editorial

Either as a prisoner or a free man...

Noriega should never return to Panama

As these words were written, some of the hoodlums in the National Assembly were using the Penal Reform project in an attempt to get Panama's former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega off the hook for a series of convictions hanging over his head in Panama. They would put a statute of limitations on the effect of a conviction that would basically void the ex-general's seven prison sentences for a host of offenses. It would mean that a person charged with even the most heinous crime could avoid punishment by going underground or into exile for long enough, something that the rich and powerful can more readily do than the ordinary citizen. It figures that a legislature intent on establishing its own impunity for bribery, embezzlement and so on would want to do such a thing, and it's reprehensible that it was even proposed, whether or not it eventually gets passed and signed into law.

While the PRD-controlled legislature was concocting this dodge, the PRD administration was insisting that once Noriega is released from prison in September, he will be obliged to serve out the prison terms imposed after trials in absentia by Panamanian courts.

However, Noriega has too many old friends in the Torrijos administration for that to be the sincere and unanimous opinion in the executive branch. His mistress's sister heads the post office. The head of his Dignity Battalions goon squad now heads the Ministry of Public Works. His erstwhile adjutant is the acting director of Transito and vice minister of government and justice.

On the other hand, if Noriega's return to Panama as a prisoner would be divisive to the ruling party, his return as a free man would infuriate his victims and amount to a major political disaster for the PRD. Especially for the Democratic Revolutionary Party but for the nation in general, there is no good solution to this dilemma.

The best of a bad situation is for Noriega never to return to Panama. He's a problem we just don't need.

Moreover, the equation of the former strongman's exile in a third country with his escape from justice is not quite accurate. Though most of the people whom he brutalized and many of those from whom he stole may never agree, there is rough justice in his long imprisonment in the United States being followed by exile from Panama thereafter.

Noriega's trial before a US federal court was a major scandal for American justice. The American assertion of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction is a bit of arrogance that deserves more scrutiny, as does the whole question of draconian drug laws in the USA and elsewhere. Setting those issues aside, the payment of more than $1 million in bribes to prosecution witnesses and its acceptance by the US courts set a corrosive legal precedent that will infringe all Americans' fundamental freedoms so long as such practices are allowed to continue.

Nevertheless, Noriega actually did more or less what he was accused of doing, and though his US conviction was for some of his lesser crimes, he served as much time as a federal inmate as he would have served in Panama for his most serious offenses. Exile thereafter would be a continued punishment of sorts.

So should Panama revive the practice of sending people into exile just to deal with this one problem? Not really. Suffice to give Noriega the option of hopping on a plane to a third country, versus the prospect of criminal and civil legal nightmares here, plus assurances that if he ends up incarcerated it will be without special protection or privileges in a mainline population at La Joya Penitentiary and that if he avoids jail his criminal past will prevent him from carrying weapons or having police protection or armed security guards to defend him from those who feel they have scores to settle. The Torrijos administration also needs to know that if it allows Noriega to return in any fashion other than wearing handcuffs, the protesters will be out on the streets and whatever hopes his party may have for the 2009 elections will evaporate.

Bear in mind...

If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough.

Mario Andretti

War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.

Hannah Arendt

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that somebody may be looking.

H. L. Mencken