news

Veteran PRD legislator and former Supreme Court magistrate Jerry Wilson has been chosen as president of the Legislative Assembly for the next year. He received not only the votes of the PRD majority caucus and its Partido Popular junior partner, but also the support of a number of his colleagues from the opposition parties.

In Panama provincial governors are appointed, not elected, and have relatively few powers. Martín Torrijos has appointed journalist Erich Rodríguez Auerbach as governor of the most populous province, Panama, and put defeated legislator Olgalina de Quijada back in her old post as governor in Colon. Virgilio Vergara will serve as governor in Chiriqui, Esther de Mena in Bocas del Toro, Darío Fernández in Cocle, Clovis Sáez in Herrera, Arturo Fábrega in Veraguas and Héctor Cárdenas in Los Santos.

As of this coming September 30, former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares will no longer be a member of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and will thus lose his legislative immunity. He has been the subject of a number of criminal investigations related to a buoy and lighthouse maintenance contract with a company called PECC that was awarded by the old National Ports Authority (now integrated into the National Maritime Authority) during his presidency. It seems, from documents made public by Comptroller General Alvin Weeden, that Toro was a silent owner of PECC. But now the Supreme Court has held that the ex-president is protected from any investigation or prosecution for that alleged scam due to his parliamentary immunity, now or in the future. No matter that the alleged crime began before he was a PARLACEN member, or that his immunity will expire shortly. It is one of a series of rulings by which the court has extended parliamentary immunity. For example, in quashing the investigation of bribery allegations in relation to the CEMIS multimodal container handling and airport development contract, the court held that parliamentary immunity not only blocked investigations of legislators who clung to their protections, but also of those who tried to voluntarily waive it and to non-legislators suspected of paying bribes to legislators. The decision was by a 6-3 vote, with all three dissenting votes coming from members of the five-member Arnulfista court majority.

Aquilino E. Boyd De la Guardia, who was one of the first wave of civilian politicians to make peace with the military dictatorship and who in his capacity as a diplomat and foreign minister played a key role in the negotiations that led to the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties, died in Panama City on Saturday, September 4. He was 83 years old.

The Institutional Protection Service (SPI) is Panama’s presidential guard, something approaching an elite national security SWAT team and intelligence agency, and a dependency of the Ministry of the Presidency. (Panama’s main law enforcement agency, the National Police, is part of the Ministry of Government and Justice, while the Judicial Technical Police --- PTJ --- comes under the Public Ministry. In any case, President Torrijos has chosen a lawyer rather than someone from law enforcement to head the SPI, attorney Leonel Solís.

In the Moscoso administration the government was divided up into fiefdoms among the families and factions that comprised Mireyismo. Early on, Ricardo Martinelli’s Cambio Democratico was part of the coalition and one of the plums it was given was the IDAAN water and sewer utility. There they instituted a party dues payroll deduction for utility workers, which was highly illegal. Now 11 Cambio Democratico members are set to go on trial before the Electoral Tribunal for offenses arising from this arrangement. They could receive prison sentences if convicted. Well after this scandal Cambio Democratico broke with Mireya Moscoso and thus this particular group of alleged crooks from the Moscoso administration did not appear on Mireya’s last minute pardon lists.

Benjamín Colomarco, best known to the public as the head of the often brutal Dignity Battalions during the final agonies of Noriega’s time, has a job with the Torrijos administration. He’ll be head of Catastro --- official surveying and public maps --- for the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Besides his controversial past --- call him the former head of a bunch of thugs, the ex-leader of a patriotic militia or some combination of these according to your politics --- he may be cast into new controversies, given that during the Moscoso administration one prevalent form of white collar crime was the land grab supported by altered official maps. Colomarco’s wife, Marta Amado Trevia, will also be on the government payroll as the new director of Panama’s post office.

Mireya Moscoso refused to honor a judgment of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, by treaty the court of last resort for many cases arising in the Panamanian legal system, when it ordered compensation for utility workers who were fired for going on strike during the Endara administration. Just before she left office, however, she filed papers with that tribunal admitting the Panamanian government’s liability for the deaths, disappearances and other persecutions of 110 people during the 22-year dictatorship. Naturally, she left no money in the budget to pay off the damages that are likely to be awarded. Incoming President Martín Torrijos criticized his predecessor for incurring a debt without considering how it might be paid, but has not flatly ruled out compensation in these cases.

