news

On January 28, in the presence of representatives of various environmentalist groups, President Torrijos signed environmental legislation that provides criminal penalties for certain offenses. The law will go into effect in late July, after a six-month interval. However, it is expected that at least parts of the legislation will be subjected to constitutional challenges by various companies or individuals who stand to be affected by these additions to the penal code.

Carnival proved deadly to 18 people this year, 15 of them the victims of traffic accidents and another three having drowned while swimming in different rivers in Chiriqui, Colon and Cocle provinces. A heavy police presence at the most popular Carnival sites, combined with checkpoints and searches along the nation’s roads, minimized acts of violence at the festivities themselves, although this year as in the past Las Tablas was plagued with a lot of unarmed robberies perpetrated by groups of maleantes working the crowds. At the police checkpoints around the country 31 fugitives were arrested and four stolen cars were recovered.

On February 3 police and prosecutors conducted a raid in Panama’s City’s corregimiento of Bethania and came up with six prisoners, 49 AK-47 assault rifles, 256 kilos of cocaine, $75,700 in genuine currency and $100,800 in counterfeit US notes. According to government sources cited by La Prensa and El Panama America, it is believed that the contraband was being moved by Colombia’s left-wing FARC guerrillas, which for many years has conducted smuggling operations through Panama. FARC’s deadliest foes, the right-wing AUC paramilitaries, run similar operations here.

The Truth Commission is more or less history, as is José Antonio Sossa’s tenure at the head of the Public Ministry, and now the Catholic Church is asking Sossa’s successor for a good faith investigation of the politically motivated disappearances, tortures and murders that happened during the 21-year military dictatorship. In particular, the church believes on the bases of remnants of clothing and a bandage, and of a congenital bone deformity that ran in his family that some of the skeletal remains found buried under a parking lot at the old Pumas Infantry Barracks in Tocumen are likely those of the disappeared Father Héctor Gallego. Sossa opposed investigations of the disappearances and people at the Public Ministry made a great public show of mishandling, mixing and misidentifying the human remains found by the Truth Commission. But the church believes that mitochondrial DNA tests on one of the sets of remains found at Tocumen, which Sossa blocked, would confirm or rule out their hypothesis that the bones are those of Father Gallego. The commission also discovered about a dozen sets of remains at a clandestine cemetery on Coiba Island, and it is suspected that some of those may belong to leftist leader Floyd Britton, who died at the penal colony there on November 29, 1969. The families of most of those who disappeared have a lawsuit for compensation now pending before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in San Jose, Costa Rica, which by treaty is the court of last resort for such cases arising in Panama. The Ministry of Foreign Relations is handling that matter and First Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro, who also serves as foreign minister, says that the administration’s policy is not to bury these case but to clarify all the facts and arrive at a negotiated settlement. This issue is complicated by the fact that President Torrijos’s father headed the military government when a number of the disappearances took place.

Under past administrations it was an effort by local governments with private business support, but starting in March the national government will be sponsoring exchanges in which people can bring in firearms, legal or illegal, and receive food vouchers that can be used at local supermarkets in exchange. The program will begin in San Miguelito, and continue in Panama City, Arraijan and La Chorrera. The exchanges will be observed and verified by representatives of the European Union, which is gathering information on worldwide traffic in small arms. Most of the guns will be destroyed, but the higher quality items will go into the National Police’s arsenals.

A bogus cover story that he’s be visiting the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca over the Carnival weekend didn’t stand up. Actually, President Torrijos went to Florida, where he reportedly attended the Super Bowl and visited Disney World. Sources for La Prensa were hot on the president’s trail, so it seems, but through his spokespeople Torrijos protested that he shouldn’t have to publicize his movements during his days off. Respect for the privacy of public figures is a traditional aspect of Panamanian culture, but then there may be people on the isthmus, especially in the gringo community, who would look askance at Torrijos’s apparent preference for Mickey Mouse culture. The president, however, may even have a good excuse for that, given persistent rumors --- which Disney declined to either confirm or deny for The Panama News --- that Cocle province will be the location of the first Disney theme park in Latin America.

