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Also in this section:
The "yes" campaign's troubles with the indigenous vote
Arab-Panamanians, leftists protest against Israeli invasion of Lebanon
On the campaign trail
Eaton criticizes corruption in Panama's justice system
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Kaiser Bazán dies in a car crash

Former Vice-President Dominador Kaiser Bazán, scion of a prominent Colon family and active in the private sector as a real estate developer and a Colon Free Zone merchant, died on August 8 in a one-car accident on the Corredor Norte. A car driven by his chauffeur hit a pool of water, spun out, plunged into a ravine and smashed into a tree. The former vice president was apparently not wearing his seat belt. The driver also suffered serious injuries. Kaiser Bazán, who was 66 years old, is survived by his widow María Isabel Kodat de Bazán and four children. He was a graduate of Cristobal High School and the US Military Academy at West Point and earned a master's degree in engineering from Stanford. He served in a number of public posts and as a leader of several of Panama's business and civic groups and served as an important contact person between Panamanian political life and this country's American community.

Néstor Jaén dies of a sudden illness

Father Néstor Jaén, a Jesuit priest who for many years headed the Ecumenical Committee of Panama, was the author of a popular column in La Prensa and was one of the Catholic Church's principal spokesmen on public affairs, died on August 4 shortly after being hospitalized with abdominal pains. He was 70 years old and had been in a precarious state of health since undergoing open heart surgery last year. Despite his frailty he worked until the very end, when he was taken to the Seguro Social hospital from a spiritual retreat that he was leading. During the years of protests against the Noriega dictatorship Jaén was, in large part because of his newspaper columns, seen by many as the religious voice of the Civilista movement. He was also renowned as the founder of the "Workshops on Jesus Among the Poor," which had an impact on Panamanian sociology and also served to steer this country's Catholics on a course that avoided many of the confrontations between conservative and liberation theology clerics that took place among fellow believers in many other Latin American countries.

Healthy quads

Señora Cornó and her quadruplets are healthy, but caring for and supporting four infants will be a daunting task. Ana María Valles de Cornó gave birth to three girls and a boy at San Fernando Hospital on August 7.

Varela easily wins Panameñista presidency

By a vote of 892 to 416, Juan Carlos Varela defeated Marco Ameglio for the presidency of the Panameñista Party at a July 29 and 30 party convention in Santiago. (In another way of looking at it, the Hermanos Varela distillery beat the Bonlac dairy.) Varela is expected to take the party in some new directions. It's the first time the movement will be without anyone related to its founder, Arnulfo Arias, in the leadership. Varela had been purged from the party by Arnulfo's widow Mireya Moscoso for supporting banker Alberto Vallarino (Arnulfo's nephew) for president in 1999, and this change of leadership might be seen by some as the party's break with the corruption and nepotism for which Mireya stood. It's also a generational change in the Arnulfista tradition, but on the other hand it maintains the party's center of gravity in the country's central provinces, with Varela hailing from Herrera.

New political party registers

The Union Patriotica, product of a merger between the Solidaridad and Liberal Nacional parties, filed papers for its legal existence with the Electoral Tribunal on August 8. The two parties had a combined membership of 124,629, but their legislators have been leaving for other parties or to sit as independents and the new party may not be able to field the four deputies needed to be recognized as an official National Assembly caucus. The Liberals were part of Mireya Moscoso's coalition and barely avoided the loss of their ballot status in the 2004 elections, while Solidaridad ran Guillermo Endara as its standard bearer that year, only to later see him leave to organize the new Vanguardia Moral de la Patria party.

Joint naval maneuvers

Panama does not have a navy as such, but we do have the National Maritime Service (SMN), which is more or less a coast guard with a small marine corps. We also have a treaty with the United States about joint defense of the Panama Canal. Thus, even though Panama is supposed to be demilitarized much of the US foreign aid to this country is military aid, and we will see a big chunk of this from August 21 to September 1 in the "Panamax 2006" maneuvers led by the United States. Panama, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Honduras will participate along with the Americans. The air, sea and amphibious war games will take place along both of our coasts, and will be observed by military attaches from Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Brazil, France and England. Elements of the US Army's Seventh Special Forces Group will come back here to take part. Theoretically, all of this is to practice defending against an attack on the Panama Canal. What it's mainly about is US military forces getting an opportunity to build ties with Latin American defense establishments. It's also useful for US defense contractors, who get to show off their wares and maybe find some Latin American buyers. Last year's similar naval maneuvers involved 14 countries and were marred by the accidental drowning deaths of three SMN members. Another result of last year's war games was a brief boom for many Panama City businesses when forces from a number of different countries got shore leaves to shop, sightsee and party in the capital. Plus, some worthy causes got some volunteer work from members of the visiting crews.

