criminal defamation. Panama’s criminal defamation laws are also being challenged before the commission by journalist Jean Marcel Chéry, who is facing a one-year prison term for a truthful story in El Panama America that made Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora look bad.

Chen Shui-bian, the president of Taiwan who was re-elected earlier this year in a close and controversial contest, will be coming to Panama for Martín Torrijos’s inauguration. Panama is one of the relatively few countries that maintains full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and there is strong pressure from factions both within and outside of the PRD for the incoming administration to downgrade relations with Taiwan in order to be able to establish full relations with China. However, Taiwan also has friends across the Panamanian political spectrum.

The Supreme Court has fined Immigration director Ilka de Barés $200 for deporting a Dominican woman without following legal procedures designed to give the deportee a chance to make her case. The wife of National Police Chief and former Arnulfo Arias bodyguard Carlos Barés, Mrs. Barés was earlier cited by the court for ignoring a court order and deporting a Colombian woman. She is also involved in a controversy over the summary jailing of three Cuban citizens here for alleged immigration infractions. In that latter case, the Panamanian ambassador and consul in Havana are being investigated for alleged improprieties in issuing visas to the three Cubans.

The illegal sale of visas and other scams have long been a lucrative business for Panama’s immigration directors. However, there can be a downside to the racket, and not only in the form of the US State Department canceling visas. On July 29, after many years of legal wrangling, jewelry belonging to one Bélgica Murgas de Castillo, who served as Immigration director under the former dictatorship, were sold at a public auction. After the 1989 invasion it was discovered that Mrs. Castillo had inexplicably amassed a fortune in excess of $600,000 while in public office and such of her assets that could be seized were confiscated by the government.

The United States Navy and the maritime security forces of six other countries will be guests of Panama’s National Maritime Service (SMN) for joint naval maneuvers in Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific waters between August 10 and 16. The war games will be tactical simulations of the defense of the Panama Canal against a sea borne attack. Panama has no navy as such, but rather a coast guard (SMN) that’s part of the National Police.

Panamanian authorities have arrested US citizen Gustavo Mora Mora, who ran an airplane chartering business out of Albrook airport and was allegedly a member of a smuggling ring that was sending some three tons of cocaine into the United States every month. Although he is eligible to be extradited to face US charges, Mora’s arrest was made for violation of Panamanian drug laws.

Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís has asked the Electoral Tribunal to impose a three-year prison sentence on Changuinola’s Mayor Samuel Palacios on charges that he used municipal funds to promote his primary candidacy to be a legislative suplente (alternate) on PRD deputy Benicio Robinson’s slate. Palacios won his primary and Robinson and Palacios went on to be elected on May 2, and that election has not been impugned. However, if the tribunal convicts Palacios it is very likely that part of its sentence would be to remove him from office and deprive him of his political rights for a number of years.

On July 30 the Electoral Tribunal heard testimony from several witnesses in a case in which it is alleged that employees of the state-owned Banco Hipotecario Nacional were compelled to buy tickets to a MOLIRENA election fundraising dinner. The bank was one of several fiefdoms that Mireya Moscoso allotted to her junior coalition partner. MOLIRENA was once a conservative business-oriented political party, but in the Moscoso administration it transformed itself into a corrupt extension of the Rosas family business, leading to its catastrophic defeat at the polls on May 2. The party just barely held onto its ballot status and Jesús “Maco” Rosas is vowing to remain its leader, but the Rosases are under attack both from disenchanted party members and in a series of cases in which MOLIRENA or its candidates have been accused of various election crimes.

Legislator-elect Juan Manuel Peralta Ríos has been charged with fraud for writing a $650,000 check to a debt collection company called Interfinanzas Factoring. His lawyer calls the prosecution “blackmail,” because as of September 1 his client will enjoy immunity from criminal investigation or prosecution and authorities didn’t wait until then to press charges. Peralta’s case will be one of several early tests of the incoming PRD-dominated legislature’s attitude about immunity, as the constitution allows the Legislative Assembly to lift the immunity of its own members. The current legislature has steadfastly refused to do so, even in relation to flagrant, admitted and violent crimes and even when individual legislators have sought to set aside their own immunity. The Mireyista-dominated Supreme Court has gone a step further, holding in the CEMIS case that non-legislators suspected of paying bribes to legislators are also protected by legislative immunity. In the 1994-1999 assembly, in which the PRD was dominant, legislative immunity was lifted on several occasions.

On August 2 police detained Bocas del Toro Mayor Eladio Robinson and brought him to the prosecutors’ office for formal interrogation related to 12 criminal complaints, mostly having to do with his part in the illegal evictions of long-time residents who had squatters’ rights to their homes, so that the lands could be appropriated by speculators. Robinson, who has played the role of stage prop in American scam artist Tom McMurrain’s online propaganda for his teak, noni and real estate schemes, did not seek re-election this year.

Now that Mireya Moscoso’s plan to build a road from Boquete to Cerro Punta --- through the Volcan Baru National Park and past lands owned by herself and her relatives --- has become moot, the Supreme Court has overturned a decision that it made this past January when it held that the local prosecutor had no standing to challenge a violation of environmental laws by the government. The decision has been hailed as a positive step by environmentalists. The decision did not touch the merits of the road controversy itself, but the more far-reaching issue of prosecutors’ standing to act in such cases.

After a long string of cases in which the high court denied access to information about government spending on the theory that those not directly involved in public transactions have no right to know about them, cracks are beginning to show in the Mireyista stonewalling effort. Most recently the Supreme Court ruled that Minister of the Presidency Mirna Pittí must provide national Ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) Juan Tejada with data about the ministry’s spending for personal services contracts. A few weeks earlier, Tejada prevailed in a similar lawsuit with respect to such spending by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

On July 25 the Madroño River in Chepo district stank of the rotting remains of thousands of dead fish and shrimp. According to La Prensa, it seems that someone dumped pesticides into the waterway as a method of catching river shrimp for human consumption. It’s a highly illegal but common practice around Panama, about which consumers need to beware for the sake of their health.

After having first supported an unsuccessful Japanese motion to make voting secret at the recent International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting in Sorrento, Italy, Panama went on to vote with the majority to maintain a ban on commercial whaling but sided with Japan and against Brazil and Argentina to defeat a proposed ban on “research” whaling in the South Atlantic. Greenpeace International issued a scathing opinion that accused the Japanese of trying to bribe small nations to support its whaling industry. During the recent election campaign Martín Torrijos pledged to take a solidly anti-whaling stand in the IWC. Panama has never had a commercial whaling industry but we do get whales, particularly in the waters off of Coiba, and there is a small amount of whale watching tourism associated with that.

Panama’s laws and regulations about electrical connections are usually discussed in the context of the widespread practice of stealing electricity --- a phenomenon that tends to be worse in wealthy areas than in the slums and squatter communities where it is most obvious. But aside from the ethics and economics, there is a safety issue, which was highlighted by the recent death of Johnny Enrique Llerena Frías, a nine-year-old boy living in Colon province’s community of Nuevo San Juan. His house did not have its own electrical connection, but instead got power through an improvised connection with his aunt’s house next door. However on August 4 the wire between the houses fell down and the barefoot boy stepped on it and was electrocuted. It seems that theft was not involved. However, Panama also has building and safety codes --- even if they are rarely enforced --- and this incident was a tragic reminder of why such improvised power hookups are illegal under those laws.





Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
US starts to cancel Mireyistas' visas
"Hard hand" against certain types of crime
Constitutional changes passed, maybe
Chávez faces a recall vote
Torrijos names more cabinet members
Milanés de Lay's election annulled

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