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Torrijos administration diplomat questioned in UK sleaze probe
Dengue alert
Colombians get refugee status
Bogus letters sent in editor's name
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Prosecutors' poisoned medicine death toll up to 297

As the result of the Social Security Fund and Ministry of Health investigating themselves, the Torrijos administration's official death toll in the poisoned medications affair stands at 50. But according to prosecutors, 297 people have made complaints of their relatives dying and have shown evidence that they had used the tainted medications before becoming ill. Essentially the pro-PRD media are treating the prosecutors' figures as bogus as part of their defense of the jobs of Seguro Social director René Luciani and Health Minister Camilo Alleyne. Tending to "verify" the lower official number is the Legal Medicine Institute's lack of the budget and staff to exhume all the bodies and test for residues of diethylene glycol.

PTJ law revised, chief sent on vacation

On December 18 legislature approved on third and final reading a law to reform the law that created the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ), taking the power to hire and fire its chiefs from the Supreme Court and giving it to the Attorney General (Procuradora General). Shortly thereafter the present chief, Jaime Jácome, was sent on three months of vacation and is not expected to return to the job. The high court's presiding magistrate Graciela Dixon and some opposition politicians denounced the move as an unwarranted extension of executive power over the legal system. 

Former PTJ narc squad chief acquitted

Rogelio Harris Cumberbach, formerly the head of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) drug squad, has been acquitted of drug trafficking charges. He spent a year in jail awaiting trial. A co-defendant was convicted, and prosecutors say that they may appeal the acquittal, which is allowed in the Panamanian criminal justice system. The judge in the case ordered all property seized from the ex-cop to be returned and ruled that in case there is a prosecution appeal there can't be any more pretrial detention.

Court OKs investigation of legislator

Hermisenda Pera (PRD-Panama City) may be the first breach in an until now solid wall of legislative impunity. The Supreme Court has authorized a criminal investigation of her for allegedly altering a signature on a labor contract. It is alleged that what this was about was the creation of phantom employees --- "botellas" in Panamanian Spanish --- whose salaries are generally collected by the politician who maintains such ruses within his or her government payroll.

The difference between Animal House and the high court

There won’t be any toga parties in the Supreme Court after all. Magistrate Esmeralda de Troitiño objected to the idea of wearing robes on the job and the proposal was the object of widespread ridicule, so their honors dropped it.

OK to have grenades if you have them long enough?

Prominent PRD activist Cristóbal Salerno, charged with possessing grenades and illegal assault rifles on his business premises on Avenida Peru, has had the charges thrown out by circuit judge Rolando Quezada Vallespi. The ruling was that since the weapons had been there since 1995, the statute of limitation applies and Salerno can't be prosecuted. Or at least that's what the judge said.

Street naming in lieu of justice?

Patria Portugal has a case in front of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission that the government doesn't care to settle. In May of 1970 General Omar Torrijos's operatives abducted her father, Heliodoro Portugal, extrajudicially executed him and disposed of his remains in a secret tunnel under the motor pool at the Tocumen barracks of the Puma Infantry. She wants the criminal prosecution of those who kidnapped and murdered her father, among other things. President Torrijos is blocking all legal actions arising from the atrocities committed by his father's dictatorship and has been successful in the rigged Panamanian justice system, but now the case is on appeal before the regional court. So what does Martín do instead of settling? He has had his Ministry of Foreign Relations suggest to the Panama City municipal government that a street be named after Heliodoro Portugal. Except for a few people who have become political allies with the PRD since its founder had their relatives killed, the families of the disappeared and murdered are unimpressed by the gesture.

Balbina wants Juan Carlos's job

The former mayor of San Miguelito, Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, wants to be mayor of Panama City. That at least dampens speculation about the possibility of her running for president. The current mayor, Juan Carlos Navarro, is often named as a contender for the 2009 PRD presidential nomination but says he's just thinking about running the city at the moment. Panameñista legislator José Isabel Blandón and independent lawyer and journalist Miguel Antonio Bernal have also expressed interest in running for mayor.

Ministry of Education hides failure stats

El Panama America reports that it has struck out in weeks of attempts to get the official figures on the student failure and dropout rates in the public schools, which are typically available this time of the year. However, the newspaper says that from teacher sources it appears that both of these social phenomena went up in the recently concluded school year.

Legislators create scoundrel refuge

Unless President Torrijos decides to go out on a limb and veto the national anthem, the Wappin' Radio Show will be a few minutes shorter. The legislature has passed a proposal to make radio and TV stations play the national anthem at 5 AM and 6 PM every day. It ought to help listeners of the Wappin podcast outside of Panama learn El Himno Istmeño. So far the main complaints about it have come from people at the SERTV government radio and television service, who find it a bothersome extra bit of work, and from anti-corruption activists who don't object to the national anthem but also think that the measure fails in its purpose of deflecting public discontent with the legislators via an apparently insincere appeal to patriotism.

Newspaper websites vandalized

On December 18 the websites of El Panama America and La Critica, newspapers owned by descendants of Harmodio Arias and not aligned with the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), were vandalized by hackers. Slogans supporting the expansion of the Panama Canal, which the newspapers editorially supported but allowed to be debated by supporters and detractors, were left by the vandals. By day's end the websites were restored.

Gangland victims police informants?

On December 11 the decomposing bodies of two men who had been tortured and decapitated were found in the Chepo neighborhood of Chiman. Authorities here have not identified the victims to the public, but El Panama America reports that a source close to the investigation told them that they may have been informants about drug smuggling activities.