One of the more sordid episodes that weighed on the voters’ minds this past May 2 was the way that President Moscoso bought, renovated and furnished a beach house at Punta Mala in Los Santos, then claimed some right to keep it because her grandfather allegedly owned the land long ago, then backed down and went through the motions of putting the place up for sale, and finally rigged the contest so that the estate ended up in her brother’s --- or more likely her own --- hands.
Now on her way out, Mireya has added to the property. In a strange, bidless proceeding, she has managed to acquire a long-term lease on adjoining government-owned beachfront property, a 4,633.86 square meter parcel for which a company that she owns will pay $332 per month in rent.
It’s not just that you or I would not be offered a similar deal. The land in question is part of the Pedro Pablo Barrios Nature Reserve, property that’s not supposed to be available to private parties at any price.
Most conveniently, the taxpayers have just finished building a new road to the president’s beach house (or her brother’s, if you want to believe that), to the tune of $338,000. Meanwhile, the public access gravel road to the adjacent public beach, Playa El Lagarto, remains in a mucky state of disrepair. Some 1,000 area residents use that latter road to get to and from their homes, while few homes are served by the now-paved road to Punta Mala. (There are, however, a few businesses along the new road. One of them is a radio station partly owned by Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona.)
The outgoing president doesn’t appear to be fazed by the bad publicity. On August 21, while unveiling a bronze statue of herself in Pedasí, she declared that “the perception that my government has been corrupt doesn’t coincide with reality.” She added that she has a list of public officials who have committed acts of corruption in her administration, but declined to release it.
Mireya Moscoso’s is by no means the first Panamanian administration to go on a smash-and-grab binge on its way out. But the president probably does take the gold medal for the brazen way she has gone about looting the public trust during her final days in office.
The more usual thing is for lame duck presidents to make appointments and sign contracts in an attempt to keep the gravy train rolling after their exit. That’s happening as well, with mixed results.
On August 17, some 600 Mireyista political appointees at the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) walked off the job to demand that their contracts be extended past the September 1 inauguration through the end of this year. After “negotiations” with the ARI administration headed by the nephew of Mireya’s late husband Arnulfo Arias --- ARI director Alfredo Arias --- the “strike” was “settled” with a promise that the Mireyista activists’ contracts would be extended.
The small-time party hacks who think --- probably erroneously --- that they have won a few more months on the gravy train are not the objects of ARI's most generous largesse. A company apparently owned by members of the Mireyista in-crowd's Jacomé family got the concession for the fuel tank farm at the former Howard Air Force Base, and a contract to build a four-lane highway on the Amador Causeway still seems to be in play.
Meanwhile at Tocumen, work began on August 19 for a $21.1 million terminal expansion project that is scheduled to be completed in 2006. A few months back, The Panama News was shown an internal memorandum urging that the terminal vending concessions be awarded before Mireya leaves office. There have been various rumors that we can’t confirm about the concessionaires selected to win the “competition,” but in any case it seems doubtful that the incoming Torrijos administration would stand for any of these plums falling into the laps of Mireya’s friends or relatives.
Over at the National Maritime Authority, outgoing director Bertilda García Escalona hasn’t been showing up at the office but the authority has been working overtime granting contracts. One of those, a renewal of the Atlantic-Pacific SA (APSA) concession to run the bunkering fuel tank farms at either end of the canal, has run into problems after the National Economic Council objected to about a half-dozen particulars about the deal and refused to give its required imprimatur.
Rubén Arosemena, who will be serving as both second vice-president and director of the National Maritime Authority under the new administration, has warned García Escalona not to award any contracts that will last past the end of the Moscoso administration, and he vows to review and rescind all improperly and imprudently granted contracts, licenses and concessions as one of his first actions new post. That latter promise has won the enthusiastic endorsement of many people in the national fishing industry, who claim that García Escalona has sold too many fishing permits to foreign commercial operations, which are allegedly stripping Panama’s coastal waters of its wildlife.
Similarly, Martín Torrijos has called for an audit of the state-owned Banco Nacional de Panama, and incoming Education Minister Juan Bosco Bernal says he’s going to look into the management of the public television Canal Once, which has been run as part of the Rosas family business for these past five years and has been the subject of numerous allegations of impropriety.
However, it seems that the Mireyistas are preparing for the inevitable investigations as well, if we are to believe anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro. On August 16 he claimed that over at the Ministry of Agricultural Development they were shredding contracts and purchase orders in preparation for the change of government.
Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Last minute smash and grab time for Mireya and her followers
Still waiting on a canal expansion plan
Canal's 90th birthday