Martín Torrijos never supported the creation of the Truth Commission that looked into the disappearances and political murders that went on during the dictatorship that for most of its time was headed by his father. However, the new president says that the search for the truth about the dead and missing will continue, but as a “scientific” inquiry rather than as a “political” smear. As an institution the Truth Commission is history, but it seems that Torrijos has left the door open for the forensic anthropologists, handlers of cadaver sniffing dogs and other specialists who had labored under its direction to resume their work. Within the PRD there have always been people who welcomed some sort of investigation of the abuses of the dictatorship, but only on condition that the far greater death toll associated with the dictatorship’s downfall in the 1989 US invasion and the subsequent persecutions in the post-dictatorship era were also probed. Defenders of the late General Omar Torrijos often argue that most of the abuses took place in the period after the October 1968 coup before Torrijos consolidated control over the government and after the general’s death in a 1981 plane crash.

At other junctures in Panamanian history, police have been sent in to take control of the Coiba Island penal colony from the ordinary prison guards. Now, however, the prison is mostly phased out of existence and the cops are being sent in to crack down on the rampant poaching in the waters of what is now a national park. Environmentalists and people in the tourism industry have sounded the alarm in recent months about the rapid depletion of the biological resources on the reefs around Coiba. The National Police will be working with the National Environmental Authority and the non-governmental Fundacion Mar Viva to patrol the area for poachers, and also to restrain the smuggling activities that go on in the area.

Some 103 kilos of cocaine have gone missing from the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) evidence room, and seven police and two civilians are being held for it. Five members of the PTJ, two officers of the National Police --- on a border police captain --- and two Dominican citizens have been jailed in the case.

Due to about $80,000 in missing and unaccounted for training funds, National Police Subcommissioner Juan Herrera, who commanded the Colon Police Zone, has been suspended from his job and assigned to other duties while an investigation continues. At this point it is not clear whether the issue is theft, bad record keeping or a combination of factors.

Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro had already tried charging former Mayor Mayín Correa with criminal defamation, but that was thrown out with Mireya Moscoso’s pardon list. Now he’s suing his predecessor, whom he ousted in a tight three-way race in 1994, in a civil action for $500,000. It seems that hizzoner is most annoyed by the things that Correa says on her KW Continente radio show. The mayor’s attorney refers to what he describes as a campaign of baseless attacks that has injured his client’s reputation. But judging from Navarro’s landslide re-election this past may, it might be hard to show that Mayín hurt his reputation half a million dollars’ worth.

Haydée Milanés de Lay, whose re-election to the legislature by a 148-vote margin was annulled by the Electoral Tribunal after it was found that she spent more than $200,000 in public funds to buy votes, will be trying again in a September 12 by-election. However, this time her erstwhile running mate and the four other candidates in last May’s race have lined up behind the PRD candidate she edged, Geovany Castillo. Milanés de Lay would have faced criminal charges for the vote buying and diversion of public funds, but for the fact that Mireya Moscoso pardoned her. (The question remains, however, whether Moscoso can face criminal prosecution for creating the illegal slush fund that Milanés de Lay used.)

On August 24 in the Boquete district corregimiento of Caldera police found the body of 43-year-old Jorge Luis Córdoba, the husband of former David Mayor Alba de Córdoba. He had been reported missing, and the body was found with multiple shotgun and stab wounds. Nobody had been arrested for the crime at the time this edition of The Panama News was uploaded.

Dengue fever is a painful one-week flu-like misery, but usually not a fatal one. However, it can cause life-threatening hemorrhages. The Ministry of Health has confirmed that a 12-year-old girl in the rural Colon community of Ciricito was one of the rare exceptions. It seems that had she received proper treatment at a hospital she probably would have survived, but due to poverty and isolation she did not get the care she needed. Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease, more common in urban areas than rural ones. It is carried by the Aedes egypti mosquito, which breeds in clear water that collects in relatively small containers --- like the trash that ignorant people throw by the side of the road.

Two Colombians, two Canadians, an Argentine and two Panamanians lost their lives in an August 22 traffic accident on the Arraijan-La Chorrera Autopista. An Argentine and a Panamanian were also injured in the mishap. Traffic police say that excessive speed was the cause when a Mitsubishi Montero smashed into an Arians Tour minibus carrying tourists back to the Decameron beach resort after a sightseeing visit to Panama City’s Casco Viejo. The accident happened at 6:45 p.m. when visibility can be bad, and near the toll gate in a spot where the road surface is in poor condition.




Also in this section:
Panama News Briefs
Mireya's last-minute pardons complicate Panama's foreign relations
A bitter transition between administrations
Martín Torrijos's inaugural address

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