Refugee influx

On August 3 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that in the preceding few days some 500 Colombians had fled their homes and crossed over the border into Panama's Darien province. The displaced persons, most of them black, were caught in an upsurge of fighting that began with a Colombian Army and right-wing paramilitary offensive against the leftist FARC guerrilla strongholds adjacent to the Panamanian border. Much of this fighting is more about wealthy individuals using the government and private death squads to depopulate and grab land rather politics as such, with long-established indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities being swept up in the violence against their will. Some 2.5 million Colombians have been displaced by the chronic civil conflict, most of them within their own country but also generating substantial refugee populations in every country which borders Colombia.

Brutal robbery causes stir among expats

Did you read some real estate hustler's website and "learn" that Panama has little or no crime? Is Panama the next step in your American "white flight," which has you inquiring about "suburban schools" and looking for that upscale neighborhood where "it can't happen here?" Don't panic, but discard the unhelpful stereotypes. Consider the fate of the Rhima family, who moved from the United States to Panama City's upscale Altos de Golf neighborhood. A gang invaded their home, pistol whipped and seriously injured two members of the family and robbed the household of its valuables. Home invasions are a problem in the capital's wealthier neighborhoods, and have even affected a government minister. In a future business section of The Panama News we will have a more detailed article about protecting yourself from this sort of crime. Meanwhile, bear in mind these principles: guard to the extent possible your possessions from view; think about the barriers --- walls, fences, burglar bars and so on --- that fit your security needs; think about a caretaker or security guard; and understand that home invaders often work on the basis of inside information from remodeling workers, domestic employees or others with access to your household, so be careful about whom you trust. Some foreign embassies will only allow their employees to live in gated communities or guarded apartment towers to reduce their vulnerability to home invaders. And the Rhima family case? Police say that they have identified a suspect, but the gang hadn't been caught at the time these briefs were compiled.

Nice try, you guys

Prosecutors and the PTJ are looking among themselves, at the courts and at various lawyers and defendants to find out just how it is that key documents were removed from the file in one of the cases against the Pablo Rayo Montaño drug network. The papers had to do with how a front for the drug lord allegedly purchased three beach front properties along the Pacific Ocean, worth some $2.3 million, to serve as drug trans-shipment facilities. So with the documents gone, do the front people for the drug lord get the properties back? Well, only if they can bribe a judge to throw out the backup copies of the documentary evidence that US authorities made and possess. But the serious legal issue now is rooting out the crook or crooks, most likely within the Panamanian legal system, who removed the documents.

Former Torrijos aide gets 7 years for 18 kilos of coke

Heraclio Ruiz, who used to be the aide in charge of helping President Torrijos make appointments to public posts, will spend the next several years in a governmental institution --- one of this country's prisons. He was handed a relatively light seven-year prison term by Los Santos circuit judge Alcibíades Zambrano for the possession, transportation and sale of 18 kilos of cocaine. Two co-defendants received shorter prison terms.

Prominent PRD fugitive gets arrest order canceled

Cristóbal Salerno, who used to head the ruling PRD's Frente Empresarial business owners organization, went on the lam for 86 days after his business premises on Avenida Peru were raided and a cache of grenades, explosives and assault rifles was seized. But his lawyers wielded influence well, so that he was able to turn himself in, give his testimony to prosecutors, and get released on condition that he not leave the country and periodically check in with police. The law doesn't provide for pretrial release in such weapons cases, but defense lawyers convinced a judge that Salerno was just an innocent grenade collector and that his weapons cache in a crowded part of the city posed no hazard to anybody who matters.

