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by Eric Jackson, largely from other media

Who in Panamanian political life is prone to anti-American demagoguery when it's convenient, and who affects a servile “let the gringos solve our problems” mentality? In the days since word went out about the revocation of Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora's US visa, for corruption whose specific details are so far unspecified by Washington, Panamanians have seen a few answers to those questions.

President Torrijos is carefully avoiding statements that would put him on either of those lists. Right after Spadafora lost his visa, the president said that the Americans have a right to determine who gets into their country and who doesn't and neither he nor top members of his administration have had anything more to say about it since then.

However, two of the scandal-tainted high court's magistrates played the nationalist card.

The court's president, José Troyano, began with a blast that was the lead story in El Panama America on December 13. There is no corruption in his court, he argued, because those who complain about it can't show the full proof that the legislature demands before it will even consider looking into such matters. Spadafora's loss of his US visa is really an exercise of “judicial terrorism” by Panamanian civil society and foreign interests meddling in this country's affairs, Troyano asserted.

High court magistrate Alberto Cigarruista chimed in the following day, charging that the United States wants to subjugate Panama. He criticized people whom he said lose their court cases and then go running to foreign embassies to complain. He attributed the revocation of Spadafora's visa to an American attempt to overcome Chinese competition for construction contracts in a future canal expansion.

In the years when he served as a legislator, before Mireya Moscoso elevated him to the Supreme Court in a process marked by bribery allegations, Cigarruista earned a reputation for making wild charges for which he wouldn't provide evidence. Thus relatively few Panamanians or Americans paid very much attention to what he said.

However, US Ambassador William Eaton did respond to Troyano, maintaining that “the only form of judicial terrorism that exists in Panama is corruption.” That set off a series of reactions from across the political spectrum, most of them critical.

Elias Castillo, a PRD member and president of the National Assembly, complained that it's improper for an ambassador to interfere in the internal affairs of the country to which he or she is posted.

Earlier, along with many other Panamanians, Castillo opined that the Americans ought to reveal the reasons why Spadafora's visa was withdrawn and show the relevant proofs. Some of those demanding proof did so because they oppose the action against Spadafora and believed that Washington couldn't or wouldn't justify its action. Others who approve of the visa revocation and would like to see Spadafora run out of office want to see the evidence so that it can be used against him here. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs forwarded a request for more information to Washington.

Because decisions on visas are administrative rather than judicial matters, the US government does not legally have or show or possess any proof to defend its actions. However, as a matter of current US policy the cancellation of a visa on grounds of corruption is a lengthy process in which the decision is taken in Washington rather than at the embassy level. American administrations' decisions on such matters are generally informed by reports made by embassy staffers, but such communications are routinely kept secret, as are most diplomatic documents. US practices with regard to diplomatic confidentiality are not much different from those of most other countries.

In the face of all the criticism Eaton backed down just a tiny bit with a clarifying statement, saying that he didn't mean to single out Panama as the only country with public corruption, given that it's a worldwide problem. He added that the government he represents --- which doesn't like to be perceived as attacking Latin American public figures for capricious reasons --- is willing to disclose the basis for its action against Spadafora.

Meanwhile, in another dispute that's the subject of a complaint about high court corruption now pending before the legislature, businessman Arthur Marohl, a dual US-Panamanian citizen, has forwarded his grievance to the US Embassy here and to US President George W. Bush, and he threatens to take up the matter with the US Senate.

The senators have no particular jurisdiction in such disputes, but theoretically the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could be persuaded to block American aid to Panama. Former committee chair Jesse Helms did that to Costa Rica a few years back, after a US citizen who killed a Tico rancher for using a legal right of way across the land that the American bought from a Colombian drug dealer was himself shot and killed and the Costa Rican authorities placed most of the blame on the American.

Taking the position that the United States improperly interfered in Panama's internal affairs by the visa revocation and the embassy's statements were current anti-corruption czarina Alma Montenegro de Fletcher and the former presidential press secretary in the Endara administration, René Hernández González. Guillermo Cóchez, a former legislator and Panama City mayor and a member of the Partido Popular, complained that “We can not permit the United States to be the one who decides who is or is not corrupt in Panama.” Mitchell Doens, who served as labor minister in the Pérez Balladares administration and was once denied a US visa himself due to alleged activities in support of Colombian guerrillas, denounced the US Embassy for “grossly disrespecting a high official of the Panamanian state.”

On the other hand, former Foreign Minister and the current president of the Solidaridad party José Raúl Mulino warned in an El Panama America column that the US action against Spadafora is a cause for concern due to the underlying alleged corruption. He argued that clothing the issue in nationalist terms by complaining of improper US intervention would be “the worst thing we could do.” The Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission issued a statement maintaining that the revocation of Spadafora's visa indicates that “there are situations that require investigation.”

Mercedes Araúz de Grimaldo, the president of the nation's bar association (Colegio de Abogados), lamented that the US government “threw in our face what we had been saying for some time.”

Former La Prensa publisher I. Roberto Eisenmann Jr. wrote in his weekly column that the visa cancellation “embarrasses me as a Panamanian.” Enrique de Obarrio, the president of the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE), denigrated National Assembly deputies whom he said “wait for some representative of the American government to come walking in and present the famous summary proof” instead of acting on corruption complaints submitted to them by Panamanian citizens. Both Eisenmann and de Obarrio were key figures in the 18-group coalition that recently submitted corruption complaints accusing eight high court magistrates or alternate magistrates of having engaged in various acts of corruption. Those complaints were summarily and unanimously dismissed by the National Assembly's Credentials Committee, whose members cited reasons ranging from standard arguments that the proof submitted with the complaint were inadequate to Jerry Wilson's unusually broad assertion that the legislature can't investigate magistrates.

Some Panamanians were less circumspect in their sympathy for the US action. Soidaridad legislator Mireya Lasso said that when a visa is revoked there is a reason, and speculated that in this case it may have been due to Spadafora's inexplicable decisions in favor of major Colombian drug traffickers. Anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro called Spadafora's exclusion from the United States “good news.” “It shows that if justice doesn't function in Panama, the United States does comply with international conventions on corruption,” he told El Panama America.

A Dichter & Neira poll commissioned by La Prensa and taken between December 2 and 4 indicated that 69.3 percent of Panamanians supported the US government's revocation of Winston Spadafora's visa.