Panama News Briefs

Resbalosos won’t be as illegal as they were in previous years, but weapons are still strictly forbidden. The governor of Panama province has issued the annual Carnival decree setting down rules for Panama City’s celebrations, and it will be illegal to carry weapons into any of the Carnival sites, regardless of whether one has a permit to carry them. The use of masks, face painting or other disguises that can conceal one’s identity will be allowed before 6:00 p.m. in the celebrations, but will be prohibited at night. Also illegal will be costumes that make someone look like a police officer, firefighter, SINAPROC rescue worker or Catholic priest. The latter measure won’t win a church endorsement for Carnival, however: the Catholic hierarchy has always disliked Carnival, which it sees as a distasteful pagan display of lewd and drunken behavior on the eve of Lent.

Although hantavirus remains endemic in Panama’s central provinces, the Health Ministry has reviewed the studies and consulted with experts from the US Centers for Disease Control and decided that it’s not enough of a threat to cancel Carnivals in the region, as was done in 2000. Thus the show will go on in Las Tablas, the biggest of the nation’s Carnival celebrations. Meanwhile, police say that they will increase their presence in Las Tablas to protect tourists from the muggers and pickpockets who work the crowd there and to search people going into the Carnival sites for weapons, drugs and liquor.

Penonome’s Water Carnival is usually fun and this year will definitely not be called off due to drought as it sometimes has been. Nor will Penonome’s celebration be reduced by other parties elsewhere in the province. The governor of Cocle, Darío Fernández, has issued a decree banning permits for dances, sound stages and other celebrations in the province’s rural areas during Carnival. The reason given is that there are barely enough police to maintain order in Penonome and other established Carnival locales and that festivities in other parts of the province would stretch law enforcement resources too far.

It has been one of those rare Januaries in which there has been rainfall over most parts of Panama, and in Bocas del Toro the problem has continued to be severe. On January 20 it was the Changuinola River that overflowed its banks, adding a little bit to the numbers of those displaced --- more than 10,000 in all --- and, because banana plantations were affected, more than a little bit to the economic damages.

A Dichter & Neira poll commissioned for La Prensa finds that 61.1 percent of Panamanians prefer to maintain our current diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Panama is one of 26 nations, mostly in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, which has full diplomatic ties with Taiwan. China, which views the island that has been separately governed since the end of its civil war in 1949 as a rebel province, refuses to have normal diplomatic relations with countries that recognize Taiwan. China is an emerging great power and has become the second biggest user of the Panama Canal. The China-Brazil trade route is also one of the brightest spots in the Colon Free Zone’s business. Against that backdrop there has been a furious competition between Taiwan and China, in some instances leading to bribery and extortion wherein corrupt officials in countries that recognize Taiwan take payments not to switch to ties with China. Within Panama’s Chinese community most of the organizations take an evenhanded approach to Taiwan and China, most Chinese-language media favor the People’s Republic of China and support for Taiwan comes mainly from the longer-established part of the community, with more recent immigrants mainly backing ties with China. All of Panama’s political alliances and most of its parties are split over the question, with a pragmatist tendency to go with the more important world power opposed by those who are reluctant to take foreign policy orders from large countries.

The Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to the pardons of anti-Castro activists who had been convicted of endangering public safety in connection with a plot to detonate a large bomb at a University of Panama auditorium at which Fidel Castro spoke during a 2000 Ibero-American summit here. The appeal was brought by one of the labor unions that invited Castro to speak, and the ruling would indicate that a number of challenges to Mireya Moscoso’s last-minute pardons also won’t prosper. Three of the convicted terrorists were given a heroes’ welcome upon their return to Miami, and recently Miami gave Mireya the symbolic key to the city for pardoning the men. (Among those on the pardon list was the writer of these briefs, who was charged with criminal defamation by a company owned by American swindler Tom McMurrain. McMurrain used those charges as part of an extortion attempt aimed at forcing the sale of The Panama News to himself.)

Using the word “terrorist” to describe a person arrested and held incommunicado by the US government pursuant to the Patriot Act or other Bush administration policies would in most cases be unfair --- the great majority of such persons seized have not been shown to be in any way connected with terrorist activities. Nevertheless, detentions in which non-US citizens are held incommunicado from their families and without access to lawyers continue. One of the thousands of “terrorist” detainees is Luis Antonio Jiménez Clement, a Panamanian citizen residing in Los Angeles, California and owner of the Internet website www.quiubo.net. He’s the son of La Prensa cartoonist Alfredo “Wilfi” Jiménez. On January 7 police showed up at the younger Jiménez’s home in LA, saying that they wanted to talk to him about a kidnapping case. Later a large force from the FBI and several other agencies descended on the home and took Luis Antonio Jiménez prisoner on unspecified suspicions of terrorism. According to La Prensa, the FBI cited things published by the website and letters to the Washington Post and The New York times criticizing George W. Bush to support the allegation --- which has apparently not been made in any court --- that Jiménez is a terrorist. The website has been shut down in the wake of the arrest and nothing sent to either of the newspapers mentioned has been produced. Panama’s Ministry of Foreign Relations says that it is making inquiries of the US government on the Jiménez family’s behalf.

