Proposed insular and coastal property law prompts opposition

At first, on September 14, all we got was a press release about how the Torrijos cabinet had approved a proposed law on island and coastal properties which would, if passed by the National Assembly, promote tourism and normalize land tenure in places where practices have been irregular for years. Given that representatives of Catastro had earlier in the year promised residents on the Bocas del Toro islands that the government intended to change things so that they could get full title to right of possession land they had bought in good faith from people who legitimately had such rights to sell, a logical first presumption was that this would be done. But there was nothing about the specifics of the law posted on any of the government’s website for the first week or so.

That the assurance of being able to get title was forgotten was the least concern. What the Torrijos administration proposed to do in areas designated as “tourism zones” by the Panamanian Tourism Institute (IPAT) was to set up a system of concessions --- 40 years for most people and entities, and 60 years for those with a lot of money to invest --- that would trump rights of possession. People who had docks, houses over the water or other beach easements who had not had them for at least 10 years would stand to lose them. Those who already had rights similar to ownership would in the future see their real estate interests limited by a provision that “Granting Concessions for building residential units shall be limited to one plot of land per Applicant. The extension of the plot, the construction cost of the betterments built and the area such betterments occupy on the total surface of the land under concession shall be the object of regulations.”

But if the proposal was cause for concern among the many foreigners who had moved into designated tourism zones in the Bocas Archipelago, it was far worse for people of humble means, whose families had in many cases worked and farmed their land for generations.

Theoretically, squatters’ rights were recognized. However, as originally proposed the law provided that “natural persons residing in the area who can demonstrate by any documentary means that they have held a permanent and uninterrupted occupancy of State land on insular territories, for a period not less than ten (10) years, prior to the enactment hereof, using such lands as their main residence or place of their agricultural activities, for their own subsistence, shall be granted a ninety (90)-year concession on such lands, without having to post any guarantee bond for such concession.”

In practice that would leave vulnerable whole communities of people who could never afford lawyers wouldn’t have documentary evidence, but only the word of witnesses in the community, which would not be admissible to prove rights to the land. Moreover, houses would have to be of sufficient quality for the government to recognize them as “permanent” and be at least five years old, farms would be limited to 1 hectare in size, and finally, the claims of such persons could be defeated if “there is… opposition from any third parties that can demonstrate a better claim for the concession to be awarded to them.” When the richer parties inevitably won, the people to be dispossessed would have many fewer rights than they had before: “no person unlawfully alleging to have a copyhold on insular territory by virtue of any documents issued by any authority, in violation of the Law and who are not included in the stipulations of the previous Article, may challenge in order to prevent the occupancy or possession of an area that has been given in concession to another person under the terms of this Act…. Concessionaires are entitled, once they have been awarded the respective concession, to request an immediate vacating of the areas under concession, as well as to proceed with the demolition of anything built thereon.”

Say what? Rather immediately, spokespeople for the Torrijos administration began to deny the plain implications of the law they were pushing. However, the plain meaning of what was written and the widespread public mistrust of the government combined to discredit the reassurances in the minds of many people who stood to be affected.

The proposed law was drafted for the government by corporate lawyers whose clients want to build mega-projects, particularly in the Perlas Islands, and dispossess the local communities of their homes and lands legally owned by virtue of long occupation without having to bother with the formalities and costs of paying the people whom they evict for the property rights to be confiscated. The Torrijos administration, which has already several times run into severe public relations problems because of its negligent legal drafting work, probably wasn’t even thinking about how this would affect the foreigners who had moved into Bocas, or the rights of people along the coasts of Colon.

However, as soon as word of the proposal’s content got out there were cries of protest from upscale foreign newcomers and long-established people of humble means alike. It so happened that those who complained are represented by PRD legislators --- Nelson Jackson along the coasts of Colon and Benicio Robinson in Bocas --- and these deputies felt the heat and added their voices to the outcry.

On October 4th the assembly’s Treasury Committee, Pedro Miguel González presiding, began hearings on the legislation. A large crowd of Bocas and Colon residents, some represented by lawyers, showed up for the occasion. Critics of the proposal were blown off as being too technical or uninformed, but that tune began to change as it became clear that rank-and-file PRD constituencies were among those dissatisfied with what the Torrijos cabinet was proposing.

On October 6 the committee met again, intending to vote on an amended proposal. That session began without a written version of the amended proposal being available, with the reading of an anonymous letter from an alleged Bocas resident which purported to say that “our concerns are more clear,” and “some points are now better” and “the law benefits us.” González assured a hostile audience that the Bocas folks had weighed in and that “proposed modifications are on the table.”

