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Panama News Briefs

Torrijos extends special legislative session

Committee votes behind closed doors on Penal Code provisions

by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

A strange thing happened along the way to the pro forma votes to pass a Penal Code that strengthens immunity from investigation or prosecution for acts of corruption by politicians and judges, legalizes the first offense of domestic violence, lets pedophiles beat the rap by offering to marry the victim, doubles prison time for journalists who write true stories that embarrass the rich and powerful and effectively lets Manuel Antonio Noriega return to Panama without having to account for his many crimes against the Panamanian people.

People complained about it, particularly women, including people within the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party and its junior coalition partner the Partido Popular. Including Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez, Panama's leading attorneys, all the anti-corruption groups, most women's organizations and the labor movement, from the PRD-aligned FENASEP government workers' union to the left-wing SUNTRACS construction workers' union and its allies in FRENADESO.

We were even treated to the specter of Chamber of Commerce head Diego Eleta objecting to the part of the proposed new code that would criminalize the practice of politicians putting "botellas" --- phantom employees --- on their payrolls so that the politicians can collect the phony workers' salaries. Forget all that stuff about running government like a business --- the Chamber is now on record as explicitly pro-corruption, which is one reason why the organization is ever less relevant as a voice of ordinary business owners who want to make a buck and don't care to give much of it to the government. But the bottom line is that the Torrijos administration couldn't even get an endorsement of its criminal law reform package from corruption-friendly good old boys.

And then, surprisingly, the politics of abortion took center stage for the first time ever in Panamanian political life. The presidential commission and the Cabinet Council sent a proposal to the legislature that would increase the prison time both for women who have abortions and for those who perform them. But then an anti-abortion group demanded that the exception for cases in which a pregnant woman's life or health is endangered by the prospect of childbirth be eliminated, the Catholic Church gave its cautious backing to that stand (without, however, endorsing the increased prison time for abortion) and the coalition of women's groups that's outraged about the partial decriminalization of wife beating and statutory rape insisted that the exceptions apply not only in the event of health problems but also rape and incest. The committee refused to let the anti-abortion group show its video, and weren't eager to hear the other side of the argument either.

Then time began to run out on the special session with the committee and the PRD in some disarray.

So the president extended the special legislative session until February 10, the matters of changes to the rules of criminal procedure and most probably the packing of the Supreme Court were apparently but not definitively put off until the legislature's regular session begins in March, and the seven-member Government and Justice Committee closed its doors to take secret votes on each section of the new Penal Code proposal. As this issue of The Panama News was uploaded, the committee was still meeting in secret sessions running long into the night.

Once the committee is done, the proposed code would come before the entire National Assembly, which would have to pass it on two readings before it would go back the president for a signature or a most unlikely veto. Amendments would be in order when the proposal gets into the plenary sessions and it seems likely that some will at least be proposed at that time.

Adding to the uncertainty are two things. First, there is the likelihood that the controversial nature of many of the proposed code sections will prompt many deputies to send their suplentes to the sessions in order to avoid going on the record as voting for something that their constituents may later hold against them. Second, 2009 presidential politics are beginning to grip the PRD, and factions loyal to announced or likely contenders Ernesto Pérez Balladares, Juan Carlos Navarro and Samuel Lewis Navarro may take the opportunity to make ideological or style points to the detriment of party unity in the legislature.