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Arrests devastate Panama's Servicio Maritimo Nacional coast guard
Luciani, Jované and Villalaz charged in poisoned medicines case

OAS meeting gathers an audience for many causes

Pro Ciudad takes its first steps
Small dolphin demo for the international media

Reports from Venezuela on RCTV, TVes and all the commotion
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Criminal procedure changes to wait

National Assembly president Elías Castillo has told La Prensa that there won't enough time for the legislature to consider the Torrijos administration's proposals to change Panama's rules of civil procedure. The big controversial changes would diverge from the Civil Code legal system's inquisitorial approach in which judges have a major role in the investigation into more of an accusatorial approach in which prosecutors gain more independence from judges in their investigations but lose such powers as the ability to order people held in jail pending trial, which would be transferred to judges. It is likely that at the end of the criminal procedure reform process the politicians will get new immunities from investigation or prosecution for acts of public corruption, as this has been a constant theme for the Torrijos administration and current assembly.

They don't know him now

Various sources say that Ricky Traad was a fundraiser for the PRD, and it has been reported as such in several of the dailies. But the jailed former director of Panama's National Maritime Service (SMN) coast guard, Ricardo Traad Porras, who has had some $6 million of his assets frozen by prosecutors, was "never... authorized to collect money in the name of [Martín Torrijos]," says former presidential campaign treasurer Ubaldino Real, now Minister of the Presidency. Real said that campaign finance records don't even indicate that Traad contributed to the 2004 Torrijos campaign. But the lists of contributors to both the Torrijos campaign and the PRD are not open to the public, so we have only the self-serving word of the administration on this point.

Teachers drown in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca

Public school teachers Doris Gaug Dixon and Yamileth Calderón were swept away and drowned along with Gaug Dixon's 12-year-old son Derian Castillo, while wading a river on May 20 on their way to where the two women taught in the community of Valle Bonito in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca. The normally shallow river was swept by a head of water that came from rain in the highlands, sweeping a group of children and adults away. Most survived but Gaug Dixon, Castillo and Calderón did not. To get to the community where they teach from the nearest roads, teachers in Valle Bonito must make five river crossings on foot.

Panama opposes whaling

There was some doubt about whether Panama would attend the recent 59th session of the International Whaling Commission in Anchorage, Alaska because it was late paying its dues. But the dues were paid and Panama voted with the anti-whaling majority to keep the moratorium on commercial whaling that has been in effect since 1986. A few exceptions for "artesanal" whaling were approved for small communities in Russia, the United States, Greenland and the island of Bequia in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, but Japan's push to resume commercial whaling was soundly rebuffed.

Legislature sides with First Uncle

The National Assembly's Treasury Committee has reported that the sale of Punta Chame beach front land whose market value is in excess of $100 per square meter to President Torrijos's uncle Rodolfo "Charro" Espino for a fraction of a cent per square meter, and allowing Espino to jump ahead of others who had previously requested to buy the land, and Espino bulldozing a mangrove swamp on the property and covering it with sand appropriated from a public beach, were all proper. This finding is consistent with the current legislature's position that all public corruption is legal.

"Kidnap Express" gets Argentine photojournalist

Lucky thing that Panama's tourism industry doesn't depend very much on Argentine visitors. During the OAS summit photojournalist Fernando Calzada came from Argentina to cover the event, and promptly found himself in the hands of kidnappers. They stole what he had on his person and made him withdraw as much as he could from ATM machines in the 48 hours they held him. Meanwhile, however, ATM cameras and marked bills --- the latter raising some interesting questions about Panamanian bank security, when one thinks about it --- put the police on the trail of the abductors. Calzada's losses amounted to about $6,000, but he was released in one piece and a few days later cops rounded up five Panamanian men who are suspects in the crime.

High school student riots

June 5 was a day that the radicals in the class of 2007 at the Instituto Nacional will well remember. Protesting about a number of causes de jour, students attacked a police mini-station on Calle de los Estudiantes and grabbed two police motorcycles. Teachers restrained them from setting the bikes on fire in the middle of Avenida de los Martires. After another day of rioting on the 6th students at the Instituto Nacional and Artes y Oficios Education Minister Miguel Ángel Cañizales ordered the two schools closed. Then the next day on Via Israel students from the Richard Neumann, Jose Remon Cantera e Isabel Herrera Obaldia high schools blocked traffic and fought police on Via Israel and Calle 50, supposedly in solidarity with their counterparts at the Instituto Nacional and Artes y Oficios. Cañizales blamed the teachers, whom he said are trying to destabilize the government.

Two die from corn beverage

Two people from the community of El Nanzal in the Las Minas district of Herrera province have died after drinking a corn beverage that was apparently tainted with pesticides. The drink may have been made from recently sprouted grains of seed corn that had been treated with chemicals to prevent fungus or insect damage, but health officials are still investigating the precise cause of the poisonings.

