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Torrijos defends "security law" proposals
Colombian kidnap industry discussed by high-profile victim's sister

High court to hear challenge to ACP's multi-billion dollar "reserve fund"

Terrorist whom Mireya pardoned gets bail in the USA
US media, a few gringos here are fascinated by grisly murder case

A peek down into a multiple urban pathology
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Torrijos's campaign manager becomes comptroller

Carlos Vallarino, who had been serving as Minister of Economy and Finance, is now the new Comptroller General. This is a legislative rather than a presidential appointment, but the president's Democratic Revolutionary Party has an absolute majority in the National Assembly and chose Vallarino, who ran Martín Torrijos's presidential campaign, for the post. Vallarino also got the support of six opposition deputies, and three other oppositionists abstained on the vote. He replaces Dani Kuzniecky, who is now the Minister of Canal Affairs.

Torrijos drops in polls

President Torrijos still has ample public support, according to polling company Dichter & Neira, the Latin American affiliate of the Harris organization, but his approval rating has slipped a bit. A poll commissioned and published by La Prensa found that in early April 63.5 percent of Panamanians rated the president's performance as good or excellent, as compared to 66.1 percent in March. Dichter & Neira's rival pollster, CID/Gallup, works for El Panama America and uses a different methodology that allows people to express a neutral opinion. By the CID/Gallup measure the largest group of Panamanians rate the president's performance as just ordinary and more people express a negative opinion about it than characterize it positively. In gringo political analyst jargon, then, Torrijos has brought support that's not very deep.

Most want several ministers to go

If people generally accept the job that President Torrijos is doing, the same can't be said for some of his ministers. Almost all cabinet members have seen their popularity go down in the course of this year, but according to the April Dichter & Neira commissioned and published by La Prensa pluralities want to see the following ministers replaced: Camilo Alleyne (health), Miguel Ángel Cañizales (education), Benjamín Colamarco (public works) and Olga Gólcher. In Alleyne's case, an absolute majority of 54.1 percent want to see him go. Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, who wants to run for mayor of Panama City in 2009, still retains a favorable rating but her negative ratings have soared in recent weeks, probably as a result of the way that she has handled the relocation of families burned out in the March 21 Curundu fire.

Growing movement for multi-party opposition primary

What do do when one of the two traditional largest parties, the one that's in opposition now, came in a distant third last time, when the opposition party that came in second no longer exists after a merger, when the candidate who came in second has just legalized his new opposition party and the candidate who finished fourth is looking good in the polls at the moment? One idea that's gaining ground among the rival factions of the Panameñista Party and attracting interest from other formations is a multi-party presidential primary. The parties could do this by adjusting their internal rules, without permission from the PRD-controlled legislature. (One never knows what legal obstacle could be erected by the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal, however.) At this point it appears that businessman Ricardo Martinelli, who served as Seguro Social director in the Pérez Balladares administration and as Minister of Canal Affairs under Mireya Moscoso, intends to run for president again either at the head of an alliance or as the candidate of his Cambio Democratico party. The Union Patriotica, formed from the merger of the  Solidaridad and Liberal Nacional parties, is going to want a business-oriented conservative and not necessarily Martinelli. The Panameñistas are divided into several factions and those rival groups still contending for control over MOLIRENA are fighting over the shell of a conservative organization that used to get about 10 percent of the vote but is now much diminished. Then there is former President Guillermo Endara, whose Vanguardia Moral de la Patria just obtained ballot status and who has at least some backing in all of the opposition parties with the possible exception of Cambio Democratico. The norm in Panama is presidential slates based on multi-party alliances.   

FRENADESO puts its toe in the election waters

The commie radicals have taken a baby step toward electoral politics, without really taking the plunge. Over the weekend of April 20-22 the labor/left FRENADESO coalition held its first national congress and said that it's organizing itself to make a bid for state power. They're not running in the 2009 elections because they say the system's rigged, but they will be campaigning in favor of holding a referendum to convene a constituent assembly that would write a new constitution and create a system in which they'd be willing to participate. You may recall that in 2004 Mireya Moscoso and Martín Torrijos teamed up to pass a package of constitutional that essentially makes a constituent assembly impossible. (If in 2009 a new president and legislature who have different ideas from the current ones take office, they can call a referendum specifying any constitutional reform process they want and if they can get the votes from the public at the polls the present constitution, which dates back to the military dictatorship, can be replaced.) FRENADESO is leaving at least that much of an opening for electoral politics, and meanwhile a couple of other smaller leftist groups are trying to get new parties on the ballot. It's very unlikely that there will be a leftist party on the 2009 ballot but there is a chance that there will be a slate of leftist independent candidates.

