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Legislative steamroller slowed by Penal Code debate
¡Panameños presente! in US antiwar protest
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Legislators add new anti-press, pro-corruption laws

Our National Assembly's Government and Justice Committee has added three new sections to the proposed Penal Code to punish with prison sentences those who publish "reserved information about political, diplomatic or police matters;" correspondence that has not been written for publication; or photographs of individuals such as this one featuring President Torrijos using the Cabinet Room to pump the gold mining stock of a project promoted by one Richard Fifer while the latter was facing criminal charges of embezzling public funds. The law is aimed at the minority of Panamanian journalists and media who don't accept bribes, and will likely cut into the illicit income of those purported journalists who do accept payoffs. If the proper occasion arises, The Panama News will without hesitation violate any such laws.

Interesting coalition pans Penal Code proposals

Women's organizations and human rights groups have been criticizing many of the proposed changes to the Penal Code since the presidential commission's draft code became known. Now an unusually broad and influential group of citizens has issued a manifesto declaring that the draft Penal Code "goes against the gains achieved in recent years by organized civil society and the commitments made by the state in the fields of human rights, especially of girls, boys, adolescents and women. The group singled out the partial legalization of domestic violence by requiring a pattern of conduct before the law can step in, suggestions of eliminating existing exceptions to the law against abortion to protect the life or health of the pregnant women and in the events of rape or incest, and the proposal to allow a man accused of sexual relations with an underage girl to avoid prosecution by way of an offer of marriage. So who signed the manifesto? Among dozens of others, President Torrijos's anti-corruption czarina Alma Montenegro de Fletcher, national ombudswoman Mónica Pérez, Panamanian Committee Against Racism leader Alberto Barrow and lawyer Mariblanca Staff Wilson, all prominent figures who belong to or have been identified with the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD); the founding leader of the junior governing coalition partner Partido Popular Ricardo Arias Calderón and his wife, former legislator Teresita Yaniz de Arias; anti-corruption activist Magaly Castillo; writers Raúl Leis and Ileana Golcher; and journalist Lina Vega Abad. Many of the signers aren't affiliated with either the PRD or Partido Popular, and some of them, like leftist activist Olmedo Beluche, are actively hostile to the ruling coalition. The manifesto represents the most serious dissent yet to affect the unity of the ruling PRD during the Torrijos administration, which was earlier rent by the dispute over the appointment of Liborio García, who was accused of domestic violence and said some particularly obnoxious things about the subject, as ombudsman. Under pressure from a broad coalition of women that included the first lady, García was forced out on a technicality about appearing at a political event.

Major oil spill in Bocas

Petroterminales de Panama, an oil storage and pipeline company that's partly state-owned, won't say exactly what happened and they're understating the size of the problem. Sometime on February 4 one of their oil tanks at Chiriqui Grande sprung a leak and dumped more than 210,000 gallons of crude oil into the bay, causing a three-mile oil slick. About 150 people from Ocean Pollution Control were brought in to limit the damage and about one-third of the spilled oil was recovered, but the fish and particularly the crustaceans upon which many of the locals depend for food will be inedible for some time to come, corals have been killed and the beaches are covered with gross sticky stuff that will persist longer than will be readily apparent. Typically the volatiles quickly evaporate from oil spills while the heavier elements become tar balls that emit small amounts of noxious chemicals well after the affected beaches appear to be clean.

Controversy, confusion over city Carnival site

For the second year running, the Panama City Carnival Commission has announced that it will move the party from its usual Via España locale, and again the people at the new place are complaining. (Last year the festivities were at the last minute moved back to Via España, though further up the street than before.) The plan this year is to have Carnival on the brutally unshaded stretch of the Trans-Isthmian Highway from in front of Colegio La Salle to in front of the Assembly of God church. That Pentacostalist denomination is understandably unhappy about drunken revelry in front of their house of worship, but the loss of more than four days of business by the several gas stations along the route is prompting the loudest complaints and the restaurants, bars and casinos near the old locale are also grumbling about business losses that the shift would entail. The Carnival Commission is a creature of the national government rather than the municipality, in large part the product of rivalries within the ruling PRD that have taken the responsibility and credit for Carnival in the city away from Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro. But that also will tend to lift the burden of blame for bad planning from the mayor's shoulders.

Arosemena goes to USA for treatment

Second Vice President and Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) director Rubén Arosemena's recovery from surgery to repair ruptured discs in his back has not gone well, so he has been flown to Boston for a series of tests and possibly further surgery. It leaves the AMP particularly short-handed, as at the same time Arosemena was headed to the States the AMP's national ports director Rogelio Orillac resigned from his second post as director of the Pacific megaport project. Under the Torrijos administration the AMP is a political patronage fiefdom of the Partido Popular, the PRD's junior governing coalition partner which is headed by Arosemena.

