Panama News Briefs

Cuba and Panama restore relations

On August 20 President Torrijos flew to Havana to attend graduation ceremonies for a number of Panamanians who had been studying medicine in Cuba, and while he was there he met with Fidel Castro and the two leaders signed an agreement restoring full diplomatic relations between their countries. Relations were broken by Cuba about one year ago, after Mireya Moscoso pardoned a group of Cuban exiles who had planned to kill Fidel Castro and many Panamanians by setting off enough explosives to level two city blocks at a university auditorium where the Cuban strongman spoke during a 2000 Ibero-American summit.

Mirones new police chief

Rolando Mirones, who had been serving as vice minister of economy and finance, has been appointed as the new chief of the National Police. He will replace Gustavo Pérez, who resigned effective September 5 to take a job in the private sector. During his time with the Ministry of Economy and Finance Mirones played a high profile in looking into and filing complaints about some of the financial activities of the Moscoso administration.

Prosecutor nabbed in bribery sting

Arquímedes Sáez, a prosecutor for 15 years and a close confidant of former Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, is now a prisoner. He was arrested at the National Bus Terminal in Albrook in an August 20 sting operation prompted by complaints by the family of a prisoner awaiting trial that they were being shaken down for a $2,600 payoff to get the inmate released from preventive detention. The transaction was surreptitiously recorded and Sáez was arrested with the marked bills he received for the payoff. Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez used the occasion to vow that all [the crooks in the Public Ministry] are going to fall sooner or later."

Baby returned to parents

Two-month-old Luis Mario Ortega Pineda has been returned to his parents. The boy was born in San Miguel Arcangel Hospital in San Miguelito but was transferred to Hospital del Niño for surgery. Because his mother has no cedula, no birth certificate was issued for the child and the latter hospital maintained that it couldn’t give up a child to someone without proper ID and referred the child to a juvenile court, which placed him at the Malambo orphanage. The 17-year-old mother, María Isabel Pineda, says she was born in a remote community and never registered with the government. If that's the case, she's one of about 80,000 Panamanians, most of them in the indigenous comarcas, in the same undocumented situation. After a great hue and cry after the young family's plight was reported in El Panama America, the Defensor del Pueblo (national ombudsman) intervened and the court ruled that whatever the mother's situation might be, the father is a duly registered citizen and the child was turned over to him. Although the particular case was thus resolved, the question of whether the government can deny a child born in Panama a birth certificate --- and therefore his or her constitutional right to Panamanian citizenship --- due to the mother's undocumented status remains up in the air. The National Assembly is expected to take up the issue of immigration reform in its upcoming session and this issue might be addressed then. But even if it is decided that such children may be denied birth certificates and thus citizenship, such a policy violates several treaties to which Panama is a party and would not likely withstand a court challenge before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, which by treaty is Panama's court of last resort in such cases.

President's popularity up

According to a Dichter & Neira poll commissioned and published by La Prensa, 45.5 percent of Panamanians think that Martín Torrijos is doing a good or excellent job as president, as opposed to 49.2 percent who have a negative perception of his performance. The numbers indicate a sharp rebound from the president's 24 percent approval rating during the strike and protests over the Law 17 social security reforms in June.

Veraguas priest jailed for sexual harassment

Father Roberto González Chávez, a Catholic priest, has been convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison for the sexual harassment of several of his students when he taught at the Instituto Jesus Nazareno in Atalaya. González has a loyal band of followers as well as some critics, and there were some tense moments between the two groups outside the courthouse during his trial this past june. The court dismissed prosecutors' pleas for criminal charges against Bishop of Veraguas Óscar Brown and Father José Schmichuizen, the latter the director of the Instituto Jesus Nazareno, for allegedly covering up Father González's misconduct. After the accusations against him were lodged, González was transferred to a post as a parish priest in Cañazas.

Most Torrijos appointees ignore financial declaration law

The Comptroller General's office has complained that of the 1,707 presidential appointees who are required to submit sworn declarations about their assets, only 349 have done so. During the Moscoso administration the law was ignored to an even greater extent. Under the Inter-American Anti-Corruption Convention and implementing Panamanian legislation, unexplained accumulation of wealth while holding public office is a crime. But in the Panamanian political culture, the accumulation of illicit wealth is precisely the motive for many of those who seek and acquire responsible government positions.

Government officially recognizes indigenous alphabets

President Torrijos has signed a decree officially recognizing Ngobe, Kuna and Embera alphabets, which are relatively recent innovations that create literature in Panama’s spoken indigenous tongues. Torrijos also announced scholarships at the Normal School in Santiago for indigenous teachers. The moves are part of a government program to establish bilingual education --- in indigenous languages and Spanish --- in the public schools within the comarcas.

Valentín Santana abandons Naso palace

Valentín Santana, the uncle of Tito Santana, the latter officially recognized by the government as the Naso king, has ended his occupation of the Naso royal house in Sieyic, on the Teribe River in Bocas del Toro. Much of the sharply divided Naso nation view Valentín as the legitimate king. In an April 3 election Valentín and his supporters boycotted the process because they said that the poll lists had been rigged, and Tito won unopposed. The Naso are the only people in the Americas with their own monarchy. (In the hemisphere we do, however, have British and Dutch colonies or ex-colonies that recognize European monarchs as their heads of state.) The king is always a member of the Santana family, but may be replaced by popular vote. Sometimes the Naso change kings when national governments change, seeking to select a Santana whom they think would work better with the new administration. This upheaval, however, has nothing to do with Arnulfistas and Torrijistas as such, but stems from a controversial hydroelectric dam project and arguments over the procedures used to approve it. Tito is for the development and Valentín opposed.

Pedrarias the Cruel honored

Patronato Panama Viejo president Francisco Linares and University of Panama rector Gustavo García de Paredes recently unveiled a bust of one Pedro Arias Dávila --- Pedrarias the Cruel --- to commemorate the 1519 establishment of the first colonial Panama City on the site of an indigenous settlement that was at least 1,000 years old. The bust, made at the University of Panama, is now in the visitors' pavilion at Panama Viejo. One of the first things Pedrarias did upon becoming the Spanish crown's representative here was to execute Vasco Núñez de Balboa on trumped-up charges, and after leaving Panama to rule Nicaragua he earned such a sordid reputation for his cruel enslavement of the indigenous population there that "the Cruel" has been associated with his name ever since. The self-proclaimed Rector Magnifico complained that Pedrarias should be seen as a man of his times but was unfairly "satanized" by later generations.

Anthropology Museum moving to Curundu Flats

The empty would-be children's museum in Curundu Flats, built with aid from Taiwan, much of which was apparently siphoned away into the personal fortunes of Mireya Moscoso's friends and relatives, will house the collection now located in the Reina Torres de Arauz Anthropology Museum. The decision was announced by First Lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos. The present museum on Plaza Cinco de Mayo, which is in decrepit shape, will be refurbished and converted into an elite fine arts high school. The museum move is expected to take about one year to accomplish.

Bank robbery nets millions

On August 15 at least three men disguised as armored car guards quietly and without violence or threats took more than $2 million from the International Bank of China branch in the Colon Free Zone. A massive search found the van a little while later, abandoned along with the uniforms in the forest at the former Fort Gulick. As these briefs were written none of the robbers had been arrested and detectives were checking out the possibilities that they worked with collaborators inside the bank.

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