According to El Panama America, which cites local sources who do not wish to be named, people in the Darien communities of Yape, Union Choco, Tuira and Tupisa have been hearing the sounds of gun battles near their communities and have observed Colombian military spotter planes overhead. The National Police told reporters for the mainstream corporate media that FARC guerrillas has entered Panama but that there was no fighting on this side of the border. According to El Panama America’s interpretation, what was going on is FARC running across the border and the Colombian Army pursuing. Usually the Colombian Army sends in their AUC paramilitary allies when they attack Panama, and although AUC attacks have frequently been supported by military aircraft, for the Colombian Army to do so in Panama would be most unusual. The AUC also maintains its own fleet of aircraft, some of which it boasts were stolen from Panama.

The US Department of Homeland Security has been mired in a couple of embarrassing situations lately, and one of them tangentially refers to Panama. Loud proclamations of a terrorist plot to attack Boston turned out to be a hoax created by one smuggler seeking revenge against an erstwhile partner. And then there were the Homeland Security secret documents that were leaked and published on several web pages. Among these documents are some that mention the passage of suspected al Qaeda figures through Panama, and note that Osama bin Laden’s worldwide network has operatives traveling on passports from several Latin American countries, including on Panamanian passports.

For the second time in less than one year, there is a dispute over the throne in the Americas’ only monarchy, that of Panama’s indigenous Naso people who live along the Teribe River in Bocas del Toro. On January 4 an insurgent group that includes the king’s uncle, Valentín Santana, took over the royal house in Sieyic, forcing King Tito Santana’s family to flee to El Silencio in Changuinola district. At the time of the revolt, the king was in Panama City attending meetings with the Ministry of Education to discuss bilingual education in indigenous communities. From El Silencio the king appealed to the Electoral Tribunal to reinstate him in power, which, however, has not happened. The tribunal is proposing new elections in April to supersede the disputed vote that maintained Tito Santana in power last year. The main bone of contention between the rival factions is a hydroelectric project to be built by damming the Bonyic River, which Tito Santana and his followers support and the insurgents oppose. The conflict has been difficult to report not only because Naso country is out of the way in the best of circumstances, but also because Valentín Santana has restricted access to Sieyic by reporters.

On the weekend of January 21-23 representatives of indigenous nations from around the Americas gathered here for a summit convened by the Kuna General Congress, the National Indigenous Confederation of Ecuador and the Coordination Council of the Salvadoran People to discuss issues of concern to the various indigenous peoples. The meeting resulted in a call for a Continental Indigenous Autonomy Movement to wage a nonviolent international campaign for indigenous self-rule. The summit participants also called for alliances with non-indigenous groups to oppose neo-liberal free market policies when those infringe the autonomy and living standards of indigenous communities.

The Moscoso administration took government nepotism to levels previously unseen in Panama’s history as an independent republic, to the extent that it became a potent campaign issue. But now the actions of several PRD legislators who have put relatives on their payrolls, plus the presence of Martín Torrijos’s cousin Hugo Torrijos as a presidential advisor despite unresolved questions about his role in the messy PECC lighthouse and buoy maintenance contract, are giving opposition deputies --- even those Mireyistas who can say things about the subject with a straight face --- cause to complain. The latest gob of political slop, aired in La Prensa, is incarnated in Rogelio Dumanoir, now a purchasing assistant on a $2,300 per month private services contract with the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), and also a relative of AMP director and Second Vice President Rubén Arosemena. The standard rejoinder is that the relatives who got jobs are qualified and put in honest work in exchange for their pay. But that’s what all political patronage machines say about the people they hire.

Transplant technology in Panama, which lags well behind that of the industrialized countries, took a step forward recently when the Hospital del Niño performed its first bone marrow transplant on a nine-year-old girl. Some 15 other young patients are awaiting donors for marrow transplants that they need. Although Panama is not, like some of the Central American countries, obsessed with rumors of children being abducted so that their organs can be stripped for transplants, we still have a low rate of organ donations.

