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Panama News Briefs

US visa revocation announced the day after legislative committee kills corruption complaint

High court corruption issue won't go away

by Eric Jackson, in part from other media

"The magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice can't be investigated," one former member of that body flatly declared to an RPC-TV morning television audience. This particular ex-magistrate was PRD legislator Jerry Wilson Navarro, whose job as a member of the National Assembly's Credentials Committee was to consider a corruption complaint naming eight high court judges for a series of offenses that include letting wealthy Colombian drug barons walk despite laws and clear evidence prohibiting their release.

The following day, the committee voted unanimously in line with Wilson's maxim and dismissed the complaint.

Were Panamanians shocked? Probably not. Remember, only a few years ago in an impeachment trial we heard former magistrate José Manuel Faúndes negotiating a $20,000 bribe to secure the release of another Colombian drug trafficker in a televised ex parte phone call with a defense lawyer. Faúndes was acquitted.

This particular complaint, however, was filed by three prominent individuals on behalf of a coalition of business, labor, professional and civic groups that includes the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission and the nation's Ecumenical Council. According to Wilson, since none of them were parties to the court cases involving the complained-of acts of corruption, none of them had standing to complain. According to other members of the Credentials Committee, since proof without a reasonable doubt was allegedly not attached to the complaint --- a claim hotly contested by some of then nation's more prominent criminal attorneys --- the legislature had no power to consider it.

Actually, the legislators' assertions have no foundation in the law. Article 160 of the constitution, which provides for the legislature's power to try magistrates for violating the constitution or laws, provides no such limitations. But since the Supreme Court has the power to lift the deputies' legislative immunity and the National Assembly has the power to try and remove the magistrates and almost all of them are immersed in a political culture of corrupt personal gain rather than public service, there is a tacit agreement that the two branches of government will block each other's accountability for their actions.

The November 29 dismissal of the corruption allegations garnered the votes of of PRD deputies Freidi Torres, Jerry Wilson, Juan Hernández and Marina De Laguna, the Panameñistas' Argentina Arias and MOLIRENA's Héctor Aparicio. Solidaridad deputy Rubén Darío Beitía played a common legislative game and sent his suplente José Vega to cast the pro-corruption vote.

And what did PRD party leader and the president of the republic, one Martín Torrijos, have to say all about this? Nothing at all. He conveniently flew off to Cuba as his party voted for corruption with impunity in the court system.

The next morning the committee vote was the leading story in La Prensa, which because of its pro-PRD slant these days didn't take note of any contradiction between Torrijos's "zero corruption" campaign pledge and his party's pro-corruption actions in the legislature.

But meanwhile, the United States government was making an announcement about Supreme Court corruption of its own. On November 30 the American Embassy announced that magistrate Winston Spadafora's visa to enter the United States had been revoked on the grounds of corruption. "The timing was accidental," embassy spokesman Will Ostick said, explaining word of Washington's decision had come the previous week but the embassy hadn't wanted to announce it on a holiday weekend. Ostick maintained that it's up to Panama to deal with its own public corruption, but said that US immigration law allows Washington to exclude foreign individuals whose odious conduct in their own countries would make their presence in the United States harmful to American interests. "This visa revocation is just one tool to use in the struggle against corruption."

Predictably, Spadafora complained that he had not been given an opportunity to defend himself or even know the specific basis of exclusion. The embassy declined to get into the particulars with the press, but welcomed the magistrate to come in and be told the details if he cares to do so. Spadafora's most notorious crooked judicial act is the sua sponte cancellation of a multi-million-dollar debt that his friend Jean Figali owes the Interoceanic Regional Authority, but he has been accused of a number of other offenses by anti-corruption activists and denounced by his own brothers and sisters. A decision to revoke or deny a visa is not a judicial procedure but rather an administrative finding pursuant to section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act that a person's entry into the country would be "detrimental to the interests of the United States." In January of 2004 US President George W. Bush announced that this section would be invoked in instances of public corruption. Nevertheless, Ostick pointed out, the review leading up to such a finding is extensive and requires strong evidence that specific unlawful acts have been committed. He added that there is no blacklist of current or former Panamanian officials and that visa revocation decisions are dealt with on an individual basis.

By comparison with La Prensa, El Panama America's news coverage downplayed the Credentials Committee's vote to summarily dismiss the complaint against the eight magistrates. However, the mostly conservative daily warned in a front page editorial that "It would be a serious error to underestimate the powerful forces of frustration, fermented in the heat of abuses and corruption. From this heat came a Comandante Marcos and a Chávez."

However, the Panamanian political class, with only a few dissenting voices, apparently figures that it has everything under control. And they do have the courts, the votes in the legislature and the president's acquiescence to keep their bribery-fueled gravy train running.