Panama News Briefs

Luis Florez, Alberto Koriat and Jorge Ellis Allen, three security officers from the National Assembly, were arrested along with three other individuals in a police sting after the legislative employees delivered two kilos of cocaine that had been transported in one of the legislature’s vehicles to undercover narcotics agents in the parking lot of the Seguro Social clinic in El Marañon. Police allege that the gang was also in the heroin business. After the bust cops with drug sniffing dogs swooped down on the Palacio Justo Arosemena looking for a drug cache. The three security officers were summarily fired, and an unnamed legislative spokesperson told El Panama America that none of them were associated with any particular legislator. Generally the security jobs at the assembly are distributed on the basis of political patronage, which at the moment is controlled by the ruling PRD-Partido Popular coalition.

On June 3 customs agents caught legislator Rogelio Alba (Liberal Nacional - Kuna Yala) taking several cartons of liquor and cigarettes out of the Colon Free Zone without paying the required duty. Over the years a number of deputies have been discovered doing the same thing, and usually the response has been their colleagues refusing to lift legislative immunity and complaints by those embarrassed that customs violated their privilege not to have their cars searched. Under last year’s constitutional changes, however, it is the Supreme Court rather than the legislature that now decides whether a member of the Legislative Assembly will have his or her immunity lifted and this may be the first test of the new provision. Meanwhile, Alba’s party says that it will investigate the incident. Under last year’s constitutional changes the party no longer has the power to remove a deputy from office, but there is the theoretical possibility of a recall election.

President Torrijos says that the executive branch of government that he heads has brought transparency to its operations “so that everyone will know how the money is spent,” but complains that the other branches of government are lagging behind. He called on the Public Ministry (the prosecutors and the Judicial Technical Police, headed by Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez and Administrative Prosecutor Oscar Ceville) and the courts to also do their parts to make government more transparent “since this subject is not the business of the executive.”

El Panama America reports that several divorce lawyers and several more court clerks from the Second and Third Family Courts are accused by prosecutors of running a racket wherein those who filed for divorce and played by the rules waited for many months to get their cases heard, but those who paid bribes of $600 would get their divorces granted within two or three days. The case is reportedly pending before the Eleventh Penal Circuit Court, but as in most judicial matters the file is not open to reporters and the general public.

In the most recent polls conducted for La Prensa the Dichter & Neira polling agency, which is the Latin American affiliate of the Harris organization, no data were published about the president’s approval rating. However, in the CID/Gallup poll conducted for El Panama America, taken of more than 1,200 people across Panama between May 12 and 16 (before Torrijos unveiled his Social Security reforms) showed that for the first time more people disapprove than approve of the president’s performance in office --- by a one-point edge --- and that 62 percent of Panamanians believe that Torrijos has kept few or none of his campaign promises. At the beginning of this year 28 percent more Panamanians had a favorable than an unfavorable impression of the president’s performance. It seems that the disenchantment is cutting into the core of Torrijos’s support, as 57 percent of those polled who said that they voted for Torrijos also said that he had kept few or none of his promises. The main reason for the drop in support is the unpopularity of the tax reforms, and this is likely to be augmented in future polls when public reaction to the Seguro Social reform is manifested. The decline in popularity might make it difficult for Torrijos to call and win a canal expansion referendum this year, but it’s not necessarily cause for panic at the Palacio de las Garzas --- the conventional wisdom is that a president who needs to do some unpopular things should do them early in his or her term and then gradually regain support with more popular moves afterwards.

The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) has turned down a developer’s proposal to run a cable car system between the top of Ancon Hill and the Amador Causeway, but will allow the system to be built if the northern terminal is on the slope of the hill at or around the city’s Mi Pueblito park instead. But will tourists really want to pay their money to get an aerial view of beautiful scenic El Chorrillo? And if the system does take the proposed alternative route, how long will it be before the neighborhood’s street gangs stage the first drive-by shooting from a cable car? So far the city has received no proposal from the developer with respect to Mi Pueblito. Ancon Hill is a national park of some importance to migratory birds, a forest fragment that’s home to endangered monkeys and other wildlife, and a symbol of Panamanian sovereignty over the former Canal Zone. Experiences with other cable cars over tropical forest canopies have shown that rather than providing tourists with views of canopy wildlife, these systems tend to scare the birds and monkeys away. Moreover, residents of Quarry Heights, one of the city’s quietest and least littered neighborhoods that’s just under the top of the hill, don’t want the added traffic. The Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) had granted a concession for the cable cars, but ANAM must approve environmental impact studies for any development of such scope and also has the last word on anything affecting a national park.

