Volume 13 of The Panama News

It’s sometimes hard to imagine that The Panama News has been publishing since that demonstration tabloid in December of 1994, but we have and now it’s going into the 13th year.

Times have changed and are changing. We have competition, both online and in other media. We expanded into radio this past year, and put out a special print edition for the canal referendum in collaboration with Miguel Antonio Bernal’s Alternativa radio show and website. We had more readers than ever in 2006.

You will see The Panama News in print again in 2007. You will see some more style changes and content additions to the website, a little bit at a time.

There will be a continuation of various attempts to shut us down, the latest being the pending criminal defamation prosecution brought by one Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman, formerly a far-right “Patriot” militia radio apologist and now an offshore investment hustler. We have a young rabiblanco with behind the scenes backing openly urging advertisers to drop their relationships with us. In certain email groups we have competitors who never saw a scam they didn’t like waging an endless campaign of scurrilous attacks. We have somebody sending out false letters in the editor's name. Despite all that, one thing that won’t change is that the too numerous scamsters who try to use Panama’s English-speaking community as cover won’t have a friend in these pages. It's a service we owe to the community, even if it still appears to be government policy that frauds aimed at foreigners are something to laugh about rather than investigate and prosecute.

These are times of scandalous media control in Panama, with a newspaper columnist being fired at the insistence of a government official, $1.3 million in public funds used to bribe broadcast “journalists” in the recent canal expansion referendum campaign, the PRD increasing its stranglehold on television and access to government institutions cut back or cut off to all but the most obsequious lapdog reporters. But all of that has helped The Panama News in a way, because there are an awful lot of readers out there who appreciate an independent perspective on things.

So look for new initiatives in 2007, but also for the same news judgment. As in a skeptical attitude toward all governments, even while recognizing that they do necessary things, occasionally good things. As in controlled by neither a political party nor Panama’s oligarchy nor some extraneous business interest. As in a local informed voice rather than stuff pirated off of Google News. As in a sense of justice instead of a calculated currying of favors. As in truth being the guiding principle, and in the event that there are errors (and the truth is that our editor and contributors and sources are fallable) the record being set straight with corrections. As in news about Panama, rather than a sales pitch for an idyllic distorted vision of Panama.

Welcome aboard for volume 13!

Censure jive

So the president of a discredited and widely reviled National Assembly, PRD deputy Elias Castillo, used the final night of the fall 2006 legislative session to launch state-funded insults at people who didn’t happen to be in the room at the time.

So one of those he attacked, Vanguardia Moral deputy Mireya Lasso, went down to the legislature to register her response.

And now Castillo accuses Lasso of assaulting him and battering PRD deputy Zulay de Vásquez. He called a press conference to which the politically approved journalists were invited and showed the video --- and the video did not support his allegations. What it showed was PRD members and security guards trying to shut Lasso up.

Even more revealing was one part of the PRD claim against Lasso. They accused her of "intruding" onto the assembly floor --- as if it were their private property, to which an elected opposition deputy has no right to access. The PRD deputies' allegation belies their basic kleptocratic state of mind, which is that they consider public assets to be their personal property to control, convert or dispose of as they wish.

Never fear, however. The robotic stooges of the PRD legislative caucus say they’re going to take a stand for ethics, by censuring Lasso.

In 2009, when the voters will almost certainly take the opportunity to fire the great majority of those currently serving as National Assembly deputies, this censure, Castillo’s creepy behavior and the not-so-damning video will shine as badges of honor for Mireya Lasso.

Bear in mind…

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.

Julia Sorel

Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.

Benjamin Disraeli