Will Pereira Burgos be
forced out by age law?
by Eric Jackson
Supreme Court president César Pereira
Burgos just celebrated his 75th birthday, and that has incited a fresh
debate over a law that was designed to force another high court
magistrate, José Manuel Faúndes, from the bench. In that prior case,
Faúndes was heard on wiretap tapes negotiating a $20,000 bribe to let an
alleged drug trafficker off the hook, and it turned out that a majority,
but not a sufficient super-majority, of the legislators would vote to
convict him in an impeachment trial. So the 1994-99 legislature passed
“the Faúndes Law” to force all public employees to step down upon reaching
the age of 75, which the then-magistrate had attained. As it turned out,
however, the high court in a split decision declined to apply the law to
the magistrate, while the law was imposed on a number of elderly
professors at the University of Panama.
Precedent doesn’t mean so much in the
Panamanian system of law --- not in comparison to the Common Law system in
the best of circumstances, and certainly not when political influence or
corruption come into play, as they often have recently. Thus, despite the
decision in the prior case, a complaint by Comptroller General Alvin
Weeden to force Pereira Burgos to step down due to the Faúndes Law is,
according to Legislative Assembly president Jerry Wilson --- himself a
former Supreme Court magistrate --- headed for the Supreme Court for an
ultimate decision.
There is a 5-4 majority of Mireya Moscoso
appointees on the high court, but if Pereira Burgos is forced out that
would not change the balance. His suplente (alternate) is also a Moscoso
appointee.
Weeden’s complaint has renewed a number
of old debates, including generational disputes over discarding
accumulated wisdom versus acquiring youthful vigor and over the
independence of the judiciary. In a column in El Panama America, law
professor Miguel Antonio Bernal argued that the attempt to oust Pereira
Burgos amounts to an attack on judicial independence. But the head of the
nation’s bar association (the Colegio de Abogados), Carlos Vásquez Reyes,
argues that as a matter of law Pereira Burgos has to step down.
Because of a string of controversial
decisions, Pereira Burgos has become a symbol of a dysfunctional court,
and PRD leaders are by and large lining up on the side that says that the
mandatory retirement age should apply in his case. However, President
Torrijos himself has been silent on the issue.
It is expected that with the passage of
constitutional changes, sometime next year the PRD-dominated legislature
will increase the size of the Supreme Court, and thus turn the majority of
Moscoso appointees into a minority.
