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FARC frees software exec after 20 months

Julio Arango, a software engineer and co-owner of Arango Software, was freed by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas at the end of November after having been held in captivity for 20 months. In an interview with El Panama America Arango, whose Panamanian company specializes in banking software and is arguably the most successful of this country’s high tech firms, said that no ransom was paid to secure his release. The engineer is a Colombian citizen who has resided in Panama for more than 20 years. He and his cousin were abducted by FARC while traveling by boat to visit relatives in Inirida, near the Colombian border with Venezuela. After he and his cousin were released Arango returned to Panama.

Gangland-style execution at Clayton Riding Club

Police are investigating the death of a Colombian army reservist who was found dead in an SUV at the Clayton Riding Club, having been shot twice at close range after having been beaten. The last such murder at that particular spot was during the time when the US Army was still at Fort Clayton and it was believed to have been related to gun running for Colombia’s long-running civil conflict. In this case police are reportedly investigating various possibilities, including drug trafficking angles. Robbery seems not to have been a motive, as the car, a wallet full of cash and other valuables were left behind. Both the right-wing AUC paramilitaries and the left-wing FARC guerrillas maintain gun smuggling routes through Panama, and due to the de facto alliance between the Bogota government and the AUC the victim’s Colombian Army connection might suggest a paramilitary tie.

What if they gave a purge and nobody came?

Jesús “Maco” Rosas, who has run the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA) more as part of his extended family’s business than as a political party, called a national committee meeting for December 18, with one of the items on the agenda the expulsion of former Vice President Arturo Vallarino. However, only 40 of the 99 members showed up, not enough for a quorum. The Electoral Tribunal has voided some of Rosas’s other purges and cut off state funding for the party because previous subsidies were improperly spent. The party has also lost a lot of dues income because when it was a junior partner in Mireya Moscoso’s governing coalition it was given the Ministry of Education as a Rosas fiefdom and teachers were obliged to join the party to get favorable assignments in the public schools, but now many of these opportunistic educators have quit. In January MOLIRENA will hold a party convention, at which it is expected that the Rosas family will be ousted from power. But look for a lot of maneuvering and lawsuits between now and the time that the locks are changed at MOLIRENA headquarters.

What if they gave monkey watching rides and the monkeys left?

The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) have given their approval for a cable car system to run between Ancon Hill and the Amador Causeway, and the neighbors up on the hill are not at all pleased. Much of Ancon Hill is a national park, an island of wildlife in the Panama metro area, and residential areas around the old Gorgas Hospital and Quarry Heights are some of the quieter and more scenic places where someone might decide to live. But the experience of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort cable car has shown that these devices scare away the birds, monkeys and other wildlife that live in the forest canopy, and residents don’t want to see, hear and smell busloads of tourists coming or going for one-way cable car rides or have their privacy and tranquility disrupted by gawking visitors overhead. The government says that the cable car operators will replace each tree they cut for the project by planting several trees elsewhere --- but the monkeys may not care to move to Arraijan. About eight hectares of forest would be cut down to install the cable car system. Because a coalition of residents and environmentalists calling itself the Movement in Defense of Ancon Hill claims that the environmental impact statement that ANAM accepted is incomplete and flawed, litigation is likely. How the judges will rule is unpredictable and may depend on whether the Supreme Court, which occupies part of the old Gorgas Hospital, will be within throwing range for passengers on the cable cars.

US Consulate makes it easier to get certain visas

Want to take your kids to Disney World? You’ll still have to jump through the same hoops that were tightened and raised in the wake of the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States in 2001. However, Panamanians who need to travel to the United States for business reasons, or want a student visa or who seek to participate in cultural exchanges will have an easier time of it. Now on Wednesdays between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. the consulate will dedicate itself to those seeking B1 business visas, while those who want to get F1 or M1 student visas or J1 cultural exchange visas will have the consulate’s attention between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. on Mondays through Thursdays. For student and cultural visas it will be possible to get an interview without making a previous appointment, but in any case there are forms that will need to be filled out. Those forms are available on the US State Department’s website at http://evisaforms.state.gov.

Token immigration raids

On Saturday, December 10, immigration agents swooped down to make simultaneous inspections on four hotels that were owned by a Colombian company owned by the late businessman Carlos Arango, who died in a November plane crash. They found nothing illegal, according to reports in the daily newspapers. In previous years Arango’s operations on Contadora had been raided for large-scale smuggling of illegal Colombian immigrants, which a neighbor who lived on Contadora for many years told The Panama News was a continuing racket. But after a few weeks of uncertainty in the wake of Arango’s death and with the likely lack of security inherent in a coordinated series of raids, it would be no surprise that everything would appear in order even if it wasn’t. One thing that the government has yet to explain is the presence of a Ministry of Health official on the small plane that went down north of San Carlos with Arango, two of his lawyers and a pilot also aboard.

Alleged partisan public employee list

El Panama America reports that an unspecified government department maintains a color-coded list of employees to indicate public servants’ partisan affiliations. It’s not an unprecedented practice but it is illegal. Based on the report Panameñista leader Marco Ameglio has complained to Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís. When the Moscoso administration was caught doing a similar thing the PRD, then in opposition, complained bitterly and blocked the appointment of Rommel Adames, one of the people accused of engaging in such partisan discrimination, to a government commission.