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Also in this section:
Prison controversies prompt corrections directors resignation
Little news in wake of Spaniards' abduction
Torrjos popularity fragile, poll finds
Bocas fraud case not about the well-known hustlers
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Torrijos signs urban development law

We will have to see the implementing regulations, and then how the law is enforced, but when President Torrijos signed the new urban development law on February 1, he made some big claims about its import. “We’re guaranteeing full access to public spaces, making mandatory the inclusion of disabled sectors,” for example. We’re a society that, from leaving holes in the streets and sidewalks for the blind to fall into, to private parties creating barriers to wheelchairs across public rights of way, is notoriously cruel to people with any sort of handicap. “It’s important to point out that this law establishes an obligation on the part of authorities for citizen consultation on the elaboration or change of urban development plans,” in a political culture not used to that sort of thing. If nothing else, the new law will provide a framework in which citizens who had no recourse at all about developments that negatively affect them may now assert their concerns. Compared to planning and zoning laws in the developed countries the law that the president signed was pretty basic, but for Panama it was revolutionary --- or at least held that promise.

Former Bocas mayor gets prison sentence

Eladio Robinson, the former mayor of Bocas del Toro, has been handed a sentence of four years and eigth months in prison for abuse of authority and fraud. His downfall was for evicting poor families that had lived on farms in his district for decades and thus held their property by squatters’ rights, then selling the real estate to foreigners.

US to cut aid to RP in 2007

The Bush administration has submitted an $8.605 million 2007 foreign aid package for Panama to the US Congress, down from $14.804 in fiscal 2006. Virtually all categories of assistance except for military aid are reduced. Panama has no military forces as such, but the Americans consider assistance to the National Police, the National Maritime Service and the National Air Service to be military in nature, and the big-ticket items in the US military aid budget are the occasional National Guard construction and medical assistance maneuvers that take place in impoverished rural areas and multinational naval war games held in Panama’s territorial waters. The budget cut does not reflect a deteriorated US relationship with Panama, but rather the exhaustion of American resources by the Iraq War. The United States is not Panama’s biggest foreign aid donor and has not been for a long time. Our most generous friends tend to be the governments of Taiwan and Spain.

Government warns Bucaram

Media in Panama and Ecuador report that the Panamanian government, at Ecuador’s request, has warned former Ecuadoran President Abdalá Bucaram, who is in exile here, not to make political declarations aimed at his home country. Such actions are considered a violation of the terms of Bucaram’s asylum, which if lost could result in his extradition to face corruption charges in Ecuador. Whether Bucaram actually was a crook while in office is another question, as it seems that a combination of only a minority of the country for his political base and strong objections to his presidency by the United States rather than any “smoking gun” led to his downfall. However, after he was forced from office and from the country charges were brought against him, and there is a long-outstanding extradition request that Panama has declined to honor.

Registro Publico employee busted for heroin

An investigation carried out in both the United States and Panama has dismantled a ring that was smuggling heroin from Panama to New York, generally in capsules swallowed by couriers. There have been 20 arrests in both countries, nine of them here. Among those detained was Mark Anthony Lowe, who was working at the Public Registry.

PTJ detective nabbed in bribery sting

A detective’s job with the Judicial Technical Police’s San Miguelito car theft unit is one of Panama’s better-paying jobs and less dangerous than a lot of other law enforcement assignments here. But according to prosecutors it wasn’t enough for detective Eduardo Carrera, who allegedly demanded a $700 payoff to kill an investigation of a car theft. Carrera was arrested and was ordered held in prison pending further legal proceedings.

Gómez lays down the law

Well, actually she says she just enforces it. However, within the Public Ministry Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez has been making changes and demanding new work styles. In the past two weeks two pronouncements have been particularly noteworthy. First, Gómez criticized prosecutors and the PTJ for lacking the knowledge to conduct proper investigations, implicitly demanding that the people under her upgrade their skills or get out. Second, she has put part of the blame for a judicial backlog that’s responsible for a large part of the country’s prison overcrowding problem on the heads of prosecutors who won’t set foot in the nation’s places of detention. She has ordered prosecutors to visit the jails and prisons at least once a month to check on the progress of the cases of those being held pending trial. More than 60 percent of Panama’s prisoners are awaiting trial, and about half of these will end up being acquitted but without any recourse for the time they spent behind bars for alleged crimes of which they were not convicted.