Normally when one goes on the lam for two years to avoid prosecution on charges of a serious crime and is then apprehended, one is jailed without bail pending trial. That procedure, however, is for those without political connections. Néstor Tomás Guerra, who served as minister of public works during the dictatorship, was charged with embezzlement in 2003 but went into hiding and was recently arrested as part of a police operation aimed at nabbing Panama’s most wanted fugitives. Guerra was quickly granted house arrest rather than pretrial detention while his case percolates through the courts.

The Panamanian government had denied that there was anything to it, but Colombian press reports that Colombia’s consulate in Colon had been a hub of illegal migrant smuggling have gained greater credence with the arrests in Colombia of former consul Víctor Botero and former consular secretary Dolly Montoya. The two are said to have sold visas and other documents to Chinese citizens migrating through the Americas. Panama and to a lesser extent Colombia are destinations for illegal Chinese migrants, but in many cases this region is only a stepping stone for people trying to sneak into the United States. Colombia’s consulates in Panama have from time to time been converted into centers for criminal activity, including air piracy and gun running by the AUC death squads as well as more mundane immigration offenses.

As these briefs were written the National Assembly was debating on second reading a plan to merge the public educational television channel, Canal Once, with public radio, Radio Nacional. The two agencies would be merged into a new Sistema Estatal de Radio y Television and managed by a board of directors representing various government ministries. Previously Canal Once had been a dependency of the Ministry of Education, and in the prior administration an extension of the Rosas family business. But soon after the change of government the Rosas who headed public TV fled the country rather than answer questions about unaccounted for funds and missing equipment, blaming the problems on his aunt, former Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata. In the course of debate some deputies complained that the proposal would allow the proposed new agency’s board of directors to approve contracts of up to $50,000 without the prior approval of the legislature or the Comptroller General.

In a country where one has historically had to belong to the right political party to get a job or a permit for a private business, nearly half of Panama’s electorate --- 1,012, 313 of 2,059,225 eligible voters --- now belong to one of the political parties. The biggest is the PRD, with 459,331 members, followed by the Panameñistas (former Arnulfistas) at 166,271, MOLIRENA with 92,616, the National Liberals with 72,306, Solidaridad at 68,235, Cambio Democratico at 53,614, the Partido Popular (former Christian Democrats) with 49,361 members and the Liberals with 47,029. Petitioning to get ballot status is Guillermo Endara’s new Vanguardia Moral. There is always a fair amount of opportunistic switching of party memberships with every change of government, but there may be less of this at the moment because the Torrijos administration is resisting demands from members who worked on last year’s campaign for government jobs and has few if any plums to pass out to those who have recently joined the PRD.

In Panama, where prostitution is legal, most of those who work at the brothels are foreigners, particular Colombians or Dominicans. There are Internet websites that plug this country as a sex tourism destination, and Panama connections have recently figured in some international investigations of online child pornography. Then, in a less sensationalistic vein, Panama’s role as the Crossroads of the World also includes a steady flow of illegal migrants to and often through this country. The bottom line, according to a US State Department report, is that Panama does not fully comply with minimal international standards in the fight against trafficking in human beings. The same has been said in previous US reports, which the Moscoso administration would indignantly deny. The present administration, however, basically admits that there is a problem and says that it’s taking various steps to deal with it. One new presidential decree requires Internet cafes to block access to pornography by minors, and this government is no longer issuing the six-month visas to prostitutes seeking work in Panama’s brothels.

In a June 4 police operation near the Paso Canoa border crossing with Costa Rica police arrested three persons and confiscated 26 AK-47 assault rifles. The arms were leftovers from Central America’s civil conflicts of the 1980s, headed for Colombia. But leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries run guns for that country’s never-ending warfare through Panama.

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