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Torrijos to make changes as poisoned medicine scandal widens
Arrests, Transito shakeup over bus fire
Panama gets onto the UN Security Council
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Three detectives suspected in PTJ inspector's death

Suspicion is falling on three Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) detectives in the poisoning deaths of their boss, Inspector Franklin Brewster. Detectives Kenneth Alberto Brown, Gioconda Iveth Véliz Ibarra and Irving Francis are under formal investigation by prosecutors. It seems, however, that while there are allegations of a motive --- Brewster's probe into suspected misconduct by these subordinates in the Sensitive Investigations Unit he headed --- and that the three  are said to have had access to the refrigerator where their boss's lunch was kept, the principal evidence that has leaked into the daily newspapers is from apparently evasive answers given during polygraph interrogations. Because the poison that killed Brewster has not been specifically identified, the element of means that's crucial to building a circumstantial case appears to be weak. The cloud over the three detectives in turn poses a threat to some high-profile drug investigations in which they played key roles, including that of the vast and politically connected multinational Rayo Montaño drug ring. According to La Prensa the Panamanian branch of the Mexican-based Arrrellano Félix drug cartel put out a $500,000 contract on Brewster when the Sensitive Investigations Unit began looking into their activities.

PRD dividing lines being drawn

With insults about President Martín Torrijos needing to put on long pants, former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares has drawn the first line in the sand in an intra-party struggle for the 2009 PRD presidential nomination. The rivalry had been simmering for some time, and now has come out into the open in time for elections next year for the party's National Executive Committee. Toro's supporters, who now openly include former legislator Miguel Bush, intend to challenge the president's people on that body and to run Pérez Balladares for the party presidency, but they won't be challenging Torrijos himself for the secretary general's post. It is widely expected that Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro will be a contender for the nomination, although for the moment he declines to talk about presidential aspirations. Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro and Housing Minister Balbina Herrera are also sometimes mentioned as possible PRD standard bearers in the next elections. The nominee will be chosen in a 2008 intra-party primary.

Union leader moves to create new party

Priscilla Vásquez, a clinical psychologist who leads the Social Security Fund Employees Association (AECSS), says that she and other labor leaders are creating a new political party, the Panamanian Workers Party (PTP). This action brings out into the open a split among labor militants, with SUNTRACS construction workers union leader Genaro López arguing that there isn't enough support among working people for a new labor-based political party at this time and others maintaining that even though it would start from a position of weakness, it's important to start such a project. Vásquez acknowledged that it will be difficult for a new party to get ballot status for the 2009 elections, but left open the possibility of a slate of independent candidates as a step along the way toward a new party.

Former corregidor gunned down

On November 5 Jesús Frías, who had served as corregidor of the El Cedro corregimiento of Macaracas district in Los Santos until this past August, was killed in a hail of gunfire as he mounted his horse on the road to El Meca. After the horse returned home without its rider a family member went out searching and found the ex-corregidor's body.

Eddie Ray Kahn booted out of Panama

Eddie Ray Kahn, a far right "Christian tax resister" who appeared here somewhat more than a year ago some time after abandoning his Guiding Light of God Ministries and American Rights Litigators organizations in Florida, has been expelled from Panama and returned to the United States to face conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion charges as a co-defendant of actor Wesley Snipes. Kahn's religious proselytizing at expat socials rubbed some people the wrong way, and after Dutch journalist Okke Ornstein wrote about his past he was shunned by many people in the American community here. It is alleged that Kahn assisted Snipes in the evasion of nearly $12 million in taxes and took a 20 percent cut of that amount for his services. Panama will not extradite someone over a tax-related foreign crime, but in this case it was an expulsion rather than an extradition, a quick summary procedure generally reserved for a foreigner here without permanent residency. Kahn was arrested in Panama on October 31 and flown to Florida the next day.

Nine die in holiday accidents

It's always a grim figure, but over the four-day Independence Day and Flag Day holiday weekend the accidental death toll was actually relatively light. Seven people died in traffic accidents and two drowned. The rains let up for most of the weekend, which meant that rivers and beaches near where streams and rivers empty into the sea were a bit less dangerous than is often the case in November. The Transito cops were out in force over the holidays to slow drivers down and respond to the 54 accidents they recored, while personnel from the SINAPROC disaster relief agency rescued a number of people at risk of drowning.

New influx of Colombian refugees

The Torrijos administration is denying any incursion of armed Colombian forces into this country or fighting along its border with Colombia in the wake of a new influx of refugees into the Jaque area. It seems that the leftist FARC guerrillas are on an offensive to retake strongholds they had lost to the rightist AUC paramilitaries and government forces over the past few years and people who live in those areas, most of them indigenous and many of whom have relatives on the Panamanian side of the border, have fled in terror.

Environmental informer reward

This country's environmental laws have for years included a provision that a person who denounces a violation to the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) which leads to a successful prosecution gets half of the fine that's paid as a reward. Alba Aldeano, whose property was affected by the diversion of the Matias Hernandez River by the developers of part of the Villas de San Jose housing project, has been paid $5,000, half of the fine that Urbanizacion del Caribe SA had to pay for diverting the river without an environmental impact study or a permit from ANAM.

Electoral Tribunal funds post-referendum "yes" propaganda

From the start everyone could see that the Electoral Tribunal was, rather than in impartial regulatory body, an integral part of the "yes" campaign --- its presiding magistrate, after all, played a prominent televised role in the "yes" campaign's April 24 kickoff role. The partial conduct continued throughout the campaign, which ended in a sweeping "yes" victory among the some 43 percent of the electorate that voted. Afterwards, the Electoral Tribunal spent public funds to have Dichter & Neira do a post-election poll to determine why younger voters by and large didn't vote. The magistrates said that this review, by a pollster that had predicted an 84 percent turnout, "proved" that the people who didn't vote actually supported the "yes" side. (The labor/left FRENADESO umbrella group makes the mirror-image and equally vain claim that the abstention amounted to support for the "no" side.) The 10-year terms of the tribunal's magistrates and the Electoral Prosecutor are about to expire, with the Supreme Court, the president and the National Assembly each picking one magistrate, none of whom can belong to the same party as another member of the three-judge panel. It's not expected that any of the incumbents will stay on, or that the PRD-dominated branches of government will appoint anyone who's not in favor of the status quo.

Sewage prompts Curundu street blockades

On November 7 residents of the Cabo Verde housing project in Curundu blocked Via Nacional for the second time in a week. So what's the complaint? In that low-lying part of the city the sanitary sewers aren't draining properly, so raw sewage is backing up into and around their buildings. Part of the problem, which may be resolved when (or shall we say "if?") the long-promised construction of a new city sewer system actually happens, is that in many places the storm drains and sanitary sewers flow together, such that heavy seasonal rains back up the pipes into which toilets flow.

1977 disappearance case quashed

The Supreme Court has suppressed the case of Chilean activist Gerardo Olivares, who disappeared in 1977 and whose remains were found in excavations at the Coiba Island penal colony during the Moscoso administration. Magistrate Esmeralda de Troitiño and alternate magistrate Roberto González held that international human rights treaties to which Panama is a party do not specifically abolish statutes of limitation for forced disappearances and thus the normal 20-year rule applies. Dissenting was magistrate Aníbal Salas. The Olivares case would, like most of the other disappearances, raise embarrassing old questions about the nature of the military regime then headed by Omar Torrijos, the current president's father. This particular matter would be even more sensitive, because delving into it would very likely raise questions about relations between the Panamanian dictatorship and the Chilean regime of the time that was headed by General Augusto Pinochet and about what role, if any, the United States Southern Command may have played in Olivares's disappearance.