Court lets Linda Thomas out on bail

On February 2 the former head of the Social Security Fund's (CSS's) closed medicine production lab, Linda Thomas, was released from preventive detention by the Supreme Court. Thomas is accused of negligence in the deaths of at least 51 patients and probably several times that number due to their taking of medications tainted with diethylene glycol that were produced at the lab. Although investigations are continuing, it appears that the cough syrup and benadryl elixir were poisoned as the result of mislabeled jugs of chemicals that said they contained glycerin but actually contained diethylene glycol. Thomas and several subordinates are accused of negligent homicide for the lab's lack of adequate quality controls to catch the problem in time to avoid the disaster. However, her supporters point out that she had for several years complained repeatedly and in writing to her superiors about deteriorated conditions and lack of equipment at the lab and received no relief. Thomas wants her old job back, but the government has closed the lab and now buys the 24 medications it produced from private suppliers and CSS director René Luciani, himself the target of an investigation for criminal negligence in the poisoned medicines scandal, says she won't go to work for Seguro Social again.

Cable car foes win a round

The Supreme Court has stayed a ruling by the National Environmental Authority that gives permission for private developers to build a cable car from the Amador Causeway to the top of Ancon Hill. Ancon Hill is a national park with two species of deer, several species of monkeys and an important spot on many migratory birds' flyways. Also, most of the residents of the quiet neighborhood where once the US Southern Command had its headquarters don't want all the traffic, litter and noise that comes with a tourist trap. Thus a coalition of opponents brought suit against the project. On another track, the project's promoters face legal difficulties arising from Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro's opposition to the plan and thus the city's refusal to grant some of the permits that would ordinarily be needed.

City cracks down on fires

It's dry season, which is burning season. For many city residents, that means a constant battle to keep up with the soot from brush fires that keeps coming in the windows. For some it will mean homes, cars or other property lost to the fires, and it will also drive snakes and rodents from their usual habitats in to homes and businesses to escape the flames. So if burning the grass along the fence line is the way it's traditionally done in the Interior, in the city that's considered intolerable conduct and the mayor, representantes, corregidores and bomberos are warning that those who set brush or grass fires within Panama City limits will be punished if they are caught, with fines ranging up to $5,000. So far, however, fines have been for $50.

Panama City representantes double their pay

The members of Panama's city council will now get $600 a week instead of $300. Most Panamanians make a lot less than $600 a month, but these men and women, of course, are not most Panamanians. A lot of them do work hard for their money, but some of them have more lucrative sources of income than their salaries.

Free trade propaganda gaffe quietly withdrawn

The Torrijos administration has relied heavily on advertising in lieu of consulting with people to promote its policies, but it hasn't always worked. Now the big propaganda blitz is for the Free Trade Agreement with the United States and there is one set of ads specifically for that proposed treaty and another generic "Compete, Panama" campaign with the same aims. But a series of billboards that went up around the country in January had a little blonde girl declaring that "I'm not afraid to compete," and it was sending some unintended messages. First, white people are a small minority of Panamanians but dominate the modeling business due to the racist preferences of the ad agencies and the companies that dominate this country's economy, so the government was in effect declaring that the beneficiaries of racial discrimination aren't afraid to compete on a field tilted to their advantage. Second, the government has made statements opposing child labor, but using a child to deliver a message of this nature appears to be at odds with the stated policy. After the Torrijos administration realized that its message was garnering more negative reactions than support for its policies, the billboards were quietly removed.

RP to host OAS General Assembly

Panama will play host to the General Assembly of the Organization of American States this coming June 3 through 5. It will be the organization's 37th such summit meeting, this time dedicated to regional energy strategies.

Taiwan denies La Prensa report

Taiwanese donations via Panamanian first ladies have sometimes in the past given rise to scandals, though not in the Torrijos administration. When La Prensa reported that Taiwan's donation for Panamanian hospitals, barrier-free programs for the handicapped, small business development and rural roads was made privately through First Lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos, authorities in Taipei were quick to object. Actually, the Taiwan government said, the $5.5 million in aid was made to the government of Panama, via Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro. The apparently erroneous report was quickly seized upon by the Peoples Republic of China, which accused Taiwan of "checkbook diplomacy." Panama has important economic relations with China, but full diplomatic relations with Taiwan only. Panama, one of only 24 countries that recognizes Taiwan, has been the focus of a propaganda and diplomacy tug-of-war between mainland China and the breakaway island nation for many years.

