letters

A few concerns...

Sticker tickets from Transito

What took one by surprise for the beginning of 2007 was not the new cost for traffic tickets in Panama but to find out that one can not get the "revisado" printed unless one pays for all traffic tickets that one has accumulated --- that would be fine if the tickets were handed directly, but I was referred to a sticker ticket that was supposedly stuck on the car's windshield: the original ticket was for $10 but  there is an additional cost of $50 claiming 'desacato' for not paying on time, whatever.

When the traffic clerk was told that I was never notified by mail or telephone that I had a traffic ticket pending, she told me that is the way the sticker tickets work: one must pay the ticket in 30 days after the ticket is officially registered on one's car. Saw another person that had several sticker tickets registered to her car: she said she has never heard of such tickets and never received any sticker tickets on her car's windshield.

So, does one have to check monthly with the traffic department in Panama to find out if one has any sticker tickets registered to one's car in order to prevent any additional tickets for desacato?

Mac C

Just the facts

May I offer you some professional advice? When reporting the events of what is going on in Panama, just stick to the facts. Do not try to interject your opinion or bias into any factual reporting. Leave the interjection of your biases and opinions for your editorials. You lose all credibility and respect, and sound like, quite frankly, a blathering idiot, when transposing opinions into factual based reporting.

With my compliments...

Kurt Barry, Lt Col USAF

Photos?

Many of your photos are distorted. Are they that way on purpose, or is it just bad photography?

name withheld

Editor's note: I sometimes get questions like these, and more often get emails expressing opinions, about evenly divided, that those photos that are rendered abstract by electronic manipulation are awful or that they are a good addition to the publication.

Not all of the photos that appear in The Panama News, whether rendered abstract by PhotoShop or published as realistic images, are good. I'm not the best photographer and I'm not working with the best equipment. Sometimes contributors pitch in with good photos and some issues rely entirely on my own resources.

The images in the space fillers ("under construction... this page is not yet done..." and all of that) are all electronically altered. I get as many complaints about the Panamanian-style theoretical publication dates (maybe mañana...) as I do about the pictures and sometimes I wonder about the relatedness of those factors in the minds of  those who express annoyance.

A good professional digital camera is one of the things on my wish list. But as the old Latin American proverb goes, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride." Even with the best equipment, I would not be the best photographer.

In the meantime I will do the best that I can to produce an informative, interesting and graphically pleasing publication for the readers.