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Referendum campaign briefs
Gangland hit at Amador concert
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

RP won't be UN Security Council candidate

Latin America will get one of the non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council and Uncle Sam has a problem with that. The problem is that the seat seems assured to go to Venezuela, and the alternative that the United States was promoting, Guatemala, has proven to be a non-starter. (That the Guatemalans have never seriously addressed the genocide that happened in the indigenous highlands, and that the principal intellectual authors still play leading roles in the country's political life, is the main reason why Guatemala can't get world support.) In the face of that probable defeat, Washington has been looking for an alternative "stop Venezuela" candidate and Panama was suggested. However, Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro told El Panama America that Panama isn't a candidate and that, foreign suggestions to the contrary, it's not going to join the contest. The ballot is secret and there is no word on which country Panama will support for the seat.

Serious highway carnage

La Prensa reports, based on Transito figures, that in the first 281 days of 2006 339 people died in mishaps along Panama's roads. That compares to 322 for all of 2005. Roads seem to be less well maintained, and auto safety inspections have clearly been weakened, but there really isn't any good statistical analysis out there about why there have been so many more traffic deaths this year. As usual, many of the deaths --- one-third so far this year --- are of pedestrians who are hit by vehicles. Pedestrian deaths tend to go up more sharply when the holiday season gets underway, a lot of times because the drunk who causes the accident is somebody on foot who wanders onto the road.

Business closed for mosquito breeding

City and Health Ministry inspectors have been showing up around the capital looking for conditions that breed mosquitoes and handing out tickets to those who allow such situations to exist on their properties. A metal recycling company, Panama Metal Recycling SA (PAMERSA), is being held up as a poster child for dengue fever after inspectors found more than 2,000 small collections of water --- each of which can serve as breeding pond for mosquitoes and nearly 100 of which were actually doing so --- on their premises. The Health Ministry ordered the business closed.

Dolphin park treaty violation?

The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) has approved a dolphin park in the San Carlos corregimiento of El Higo, and that has brought some criticism its way. The proprietors say that they will get the dolphins from the Solomon Islands. However, that would be in violation of both Solomon Islands law and the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species to which Panama is a party. Critics point out that dolphins are social animals and that the removal of one or more members from a wild pod often results in the death of those dolphins not captured. In any case, ANAM is not supposed to grant permits in violation of international environmental treaties to which Panama adheres. But after the complaint were aired by French environmentalist Alexandra Cousteau and others, ANAM said that it had just approved construction of the dolphin park and not the importation of the dolphins.

Candanedo's back

Patricio Candanedo, who quit the Public Ministry in a huff after having been suspended for some infractions in his work as an anti-drug prosecutor earlier this year, is back. This time he's the liaison between the Public Ministry and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Candanedo's suspension was allegedly using improper procedures to jail some drug suspects in an international investigation, something that Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez was unwilling to excuse but which the DEA really liked. American law enforcement authorities have pressed Panama, with mixed success, to get rid of prosecutors and judges who appear to have been bought by drug traffickers and favored Candanedo because of his untouchable reputation and the results he obtained in a number of high-profile cases.

US gives RP $3.7 million in anti-drug aid

The US government has given Panama an additional $3.7 million for its anti-drug efforts and the two governments have signed a memorandum of understanding about how the money will be spent. In the end, the biggest economic support for anti-drug efforts that Panama will have received this year ought to be the harvest of forfeitures from the breakup of the Rayo Montaño drug ring, assuming that those vast real estate and other assets are not squandered or diverted.

Colon's ex-mayor gets three years

Former Colon Mayor Matilde Rosales de Ardines and the city's former treasurer José Mercedes Brown have been given three-year sentences for fraud and a co-defendant has received a lesser sentence. The conviction stems from a 2000 attempt to sell municipal bonds on the US market, something that American authorities discovered and then passed on to their Panamanian counterparts. Cities don't have the legal right to issue bonds here. The defendants presented their actions as a good faith attempt to challenge what they thought an improper interpretation of the law, while prosecutors presented it as an attempted securities swindle.