It was unconvincing and under an avalanche of criticism --- some of it now coming from the Chamber of Commerce --- the committee started amending the unavailable amended version, and then amending the amendments to the amendments. González proffered the assurance to people who had never registered their squatters’ rights because they could never afford a lawyer that under the new version, such people would have six months to register the rights that they still can’t afford to register.

“It still doesn’t contemplate the right of people with houses or farms that have been there for many years,” legislator Nelson Jackson complained.

Various attorneys pointed out the lack of definition for several key terms, most of all “rights of possession.” Guillermo Márquez Amado pointed out that some 70 percent of all land in Panama is neither platted nor registered in any government office, and that since colonial times the law has held that no registration is necessary to maintain squatters’ rights. Dimitri Troetsch, at the behest of a group of Bocas residents, complained that “many structural things are not clear,” to which González snapped back that “this is the third version” that was under discussion. From the Costa Arriba of Colon, José Luttrell observed that in his neck of the woods people had long had their rights of possession recognized by municipal authorities --- in Bocas the Agrarian Reform Office has played this function --- and that even if people had the money and intention to register their properties, the law as proposed would leave them confused as to where to go to do so. The proposal “destroys private property,” Luttrell concluded. Fatima de la Guardia from the Colegio de Abogados insisted that the amended amendment to provide protection for rights of possession “duly recognized before this law went into effect” be changed to say “existing before this law went into effect.” Attorney Ivonne Fábrega pointed out Supreme Court decisions that would rule out Catastro’s authority to decide which rights of possession are valid.

Catastro director Benjamín Colomarco, whom the PRD-oriented La Prensa incorrectly identified as the proposal’s author, was at the hearing but handed all questions directed at himself to Irma Lee, a young lawyer for his agency. Her arguments didn’t satisfy either the committee or the crowd.

Deputy Benicio Robinson pleaded that assurances that were being orally given in the committee room needed to be specified in the text of the proposed law. The Chamber of Commerce insisted that remaining restrictions on foreign ownership and financing of island developments mean that Panama’s tourism industry will be less competitive with its counterparts in other countries. The concerns were put to Colomarco, who again referred them to Lee, who in turn went into a long discourse on Panamanian constitutional history.

Then the committee adjourned to meet with the 20/30 Club Telethon’s 2005 poster child. A French couple who own property on Colon’s Costa Arriba stopped this reporter in the hall and succinctly stated their opinion of the proposal and the morning’s proceedings: “This is crazy.”

That afternoon the committee approved the first several sections of the law, amended several times over and not available in writing at the time. There things stood as this issue of The Panama News was uploaded.

But meanwhile there were protest rallies in Bocas Town and Almirante, the Ministry of Economy and Finance issued a press release that was intended to reassure people but mostly didn’t, and Colomarco arranged for a damage control visit to Bocas.

As this issue was uploaded, exactly what the committee had approved four days earlier had yet to be published.

This reporter heard a lot of speculation about what the intentions of various parties are. Some said that at heart Benjamín Colomarco, IPAT director Rubén Blades and committee chair Pedro Miguel González are 60s radicals with anti-American tendencies and want to dispossess people, especially foreigners, in order to put the land they hold back into government hands. Some said that it was a matter of a few of this country’s wealthiest families wanting to bulldoze several specific long-standing fishing villages in order to build exclusive upscale resorts without having to buy the rights to the land they take. Another commonly heard opinion was that the people in the cabinet and the legislature are essentially lazy and stumbled into a hornets' nest by letting corporate lawyers with special interests draft a law with far-reaching implications and swallowing it whole, without bothering to consider its consequences or even in many cases to read it.

In the end this reporter expects that while promises of title that the Torrijos administration made may be a dead letter, foreigners who have in good faith bought rights of possession on the Bocas islands will not be deprived of such rights as they already have. Were that to happen the influx of foreign retirees into Panama would come screeching to a halt. It has probably already been adversely affected just because of the threatening nature of the proposal the cabinet sent to the legislature.

However, it does seem that the Torrijos administration will continue to back the efforts of its wealthiest backers to expel some of the poorest communities that voted for Martín last year, where those communities occupy land that the rich want for their tourism projects. That, in turn, would lead to the continued erosion of public support for this administration that set in with unpopular tax legislation and deepened as the result of the ill-fated Seguro Social reforms.

Build a home in Las Cumbres with Villa Concordia --- http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/site/pages/concordia.html
Make the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://www.executivehotel-panama.com
Find the boat of your dreams through Evermarine --- http://www.evermarine.com
Is Bocas your retirement haven? --- http://www.KodiakBocas.com

business & economy