Rector Magnifico seeks to reduce election losses

Recall that the University of Panama's rector with a fake doctorate, Mr. Gustavo García de Paredes, managed to get re-elected for another five-year term a few weeks ago, but that most of his running mates for deans and heads of regional university centers were ousted. But now the university political machine is trying to take back one of the posts it lost. Lydia Gordón was elected dean of the nursing faculty by a small margin. Now, however, the incumbents say that a professor who didn't vote should be allowed to vote and that the one vote will re-elect Elba De Isaza as dean under the weighted voting system the university uses. It turns out the the professor, assigned to the Darien regional center, was not on the poll list and on election day both candidates agreed that she shouldn't be allowed to vote. Gordón says she'll challenge the university administration's ruling before the Supreme Court. That will add to the other court cases, for the issuance of a fake diploma to a student "leader" who supported the Rector Magnifico, and challenging the legality of García de Paredes and other incumbents run for re-election.

Won't be using his Panamanian passport soon

Eduardo Masferrer, naturalized Panamanian of Cuban origin, had been living in Miami for several years and the Torrijos administration is now moving to cancel his citizenship. It's a moot point, really. The 57-year-old former CEO of the Hamilton Bank had the recent misfortune of being sentenced by US Federal District Judge Michael Moore, renowned for the stiff penalties he hands out. Masferrer got 30 years for directing an elaborate $20 million bank fraud in which a number of other Panamanians were implicated as co-defendants or recipients of unsecured loans.

New environmental indicators

On July 25 the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and the Comptroller General unveiled a set of official environmental indicators as benchmarks for the nation's progress or backsliding in ecological protection and as a tool to help formulate public policies. Biodiversity on land and in marine systems, land uses, forest cover, pollution by and treatment of liquid and solid wastes, energy use and air pollution, natural disasters and environmental law enforcement statistics all go into the new indices. The system was patterned on those now used in Brazil and Mexico and has been in the works since 2004. Among the figures cited in the index are 3,364,591 hectares of wild forest in the country and 2.4 percent of our land being arable.

Rainy season pests (1)

With the heavy rains of late, certain animals that ordinarily live outdoors have been moving into the shelter of homes and businesses after their habitats have been flooded. In Panama City, that means rats and mice in particular. Our capital has more rats than people and we see more of our rodent neighbors in times of heavy rain. It poses health and safety hazards --- every year the bomberos are called to put out fires started when electrical wires chewed by rats short-circuit, and diseases can be spread by rats and mice contaminating food. You want to keep your homes and businesses as clean as possible to deny rodents food and water supplies within your spaces. If you have been invaded by rodents, you can use old-fashioned traps or put out poison. In the latter case put out commercially baits with warfarin or another later generation anti-coagulant poison. These are not only less harmful to children or pets who might directly or indirectly get a dose but also make the dying rodents thirsty so that they come out of their hiding places in search of water and thus don't die inside walls to create long-lasting gross odors.

Rainy season pests (2)

The Panama News periodically gets emails asking whether those who intend to move to or visit this country need yellow fever shots. We have not had a yellow fever case in many years, but the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads that deadly malady is among us and spreads dengue fever, a week-long flu-like misery that is, like the flu, occasionally life-threatening. While the Anopheles mosquito that spreads malaria likes murky swamps, the Aedes prefers tiny, clear bodies of water --- like those created inside a beer can that some slob has thrown by the side of the road, or in an abandoned used tire, or in that little tray under your flowerpot. Dengue is a primarily urban and largely preventable disease, which gives you a fever, body aches that make you feel as if you have been tenderized with a meat hammer, usually a rash and sometimes hemorrhaging. Clean up your act to keep the mosquito population down! Inspectors from the municipal government and the Ministry of Health are going around looking for mosquito breeding conditions and they will impose a fine if they find them at your home or business.

A rare tornado

Panama has waterspouts over the sea, but hardly ever sees a tornado over land. On July 26, however, the Juan Diaz neighborhood of Panama City saw a little tornado, which damaged 35 homes and downed power lines. Nobody was killed or seriously injured, but several houses were total losses.

Costa Abajo hit by floods

The community of Guasimo on Colon's Costa Abajo saw several of its homes flooded on August 7 and 8, and those who were not forced from their homes had their drinking water contaminated when sewage tainted the local water treatment system. The village, in Donoso district, is at the confluence of the Miguel de la Borda and Guasimo rivers, both of which overflowed their banks after two days of heavy rains.