Gruesome robbery and murders

Five men are being held in connection with a particulary gruesome crime that has shocked Panama. On February 5 robbers descended upon the Deli Gourmet in Panama City’s Obarrio neighborhood, cleaned out the register and the safe of some $3,000 and abducted the two women working there, killed them execution-style and dumping their bodies along the Corredor Sur. Police and prosecutors say that one of the assailants was the deli’s security guard, who could have been identified by the cashier and supervisor who were slain.

Ex-legislator’s son shoots a man, walks

Francisco Reyes Tapia, the son of former Mireyista legislator Francico “Panchito” Reyes, shot and wounded a man in an argument that began inside a San Miguelito casino, but after a couple of days in detention was ordered released by an assistant prosecutor. The younger Reyes was Panama’s consul in Guayaquil under Mireya Moscoso’s nepotism regime. The father gained notoriety for pulling a gun on two electric utility workers who were disconnecting an illegal connection to the power grid through which he was stealing electricity. The erstwhile legislator’s colleagues in the assembly apparently thought it perfectly proper for one of their number to steal and to pull guns on people --- as least the wouldn’t lift his immunity from prosecution for such behavior --- but at the polls in May of 2004 the voters didn’t see it that way. In this latest incident, the victim, who was shot twice in his legs, says that a drunken Reyes Tapia was trying to rob him of his winnings at the casino and followed him outside and shot him. The gun used in the incident turned out to be illegally unregistered.

Woman killed in cops and robber shootout

When one Christopher Alleyne Yard stuck up a Texaco station on Via España in Vista Hermosa for about $100 on the evening of January 31, the attendant feared that he would be fired and gave chase, throwing rocks and shouting. The commotion drew the attention of police, who converged on the scene and blocked an intersection through which the robber was trying to escape in a taxi. Alleyne jumped out and fled on foot, pulling out a .38 caliber pistol and firing shots at officers. Several cops returned the fire. In the shootout a stray bullet struck and killed Ligia Elena Sinistierra Morales, a passenger on a bus that was stuck at the intersection. El Panama America reports that witnesses told its reporters that the robber fired the shot that killed the 36-year-old woman, who was on her way home from work and is survived by her husband and son. The layout of where the police, the robber and the bus were situated at the time of the tragedy would also suggest that Alleyne killed the woman. However, suggestions have been made that the police fired the bullet that killed her, something that National Police director Rolando Mirones denies. The PTJ is conducting ballistics tests and other forensic work to determine the facts of the matter. Meanwhile, some critics are arguing that whoever fired the shot that killed Sinistierra, shootouts like this one, in which many innocent people are exposed to mortal danger, ought to be avoided by police. Under Panamanian law officers are entitled to use deadly force to defend their lives or those of others, but the police academy also trains them to consider the dangers to third parties if they do use force.

Catholic Church denounces La Joya brutality

The Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Commission and its prison ministry have issued a joint communique, under the leadership of Monsignior Carlos María Ariz, calling on the government to fully investigate and punish those responsible for a number of beatings and other cases of maltreatment of prisoners at La Joya Penitentiary that have come to public attention in recent weeks. The church also called for more transparency in the administration of the nation’s prisons.

Radicals rumble on campus --- well, sort of

Members of two University of Panama leftist groups, the Peoples Revolutionary Youth Movement (MJP) and the Revolutionary Student Front (FER-29), have had a shouting match that according to various accounts may or may not have resulted in a scuffle. The MJP tried to recruit a young woman who had been active with FER-29 as a high school student at the Instituto Nacional when she registered at the law school, and FER-29 objected. Factions have been proliferating among the campus left of late for two main reasons: first, because the left in the end failed to block the privatization of the Social Security Fund’s investments and serious cutbacks in workers’ pension benefits, and this has led to a predictable process of rethinking, disillusionment and blame assignment; and second, because part of the campus left thinks it’s embarrassing that the rector, who is caught up in a false diploma scandal, has gone all but uncriticized by the radicals. FER-29 has been mostly supportive of the rector, while the recently formed MJP has little use for him.