Crime scene trashed, family can't get child's body

Under Panamanian urban land tenure law, the owner of a condemned slum can't collect rent and can't evict the residents, but on the other hand the residents can't obtain squatters' rights by living there long enough. Plus, in many slum neighborhoods years of on and off negligence, corruption and unconcern have left the titles to much of the land cloudy at best. Overlaying this there is an attitude: when it comes to rich people, governments have been more protective of land titles than in the cases of poor people. So what to do when an entire slum neighborhood burns down? Without bothering about titles, Housing Minister Balbina Herrera immediately decided that the residents who lost their homes in the March 21 Curundu fire would not be allowed to rebuilt, and to prevent that she sent in bulldozers and dump trucks to that people couldn't retrieve zinc roofing material to build new temporary shacks while trying to rebuild. Apparently the burned neighborhood is going to be turned over to developers to build apartments that few if any of the area's former residents will be able to afford. But so great was the minister's haste that she had her crews destroy the crime scene: the place where members of one gang allegedly started the conflagration by a molotov cocktail attack on the home of a member of a rival gang. That's going to make things a bit more difficult for prosecutors to make their case against two adults and two juveniles who are under arrest for starting the fire. Worse yet, also scraped up and taken away by Balbina's crew were the remains of Laurin Núñez, a seven-year-old girl who perished in the fire.

Panama doesn't want Posada Carriles back

Anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, convicted of endangering public safety and sentenced to prison here for a plot to set off a bomb at the University of Panama but then pardoned by former President Mireya Moscoso, has been released on bail by a US federal judge. He was facing charges of illegally entering the United States, but managed to convince the courts that if sent away his life would be in danger. Posada Carriles is a prison escapee from Venezuela, having after his escape been tried in absentia and sentenced to 30 years for putting a bomb on a Cuban civilian airliner back in the 1970s, killing all 73 people aboard that plane. Both Venezuela and Cuba want the man returned to face justice, but the Bush administration isn't handing anyone over to either on of those governments. But although President Torrijos sternly condemned the pardons of Posada Carriles and his accomplices at the time and a criminal investigation of the matter was begun, Panama is not going to join Cuba and Venezuela in the line of countries seeking extradition.

Get your shots

Despite shortages of some of the medicines that patients with certain chronic illnesses need, our public health care system has stocked up on serum for a number of immunization campaigns that the government considers a priority. Vaccinations for hepatitis A and B, influenza and rotavirus are free at public health care facilities and most private ones as well. The Ministry of Health is conducting a publicity campaign to urge people to be vaccinated.

Dispute over wiretaps

Attorney General (Procuradora General) Ana Matilde Gómez thought that with respect to Arquímedes Sáez, she was dealing with a corrupt prosecutor. Thus her Public Ministry issued a resolution authorizing wiretaps of that ministry employee. But Administrative Prosecutor (Procuradora Administrativa) Óscar Ceville, an autonomous part of the Public Ministry, claims that it was illegal for the ministry to order that wiretap and has petitioned to have it declared so. The Supreme Court, whose presiding magistrate Graciela Dixon has been feuding with Gómez, is now considering the case.

Fire chief suspended

Because there are apparent irregularities in the financial records of Panama City's fire department (the Cuerpo de Bomberos), its chief, Colonel Mario Ramírez, has been removed while the matter is under investigation. In the meantime the bomberos are being directed by a four-member committee rather than an acting fire chief.

Corrections director's brother busted for coke trafficking

Enoc Landero will be his brother's guest for awhile, so it seems. Enoc was arrested in a series of raids to break up a ring that was alleged to have been shipping cocaine from here to the United States by air. His brother, Carlos Landero, is the Torrijos administration's corrections director.

Bible Month proposal back

Legislator Vladimir Herrera, of the opposition MOLIRENA party and an Evangelical Christian, has revived the old Bible Month proposal that has been rejected by the National Assembly so far. Panama's a mostly Catholic and overwhelmingly Christian country, but we have had two Jewish presidents and there are thriving synagogues, mosques and Hindu and Baha'i temples as well as a substantial number of people who believe in no religion. Earlier attempts were criticized as attempts to impose Christianity on religious minorities, but now the plan is to declare September "Holy Scriptures Month" so as not to explicitly exclude believers of religions that don't recognize the Bible as their sacred book. As has been the case when this issue has come up before, a lot of people say that they would prefer that the deputies just adhere to Biblical ethics in their daily actions rather than making gestures of faith and carrying on as they usually do.

Torrijos defends "security law" proposals
Colombian kidnap industry discussed by high-profile victim's sister

High court to hear challenge to ACP's multi-billion dollar "reserve fund"

Terrorist whom Mireya pardoned gets bail in the USA
US media, a few gringos here are fascinated by grisly murder case

A peek down into a multiple urban pathology
Panama News Briefs