When it seemed that his opponents had the votes to take away his family business, Jesús “Maco” Rosas got the Electoral Tribunal to intervene and postpone the January 30 convention of the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA), one of the political parties in the Mireyista alliance. But the tribunal rescheduled the convention for February 27 and legislator Wigberto Quintero is running to depose Rosas as party leader. In an early January meeting of most of the convention delegates, Quintero mobilized a majority to depose Rosas, but that decision was nullified by the Electoral Tribunal. In order to maintain the Rosas family hold on MOLIRENA --- even though now that Mireya is history the more than a dozen Rosases who held administrative posts with the government have been sent packing and one of them has fled the country to avoid questions about money and equipment that went missing from public TV --- it seems that Maco must have the support of the faction led by former Vice President Arturo Vallarino. But Rosas purged many Vallarino supporters from the party, and that faction is rallying around former legislator Olimpo Sáenz as its candidate to oust the Rosases. At one time MOLIRENA was a conservative business-oriented political party, but in recent years it has degenerated into something akin to a mafia family rent by personal rivalries.

Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís has asked the Electoral Tribunal to try deputy Central American parliamentarian Fabio Suárez, a PRD member, for instigating fraudulent mass changes of voting addresses from Tocumen to Atalaya to boost his candidacy for the job during the 2003 PRD primaries. If tried and found guilty Suárez would be stripped of his office and could be sent to prison.

Leopoldo Mojica, who had served as commander of the nation’s firefighters and in a number of other government posts, died on February 6 of a heart attack. He was 78 years old. Over the previous two years he had suffered a stroke and two other heart attacks. He is survived by his widow, Elsa García de Paredes de Mojica, six children and eight grandchildren. In addition to his 30-year career with the Bombero Corps, over the years Mojica distinguished himself as a judo champion, designer of the cedula and systems director for the Comptroller General’s office.

Panamanian artist Pacífico Castrellón, who was caught sketching the Peruvian Congress as part of a Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement plot to attack that institution in Lima, has had his 15-year terrorism sentence upheld by Peru’s Supreme Court. First convicted by an anonymous military tribunal and given a 30-year sentence, after the fall of the Fujimori regime he was retried, again found guilty and given a shorter sentence. Castrellón has served nearly nine years in Peruvian prisons, and under the terms of a Panamanian-Peruvian prisoner exchange treaty would be eligible to finish his sentence in a Panamanian prison. He will be eligible for parole after serving three-quarters of his term, or in less than two years.

As proprietor and host of the Lo Mejor del Boxeo television show, Juan Carlos Tapia is Panama’s most popular sports journalist, but that’s not the extent of his interests. Yes, he’s also a big promoter of the nation’s little bel canto opera scene, but that also doesn’t cover his influence. At the beginning of each Thursday night boxing show Tapia has an editorial, and these chats run the full gamut of social and political issues. The politician who gets panned on Lo Mejor del Boxeo usually sees an immediate drop in his or her public approval rating. Now Tapia has turned his attention to certain privileges that legislators and high court magistrates receive and, echoing a call by the new Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez, he has called for these officials to voluntarily eschew their gasoline allowances, free cell phones, duty free cars and other special privileges. There is no word so far on how many public officials are heeding the call, but Tapia says it’s the beginning of a campaign and the use of the country’s most popular sports show to further it likely means that the matter will not easily be dismissed or forgotten.

Police report that for the first time they are seeing a series of crimes in which gunmen abduct people in parking lots, rob them, force them to visit ATM machines and withdraw cash with their credit or debit cards, then drive away in the stolen cars and sometimes hold the victims for ransom. This sort of crime has long been known in the United States and is recently all the rage in Colombia and Venezuela, but is new to this country. Police are looking for two men and a woman who have been prowling around upscale shopping areas in a gray Nissan Blue Bird in search of victims. It seems that when this particular gang is caught the evidence will be strong, because cops and prosecutors have ATM security camera photos of its members in action.

A half-million restoration job has begin at the little San Francisco de La Montaña church in the Veraguas community of San Francisco. That 17th century church’s interior is full of priceless wooden carvings by the first generations of indigenous craftsmen to embrace Christianity. During the Moscoso administration contractors were hired to fix the roof and drains, but the work was halted and the wooden furnishings were left exposed to the elements. Now a new foundation led by Santiago’s Catholic Archbishop Oscar Brown has hired Mexican restoration expert Ángela Camargo, whose work in Panama includes the fixing of the Casco Viejo’s Iglesia San Felipe Neri, to direct the work. The task of putting on a new roof and drainage system began on February 3, and it’s projected that the restoration of the church’s wooden contents will begin in April.



Also in this section:
Torrijos spending political capital
Panama News Briefs

Back to top

Financial services at Finansbanken --- http://www.finansbanken.dk/english/index.html
Build a home in Las Cumbres with Villa Concordia --- http://villaconcordia-pma.com/
Make the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://www.executivehotel-panama.com
Let Alegria Web Design handle your Internet needs --- http://www.alegriawebdesign.com