Former FBI agent in sex and spying scandal

Although Panama might reasonably be concerned about espionage, the matter has been treated as a sexual pecadillo. It seems that Gil Torrez, the former FBI agent working as the US Embassy’s legal attache here, had an affair with a woman who had a job as a lawyer at one of the government ministries during the Moscoso administration. The attorney was apparently an American spy watching the Panamanian government. But as filed in the complaint by an erstwhile subordinate in the United States, Torrez’s conduct was a breach of FBI ethics and placed him in a position to be blackmailed by the Panamanian government. The matter has been taken up by the FBI’s management, at the urging of US Senator Charles Grassley. So far the woman has not been identified by name down here, but if that comes to pass it might legitimately be alleged that by spying on her employer she was in breach of her ethical duties as a lawyer.

US congressional bribery scandal has Panama roots

One popular theory of why the United States invaded Panama in December of 1989 rather than take one of its many opportunities to just remove Manuel Antonio Noriega from the scene was that George H.W. Bush, a former CIA spymaster when Noriega was on The Company’s payroll and later the Reagan vice president who played a big role in covert warfare in Central America, wanted to grab Panama’s public records to avoid embarrassing revelations. Many records were seized and have never been returned by the US government, which considers them war booty and classified documents unavailable to the American people. Against Pentagon wishes, a Poway, California businessman named Brent Wilkes, in the early 90s a Washington lobbyist, landed a contract for San Diego-based Audre Inc. to convert the hundreds of crates of Panamanian records to digital format. Later, Wilkes set up his own company and landed these contracts for himself, and by campaign contributions and outright bribery made a long and lucrative career of winning US defense contracts by persuading key members of Congress to earmark them for his companies. But now one of the key recipients of Wilkes’s bribes, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, has tearfully admitted his guilt and Wilkes, listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in Cunningham’s indictment, is no longer getting government business. And worse may be yet to come --- Wilkes has been subpoenaed in an ongoing corruption investigation directed at former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

Despite what La Prensa reports…

They may be proven right in the end, or may not. La Prensa has once again botched an international election story, reporting in its February 6 edition that former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias had been returned to his old job by the voters. However, with the race in a statistical tie and less than 90 percent of the electronic returns counted, Tico electoral authorities suspended the count so that the paper backup ballots could be counted by hand. That process will take about two weeks. La Prensa seems to be making a habit of gaffes like this, having earlier reported that Venezuelans voted to oust Hugo Chávez in a recall election when actually the controversial president had easily retained his job. It seems, however, that the stories behind these errors are very different. In this case it was a matter of rashly trying to get the story into print before the competition, where in the Venezuelan case it was a matter of an editorial alignment with the anti-Chávez faction that was so profound that the daily printed opposition wishful thinking as if it were fact.

Valdés Escoffery doesn’t want another term

Eduardo Valdés Escoffery has been an Electoral Tribunal magistrate for more than 16 years, and when his current term ends later this year he says he doesn’t care to stay on. The judge told El Panama America that he wants to return to life in the private sector, having given his share of sacrifice for the public interest.

Arguments over a labor party

Priscila Vásquez, the leader of the union representing the non-medical employees of the Social Security Fund, says that she’s heading an effort to create a new political party representing the interests of working people and based in the labor movement. However, most of the leaders of the militant CONUSI labor federation have told La Prensa that they are against the idea, in some cases for sectarian leftist partisan reasons and some because they don’t see much prospect of success. The moderate CONATO labor federation is mostly led by PRD members and thus also not interested in a working class party. However, within the rank-and-file of the leftist FRENADESO coalition, including among groups whose leaders disagree with Vásquez, there is a clamor for a new party. In order to get ballot status, a group must go through an arduous process that includes signing up more than 53,000 members. If FRENADESO decided to do that it could accomplish the task in short order, but it would be a daunting task for only one component union.