Toro wants his US visa back

It has been SO long since he could take the family to Disney World, and he thinks it's unfair. Former President Ernesto "Toro" Pérez Balladares has hired a US law firm to try to get his visa to visit the United States restored, and has gone on a publicity offensive about it here. That probably means that his aspirations to be the PRD presidential nominee in 2009 are waning and it has come to the "any publicity is better than no publicity" point. Toro says that he has never been given a reason why the Clinton administration yanked his visa, but what he really means is that key bits of evidence, including the identity of a witness or witnesses about whom he knows not and thus would have a hard time retaliating against, have not been revealed. The visa was pulled over allegations of corruption, most particularly the sale of Panamanian visas to Chinese citizens who intended to use them as part of their attempts to illegally sneak into the United States. The former president knows about that allegation because shortly after it was made he defended against it by making the argument that it's a violation of Panamanian sovereignty for the United States to pass judgment on this country's immigration policies.

Rosas, three others found liable

Former public television director Ariel Rosas and three others former employees at Channel 11 have been found liable for the disappearance of 11 video cameras, valued at about $30,000, from the station. The finding was by a civil tribunal under the Comptroller General's Office of Legacy Responsibility (DRP). Rosas faces other civil and criminal proceedings from his tenure in public TV during the Moscoso administration.

Two ex-cops guilty, one acquitted in 2001 murder

A jury has convicted former police officers Mario Aizprúa Espinoza and Luis Carlos Villarreal of the 2001 murder of César Augusto Gálvez, and acquitted a third former officer, Carlos Troadio Acosta, who had also been charged in the case. Aizprúa and Villarreal face 20-year prison sentences.

PTJ detective busted for jewelry store heist

Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) detective Jaime González has been arrested on suspicion of taking part in the armed robbery of a Calidonia jeweler. Prosecutors have ordered him held without bail pending trial.

Prosecutors believe that Gittens hit was mistaken identity

An alleged drug dealer, Jacinto Padilla Phillips, has been arrested in Panama City and the TVN television network has reported that he's the prime suspect in the assassination attempt that seriously wounded assistant anti-drug prosecutor Armando Gittens. The theory is that Padilla put out a contract on Gittens's superior, Roberto Moreno, but the gangsters hired to do the job got Moreno's suplente instead. Gittens was seriously wounded and has had to undergo several operations in the weeks since the attack.

One killed, three hurt when cops fire on illegal migrants

On October 8 police opened fire on a bus load of illegal Chinese immigrants and their smugglers when the vehicle tried to run through a roadblock near the beach in the Arraijan community of Bique. The driver, a Panamanian citizen of Chinese descent who is believed to have been one of the coyotes, was killed and three of the bus's other 24 occupants, all undocumented immigrants, were wounded. Bique residents had complained to police about the landing of a boatload of people the a few hours earlier, leading to the roadblock and the shooting.

Alberto Motta dies

On September 25 businessman Alberto Motta Cardoze, whose principal holdings were in COPA Airlines, the TVN television networks, the ASSA insurance company and Banco Continental but who was involved in many other businesses, died at the age of 90. His business empire was based on a family Colon Free Zone import/export company that became the biggest liquor distributor in Latin America, diversified and then was divided, with Felipe Motta taking the liquor business and Alberto the other products. Buying a small airline in 1975, he built COPA into one of the region's largest air carriers and one of only two Panamanian businesses traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Moonies come through Panama

Followers of the Korean billionaire Reverend Sun Myung Moon, led by his granddaughter Shin Mi Moon, have recently been in Panama as part of a worldwide tour to promote foundations and organizations related to the Unification Church. The Unification Church preaches that God came to Earth incarnate as Adam to sire a perfect race, but was thwarted when Eve had sexual relations with Satan and thus tainted humanity's bloodlines. Then, they say, God came to Earth in another incarnation as Jesus Christ, but failed in his mission to purify humanity's bloodlines by getting crucified before he could father children. Now, the Unificationists maintain, God has come to humanity again to get it right this time, in the form of the owner of the Washington Times and Tiempos del Mundo, the "Third Adam" otherwise known as the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Panama, a mainly Catholic country, has freedom of religion so missionaries can and do come here to preach all sorts of strange beliefs.

Amnesty for false diploma case?

His criminal trial hasn't yet happened, but it seems that there will be a general amnesty for students expelled from the University of Panama and the principal intended beneficiary will be Humberto Alcázar, the rector's erstwhile acolyte on the General University Council who got a university diploma without having had to actually take the classes required for it. The amnesty proposal is before the Academic Council. To put things into proper perspective, the university rector's doctorate is fake as well.