One of the key members of Mireya Moscoso’s inner circle, George Weeden, died on January 13 after a prolonged illness. He was 61 years old. Weeden served in government as consul in Indonesia, as Vice Minister of the Presidency and on various special diplomatic missions. After the 1968 coup he fled the country along with Arnulfo Arias and Mireya Moscoso and remained in exile for 10 years. Weeden was a founding member of the Arnulfista Party. A number of his relatives received government posts in the Moscoso administration. Three years ago Weeden’s doctors told him that he probably had no more than six months to live, but he turned out to be more tenacious than that. His funeral took place at the National Sanctuary, after which his remains were cremated.

Banancio Sobenis, the Arnulfista representante for Chiriqui’s San Lorenzo district, has been removed from office by the Electoral Prosecutor, along with his suplente Arcenio González. The two men are accused of using public funds for their campaign activities leading up to last May’s elections, and will be tried before the Electoral Tribunal. They could receive three-year prison sentences if convicted. A number of legislators were accused of similar conduct, but in the cases of those who won the legislature invoked the immunity of the accused and prohibited any investigation or prosecution of the deputies’ alleged offenses. The big question left unanswered is whether the person who put all the public funds at Mireyista candidates’ disposal --- Mireya Moscoso herself --- will be prosecuted for her role in the multiple scandals.

Candidates and party officers during the 2004 election season officially lost their protections against criminal prosecutions or firings from government jobs as of January 18. The period of immunity is set by law. Several persons, including former President Mireya Moscoso, had previously been stripped of this immunity by the Electoral Tribunal. It seems that this type of immunity was not a big impediment to Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís’s pursuit of election law violators, but Mireya Moscoso’s pardons and the legislature’s refusal to drop the immunities of its members have paralyzed a number of investigations.

Despite a clear majority of convention delegates who back a hostile takeover bid, Jesús “Maco” Rosas will continue to collect a government check and will continue to run the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA) as a family racket. Early in January a majority of MOLIRENA convention delegates met in a special session and voted to remove Rosas and nullify his expulsions of party dissidents. Rosas challenged that decision before the Electoral Tribunal, putting it on hold while under review. It seemed that the issue would be moot, as there was a scheduled January 30 party convention at which the Rosas faction was likely to lose. But then a Rosas loyalist challenged that convention, and the Electoral Tribunal forbade the holding of the event while it decides the latter lawsuit. Thus the tribunal leaves the Rosas family in control of MOLIRENA for the time being.

El Panama America suggests that the series of questions about the Moscoso administration’s Fundacion Mar del Sur (through which Taiwan’s aid to Panama’s public health care system was funneled) has grown. The daily reported that last May the Supreme Court noted that one Aquilino Sánchez Sanjur, purportedly the lawyer for the foundation on the face of papers filed before that tribunal, actually isn’t licensed to practice law. The Public Ministry, which would have the power to prosecute in cases of practicing law without a license, was reportedly looking into the matter when these briefs were written. So far, however, it appears that the most dangerous questions about the foundation revolve around its administrative expenses, some $18.4 million over four years.

The Truth Commission set up under the Moscoso administration has transformed itself into a non-governmental organization, but loose ends remain. For starters, the government is moving to evict the group from its quarters in a public building in Balboa. There are also claims that any evidence in the possession of the commission, and the organization’s files themselves, properly belong to the government. Many of the abuses that the Truth Commission investigated, which included more than 100 politically motivated murders or disappearances, took place in the years that the late General Omar Torrijos exercised power and largely for that reason his son, President Martín Torrijos, has always opposed the commission and its work. The younger Torrijos, however, has from time to time hinted that he’d support a truth process that clarifies the abuses and provides relief to the families of the victims. Such a process may come under pressure from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, which by Panamanian law is the court of last resort in such cases and before which the claims of the families of the disappeared are now pending.

Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez, who at one time worked for the Truth Commission, has ordered the remains of Gerardo Olivares Velásquez, a Chilean citizen who fought with Panamanian guerrillas opposed to the October 1968 coup and who was captured and surreptitiously executed at the Coiba Island penal colony sometime in 1972, exhumed and delivered to the Chilean consul. By a comparison of the slain guerrilla’s skull and photos of his face taken while he was living the Truth Commission was able to identify that set of remains found at Coiba’s secret cemetery. Other bodies found at the site were identified using DNA, while still other remains are still unidentified. The “most wanted” remains sought on Coiba are those of leftist leader Floyd Britton, who died at the penal colony on November 29, 1969.

The Supreme Court has called for an investigation of prosecutors Geomara de Jones and Roniel Ortiz, after a former suspect in the abduction and murder of Swiss banker Hans Jorg Bosch testified that they kept him in jail and made various threats against him because he refused to give false testimony in the case against attorney Gilberto Boutin. Jones’s husband was attorney for imprisoned “offshore asset protection guru” Marc Harris in a series of legal brawls against Boutin, who had been Harris’s lawyer but had a falling out and froze more than $1 million in Harris-controlled assets to purportedly cover legal fees that Harris owed. In those battles Harris generally had the support of former Attorney General José Antonio Sossa and Boutin was generally backed by the Supreme Court. There are many allegations of corruption in the Harris-Boutin affair, mostly made by those who are themselves the targets of corruption allegations.