Electoral Tribunal purge, pay dispute

Now that there has been a change of membership in the Electoral Tribunal that institution, whose hiring policies have historically been marked by nepotism and political patronage, has let 11 employees go. On their way out those who got the pink slip are demanding back vacation pay, given that the magistrates of the old panel (two-thirds of whom are back) paid themselves 16 years worth of this item late last year. It seems that the former employees will get their money, but not all at once as is the norm in Panamanian labor relations. The magistrates say that they will pay part of the vacation money now, and another part at an unspecified later time. Due to constitutional and statutory separation of powers it's not clear whether the firees have any effective recourse to Panamanian labor laws about this matter.

Parties sign up new members

The times when existing or potential political parties can take to the streets to register new members are regulated by the Electoral Tribunal, and proselytizing is now in season. The ruling PRD remains the nation's largest party by a wide margin, but its influx of new members in search of government jobs or contracts appears to have run its course. Although not unchallenged by the parties of the governing alliance, it's opposition organizations that seek to replace the PRD in the 2009 elections who appear to be making the biggest gains. Ex-President Guillermo Endara's Vanguardia Moral needs to have some 60,000 members to gain ballot status and it seems headed to meet this goal by sometime in March. A lot of this embryonic party's new members are coming from Endara's former organization, the Panameñista (formerly Arnulfista) Party. Businessman Ricardo Martinelli's Cambio Democratico and the Union Patriotica that resulted from the merger of the Liberal Nacional and Solidaridad parties are also reporting notable recruiting successes.

Melitón Sánchez out at Olympic Committee

After 25 years as Panama's Olympics czar, Melitón Sánchez has thrown in the towel in a dispute with the government's National Institute of Sports (INDE) and resigned as president of the Olympic Committee of Panama (COP). There were rival groups claiming to be the national Olympic movement's officers, with the Torrijos administration and courts supporting Sánchez's foes. The old leadership ran afoul of the law by spending state funds on booze during the Athens Olympiad, but was subject to strong public criticism for many years before that for its habit of sending delegations to international sporting events with more "dignitaries" and fewer athletes that seemed appropriate.

But did they come out ahead on the deal?

The Seventh Circuit Court has sentenced two former detectives of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ), Julio César Espinoza and Carlos Arboleda, to 20 months in prison for helping Belizean drug trafficker Fernando Requena Duval escape from custody when he was taken to the lock ward at Santo Tomas Hospital in 2004. Usually money changes hands for such services, but in this case that aspect was not proven in court.

SOA argument again

The beautiful Hotel Melia at the former Fort Gulick was originally built as a hospital but is best known as the former US Army School of the Americas (SOA), which trained Latin American army officers. The school here was closed in the 1980s and moved to Fort Benning, and later its name was changed. But the facility is still controversial because most Latin American countries have at one time or another been run by dictators who were alumni of the school, and a lot of the region's most notorious torturers and death squad leaders of the 70s and 80s also went there. The other side of the argument came to Panama recently in the form of retired Lieutenant Colonel Ramón López, who used to teach at the SOA and told La Prensa that the antiwar protesters' characterization of the facility as a center for the formation of murderers and torturers is an unfair insult to 99.5 percent of the people who studied there. The reality is for the most part more subtle. The SOA did not introduce the practice of torture into Latin American politics, and though it taught counter-insurgency techniques to officers of armies that notoriously used torture, the liberal reforms of the Kennedy administration led to many of the most criticized abuses. The theory back then was that armies should win the hearts and minds of people whom guerrillas were trying to recruit by way of humanitarian and public works projects. Thus the SOA taught public administration, and later the officers who had been taught to run government institutions tended to take over the governments in their countries. Most US administrations opposed the murder and torture, at least in their public statements and in some cases by their specific policies.

US may probe WWII fate of Japanese Latin Americans

At the beginning of the 1940s, most of Panama's barbers were of Japanese descent, and this country's Japanese community was also employed in the fishing and farming sectors. Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, all persons of Japanese ancestry in Panama --- and in several other Latin American countries --- were rounded up and shipped off to internment camps in the United States. Some were sent to Japan in wartime prisoner exchanges, and some went there after the war, while others ended up in various South American countries. Panama's Japanese community was never allowed to return here and received no compensation for the property that was taken from them. Now Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) has introduced a bill to investigate the fate of the 2,300 or so Japanese or Latin Americans of Japanese descent. In the 1980s the United States belatedly made a formal apology to the some 120,000 Japanese-Americans whom it interned during World War II but no such recognition has ever been made of the Latin Americans who received similar and in some respects worse treatment.

But García de Paredes and Toro do it...

La Prensa reports that the Ministry of Education has determined that 85 public school teachers got their jobs with falsified academic credentials and is investigating 75 more suspected cases. Academic fraud is rampant in Panama, with two prominent practitioners being University of Panama rector Gustavo García de Paredes and former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, both of whom use the title "Dr." although neither of them actually has a genuine doctoral degree.