Ubaldo Davis, the editor and publisher of the satirical weekly tabloid La Cascara News, got to spend a couple of days in jail for a suggestive photo montage of then-President Mireya Moscoso and then-Government and Justice Minister (now Supreme Court magistrate) Winston Spadafora. In the November 1-7 issue of that same publication, Mireya is the subject of a double caricature: “before,” showing her sister the jewelry she bought, and “after” with the police slapping the handcuffs on her.
One might dismiss it all as adolescent male humor, and a recent column in The Panama News that advocated “jail to the (ex) chief” as a bit extreme --- but for the fact that some very establishment voices are saying much the same. As a front page La Prensa editorial put it, “it’s time that Panamanian justice emulates the behavior of Costa Rica” --- at a time when two former Tico presidents are in jail on corruption charges. A front page El Panama America editorial warns that the Torrijos administration may be pursuing weak cases “to discredit the struggle and let the big fish of corruption escape.” On all sides of the political spectrum the arrest and trial of Mireya Moscoso are openly contemplated.
This is not a sudden sea change in public opinion. Since early in the Moscoso administration there has been a growing clamor to bring the former president and her inner circle of sneering crooks to justice. There were too many bald faced lies, too many improbable explanations, too many defenses of the untenable as Mireya and her crowd flaunted their wealth before a nation living through hard economic times. the buzz escalated toward a roar when the president basically told her own anti-corruption commission to get lost over the issue of nepotism. When the US ambassador took the unusual step of talking about the Panamanian government’s corruption --- not once but several times --- that was a clear sign that this was something out of the ordinary. Then came the crushing humiliation of the May 2 election, when all the corny tricks --- including the massive use of public funds to directly and indirectly buy votes --- were not enough to raise the Mireyistas above third place, with about 17 percent of the vote. The Panamanian people were clearly sick of that woman.
And then, on her way out, Mireya Moscoso reneged on a promise to disclose the use of her presidential secret fund. She issued a cryptic press release about an alleged sketchy report, but when Martín Torrijos took office neither the report nor the documents indicating the secret fund expenditures were left for him or the new government team to peruse.
Silly Mireya --- didn’t she know that there are such things as bank records, and that there are people who know where she shopped?
Auditors have thus reconstructed the use of some $23.1 million that flowed through the ex-president’s special fund. Initially, the Torrijos administration charged that Mireya had spent more than $1000 per week on clothing, to which she replied “I couldn’t walk around ragged.”
With that excuse, worthy of Marie Antoinette, the clamor for action to punish the former admnistration's corruption became a roar.
Then the national Ombudsman published some more precise figures. In her five years in office, Mireya Moscoso used the presidential secret fund to buy $262,807.25 worth of clothing from Studio Moda, and another $162,389.83 from Felix B. Maduro. That’s $425,197.08 in clothing purchases over five years, or some $1635 per week, in a country where about half the people live on less than $200 per month.
And that doesn’t include the custom dress she had an Atlanta fashion designer make for her trip to Spain’s royal wedding, reputedly with a price tag in excess of $20,000.
Nor does it include the jewelry purchases from the presidential secret fund --- $651,033.86 worth, according to the Ombudsman, not counting purchases made with public funds by her sister Ruby Moscoso de Young, who served as first lady during the Moscoso administration.
Then there were the vast liquor purchases and food bags to be distributed at Christmas as the 2004 elections approached. And the cosmetic surgery bills, apparently for the president herself and for members of her entourage. And more than $32,000 in repairs on Mireya’s personal BMW (she’s a notoriously horrible driver, who got into several accidents while president).
These were just the secret fund expenditures. There are at least a half-dozen other scandals that are or may be just as high-profile and that directly involve the ex-president and her inner circle of friends.
Thus it’s not just a radical fringe that’s talking about throwing Mireya Moscoso in jail.
Can anything stop this process?
Well, we do have this pro-corruption Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, and with less than a month on the job the new “anti-corruption czar” Cristóbal Arboleda, who used to work as a prosecutor under Sossa, is complaining that his former boss is dragging his feet on the corruption investigations. But come January, Sossa’s term will be over and back during the election campaign President Torrijos promised that he’ll pick a new attorney general.
Now it may be that Torrijos will put someone of the same character at the head of the Public Ministry, and after all of the dives have been taken plead that it wouldn’t have been right for him to interfere in the legal process. Except that the scandals have taken on lives of their own, and it may not be politically possible for Torrijos to wink and nod and let his predecessor go on her merry way.
One indication that the fix may not be in is the way that some of the other Moscoso administration scandals are going. On October 7, for example, former Canal Once director Ariel Rosas, who was being questioned for a quarter-million dollars worth of video cameras and other equipment that went missing from public TV on his shift, and more than $2 million otherwise unaccounted for, slipped across the border into Costa Rica. It wasn’t until two weeks later that Panamanians learned that Rosas had asked for political asylum.
Then there is the matter of aid from Taiwan, which the Moscoso administration diverted through “private” foundations controlled by the president’s friends. While the subject of where all the money went was still under investigation, and the other issue of what games may have been played with the contracts when the money was spent for its intended purposes had not yet been much discussed, Mireya found herself obliged to deny an allegation by Taiwanese legislators that their president had given her $1 million. (Although many of the facts about the aid from Taiwan are still not a matter of public record, that has not stopped a number of prominent Panamanian political activists from across the partisan spectrum, led by former President Jorge Illueca and former legislator and diplomat Oydén Ortega, both perredistas in good standing, from publishing full-page ads in the daily newspapers, arguing that the corrupting influence of Taiwanese money is another good reason to drop relations with the government in Taipei and exchange ambassadors with Beijing.)
Then there is the criminal complaint of inexplicable enrichment that Vice-Minister of Economy and Finance Rolando Mirones has filed against former Minister of Economy and Finance Norberto Delgado. On the face of it, Delgado accumulated far more wealth while in office than his salary or the assets he reported when he assumed the role of minister could explain. But wait! --- Delgado says he has an explanation. However, if his story is to be taken at face value, then he’d still have to explain why he didn’t report vast tracts of land in the Darien as assets he held when he took office.
Then add the audits and investigations into the lending practices of the state-owned Banco Nacional de Panama, Caja de Ahorros and Banco de Desarrollo Agropecuario financial institutions, probes into boondoggles by the Ministry of Public Works, reports that under the Moscoso administration the government had “contractual relations” with several fictitious companies, the appearance that money was skimmed from the national bingo parlors, and that many tax exonerations were improperly granted --- and it still doesn’t get to the well known scandals that resulted in the resounding Mireyista electoral defeat this past May.
For the record, the Panameñista Action Movement (MAPA), an organization of rank-and-file Arnulfistas, issued a press statement denouncing a “malicious” campaign against Mireya Moscoso and alleging that the PRD government “lacks the moral authority” to question the former president’s actions. The communique, however, stopped short of disputing the truth of the various allegations.
Also in this section:
Panama City's parades
Arosemena de Troitiño takes high court seat
Audits catch up to Mireyistas
Panama makes it the Group of Four
Panama News Briefs