Rodrigo Granda Escobar, the purported “foreign minister” of Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels who was kidnapped in Venezuela by soldiers bribed by the Colombian government and delivered to Colombia, thus touching off an international row, was a frequent visitor to Panama too. Immigration records show that he came here three times between October of 1999 and January of 2001, without problems. When the previous Colombian government held peace talks with FARC, Granda was part of the rebels’ negotiating team. Although the Colombian government claims that he was a wanted terrorist, INTERPOL had no international arrest warrant for him and his arrivals and departures to and from Panama --- and also apparently Venezuela --- appear to have been legal.

The Rainbow Tribe, an organization with its origins among American hippies and an international membership, will be camping out in Bajo Mendez, in Gualaca district along the Caldera River, through mid-February. The group eschews electricity and chemical products at its gatherings, which are held in rural settings. Also banned are drugs and alcohol. This will be the first time that a Rainbow Gathering has taken place in Panama.

Wouldn’t you know that El Siglo would have treated this story with the screaming front-page headline quoted above. On January 25 police swept down on an improvised filming studio in Veracruz and busted a pornography production allegedly headed by one Frederick Salaff, said to be of California, who had allegedly hired prostitutes for between $100 and $300 per day to perform in his erotic productions. But alas, it seems that Rio Bueno, Ltd, SA --- the organization’s corporate form --- didn’t have its papers in order. Prostitution is legal in Panama but we have a Board of Censors with the power to ban pornographic works and laws against the employment of minors in the sex industry. This operation, however, allegedly didn’t comply with the proper registrations and obtain the various permits required for any foreign enterprise to set up shop here. Moreover, it is alleged that proper measures were not taken to shield the sexual activity from the eyes of minors, as the complaint that brought the police in came from neighbors who say that they witnessed some of the filming.

Panama’s prisoner count stood at 11,273, including 847 women, in the fourth week of January. The month saw a roundup of some 729 gang members (or alleged gang members) in San Miguelito and Panama City, which thus got the prison population growing again after the traditional pre-Christmas paroles, pardons and commutations. But it didn’t grow very much --- all but 24 of the alleged gang members were promptly released when it was found that there were no charges pending against them and was no evidence to justify the filing of charges.

On January 23 a police undercover operation resulted in a raid in the La Chorrera neighborhood of La Pesa, which netted 2,000 kilos of cocaine paste said to be en route from Colombia to the United States. Six Panamanians and a Colombian were arrested in the raid, in which two cars were also seized.

Police are warning of a series of apparently related armed robberies in which the homes of relatively affluent families in Panama City’s San Francisco and Bethania corregimientos have been invaded. In recent years there has also been a lot of that sort of crime, directed in particular against American retirees, in the Arraijan community of Veracruz. To put things in perspective, in 2004 there were 870 armed robberies reported in Panama, a country with a little under three million inhabitants, which adds up to an armed robbery rate of about one-quarter of that seen in the United States.

A new investigation implicating possible corruption during the Moscoso administration is underway, this time at Customs. The Ministry of Economy and Finance audit of Aduana finds that unspecified thousands of dollars in cash and negotiable instruments that was confiscated from those who illegally didn’t declare it or in connection with seizures of drugs or other contraband are unaccounted for. In the case of checks and other commercial paper, the investigation is now headed for the banks, to see if, when, into which accounts and by whom any of these instruments were deposited. In most cases these funds would belong to the state, but in others they would have to be returned to their rightful private owners. Determining the extent and nature of the problem, and how much is owed to whom, could be a prolonged process.

Fugitive former Banco Nacional de Panama (BNP) CEO Bolívar Pariente has, through friends from his hiding place wherever it is, set conditions on his return to Panama to confront corruption charges. He demands that the arrest warrant against himself be rescinded --- which his lawyer Rogelio Cruz is petitioning the Supreme Court to do --- before he comes back. Pariente used his position as head of the bank to give financing to the Prados del Este residential development that was illegally built in a flood plain, and to use the bank’s influence to put his relatives in control of that development. When the floods came in September, several Prados del Este residents were drowned and Pariente and his relatives began pointing fingers at a Colombian subcontractor. Some of the others involved in the scandal were arrested and briefly held until being released on bail. Pariente, however, was granted a US visa and fled through the United States, probably to Spain. Afterwards the United States suspended Pariente’s visa.

Also in this section:
Casco Viejo renovation project
Landfill removal
Mireya retains control, changes party name
Panama News Briefs

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