National Assembly backs corruption

The National Assembly, by actions of its plenary, one of its committees and one of the minor parties represented therein, has reiterated its intention to continue its customary corruption, regardless of President Torrijos's celebrated “zero corruption” pledge.

On October 25 the assembly plenary voted to reinstate the much-abused legislative privilege of importing cars free of duties. That perquisite has for many years been the basis of a lucrative business wherein luxury car dealerships have essentially bought the legislators' rights so that they can import and sell expensive cars to third persons at much lower prices, keeping the vehicles in the names of the legislators.

In June and July a series of revelations about such abuses, one of them pertaining to legislator Rogelio Alba (Liberal Nacional - Kuna Yala), led the assembly president at the time, Jerry Wilson (PRD - Panama City), to decree an end to automobile import duty exonerations through the end of his term on (PRD - Panama City) temporarily extended the moratorium pending action by the legislature as a whole. That action came suddenly on the evening of October 25, when the assembly plenary voted unanimously to renew the exonerations.

Theoretically, the renewed privileges are limited, as they only allow deputies who have not already taken advantage of the auto exonerations during this session to do so. However, as the assembly regulations allow only one duty-free car every three years to each deputy and each suplente in the National Assembly and the same privileges to the deputies and suplentes in the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), as a practical matter the unpopular privilege has been continued.

Although the de facto and highly illegal transfer of the privilege to third parties by a number of the deputies has been well established, there has been no move to taken internal disciplinary measures within the legislature, let alone to lift immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution for the tax fraud implicit in the racket of transferring legislative tax exonerations to others.

Alba's case is worthy of special mention because not only is he one of the deputies who most clearly abused his car exoneration privilege by transferring its use to someone else, he was also detained earlier this year smuggling liquor and cigarettes out of the Colon Free Zone without paying the duty on them. At the time he said he was doing so for the community he represents. (Alba's name has also been mentioned by witnesses and the press in connection with the laundering of funds from a large cocaine sale, but prosecutors have not seen enough of a case in that particular allegation to go to the Supreme Court and ask the magistrates to lift his immunity.) In any case, the National Liberal party of its own accord began disciplinary proceedings to expel Alba from its ranks. But suddenly, citing purported procedural problems, the party called the moves against Alba to a halt.

These latest pro-corruption moves came against a backdrop of a stalled committee discussion on changes to the legislature's internal regulations and the rejection of one of the presidential State Commission for Justice's key anti-corruption recommendations.

The legislature's Credentials Committee is the body which first hears complaints about corruption involving assembly members and employees, and in this legislature has an unblemished record of blocking all inquiries or motions about all acts of corruption. Presided over by deputy Freidi Torres (PRD - Veraguas), the committee hadn't as this story was written, met for several weeks. According to Torres, it's because of difficulties arranging a session at which all representantes (city council members) from every municipality in his home province can attend. Why there is a need for such an unusual procedure, Torres hasn't really made clear.

The net effect of that odd procedural tangle is that promised reforms to the legislature's internal regulations have not been discussed. Opposition deputy Mireya Lasso (Solidaridad - Panama City) predicted in La Prensa they are not going to be discussed because what's going on is a series of foot-dragging subterfuges by a legislature that “does not have the will” to enact reforms. In El Panama America Enrique de Obarrio, the president of the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE) complained that the reinstatement of the auto duty exonerations and the committee's failure to meet indicate that fighting corruption is the least of the deputies' concerns.

In La Prensa Torres more or less concurred with de Obarrio, when the former alleged that the duty exoneration really isn't a very important issue and that what matters is a modernization of assembly rules to make the legislative process work more efficiently.

A Dichter & Neira poll commissioned and published by La Prensa indicated that some 56.8 percent of Panamanians favor an end to all special tax exonerations for all public officials, while a further 18.8 percent that might favor allowing members of the executive or judicial branches of government or the diplomatic corps to retain some of these benefits want to take them away from the legislators. The poll also found a public looking askance at tax exonerations that benefit segments of the private sector.

Meanwhile, on October 13 the plenary of the National Assembly voted to reject the recommendations of President Torrijos's State Commission for Justice.

The legislation that the commission wanted included expanded powers for prosecutors to investigate inexplicable enrichment by public officials. As the law now stands, an investigation against a current public officeholder can only begin if there is enough admissible court evidence to sustain a conviction presented before any investigation presented by the Comptroller General to the Public Ministry. But the Comptroller General lacks the power to pierce corporate and banking secrecy veils or to subpoena most information like prosecutors can. Thus as a practical matter a legislator, judge, government minister, president or clerk in a government office who takes bribes and with the proceeds of those bribes lives in an expensive house and drives an expensive car which could not be explained by his or her known sources of income can't be investigated for inexplicable enrichment while in public office.

Also among the commission recommendations that the legislature voted down were the right of any private citizen to file a criminal complaint against any public official who is required by law to submit a declaration of assets but who fails to do so; the Comptroller General's power to audit any public official's declaration of assets; and the extension of the statute of limitations in public corruption cases for an extra five years.

On RPC television, Jerry Wilson defended the assembly's vote, characterizing it as “unjust and inappropriate” that any ordinary citizen could have the right to complain about corruption on the part of a public official. However, hardly anyone outside of the political class has accepted this argument. Anti-corruption activist Magaly Castillo argued in El Panama America that what the PRD-controlled assembly did was a betrayal of the PRD president's “zero corruption” campaign pledge: “It's incomprehensible that they had sold themselves on the point that they would fight corruption, and that now they're saying something else.” APEDE's de Obarrio said in the same daily that the politicians' behavior is putting the public's tolerance and frustration to a new test. The Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission likewise complained in the same medium that “nobody is above the law” and called the assembly's vote “inexplicable.”

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