Bus fire survivors don't cooperate with prosecutors

It is the position of the Public Ministry that there will be no liability for those responsible for putting a bus without an emergency escape and with an air conditioning system that used an explosive chemical on the road --- and thus, because the driver, owner and mechanic of the bus that burned last October 23, killing 18 and injuring a number of other passengers had no insurance, that there will be no compensation paid. Lawyers for the families of some of the victims have filed private criminal charges against the bus's importer, former officials of the Transito authority for allowing the bus to operate here and former officials of the Banco Nacional de Panama for insisting as a loan condition that this type of bus would be the only one they would finance, and a judge has ordered those complaints integrated into the prosecutors' investigation. Meanwhile prosecutors have scheduled a reconstruction of the accident, and only one of the 23 survivors has answered the summons.

Another PTJ scandal

It's a very old trick. An alleged criminal with substantial property is arrested on a drug-related charge, and a substantial part of his or her property disappears. Now at least a half-dozen officers of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ), including a provincial chief and two section chiefs, are under criminal investigation for the disappearance of some $200,000 seized from the home of Carlos Micolta, a Colombian man alleged to have been a money launderer for the Pablo Rayo Montaño drug gang.

Mayor doesn't like nude protest idea

Is it just an old Yippie ploy, in a country not used to that thing? La Critica reported a threat of a procession of nude protesters riding bicycles through the city to register their unhappiness with the high cost of living. The mayor's office told the tabloid that such protests are "not authorized" because they "affect the morals or good customs" of citizens.

Disabled excluded from legislators' hearing

The PRD is planning to create a new National Handicapped Secretariat and legislation about that subject was on the agenda for June 6. For the occasion teachers from the IPHE special education school, parents of handicapped kids and associations of the handicapped staged a march to the Palacio Justo Arosemena. When they got there security guards would only let seven people onto legislative grounds, and there ensued a shoving match with those who were excluded from the discussion. Neither the current administration nor the current legislature particularly care to hear what affected individuals have to say about any matter on which they want to legislate, and when there is a pretense of a dialogue those who are allowed to speak are carefully selected so as to only include those who support what the government is trying to do. Thus the shoving match.

Panameñistas differ over international alliances

Panameñista Party president Juan Carlos Varela wants the party to join the Christian Democratic International, to which Panama's Partido Popular, the Spanish conservative party of the same name, Mexico's National Action Party and Germany's ruling party all belong. This move is being opposed by certain factions of the party, including MAPA, which in a communique argued that "Panameñismo, based on the principles of Accion Comunal --- union, action and revolution --- does not identify with the ideologies of parties like the Spanish PP or the Mexican PAN, which are eminently said to be "rightist" or "ultra-rightist." Accion Comunal, whose outstanding leaders were the brothers Arnulfo and Harmodio Arias, arose in the 1920s as an offshoot of the Liberal Party, and took on many of the trappings of the Ku Klux Klan such as white robes and hoods and a demand to deport all Panamanians of West Indian, Asian or Middle Eastern descent. In the 30s, Arnulfo Arias became Panama's ambassador to Mussolini's Italy and then Nazi Germany and became enamored with fascism. In 1941 Arnulfo Arias sponsored a constitution that stripped all Panamanians of Afro-Caribbean, Asian or Middle Eastern ancestry of their citizenship. As an older man, however, Arias toned down his enthusiasm for fascism and argued that his racial policies were not racist but an attempt to turn Panama into a single Spanish-speaking society. In recent years there hasn't been much in the way of guiding principles to separate the Panameñista Party from the PRD. The Moscoso and Torrijos administration have both been markedly corrupt and equally committed to economic globalization on the terms offered by the United States.

Union Patriotica leader for constituent assembly

The new Union Patriotica party, formed of a merger between the Liberal Nacional and Solidaridad parties, appears ready to put the convening of a constituent assembly at or near the top of its 2009 platform. Party president José Raúl Mulino is recommending that Panamanians insist on a commitment to a convention to write a new constitution before voting for any presidential candidate the next time around.

Voter rolls to be purged

The election laws are being changed for the 2009 elections and one modification in particular is likely to lead to a lot of voters showing up at the polls and not being allowed to vote. The practice is that citizens get a cedula number based on the location where they were born, and that's also their voting precinct unless and until they update it to reflect their residence. People have been theoretically required to update their voting addresses but have been allowed to vote where they are registered but no longer live. Now it will be mandatory to update the voting address and voters found not to be living where they are registered will be stricken from the voter rolls. That means that a number of Panamanians who live abroad and come back to this country at election time to vote will no longer be able to do that. It will also mean that the homeless will be disenfranchised. Will there be greater opportunity for election fraud in 2009? That remains to be seen --- after all, people should vote where they live, but any purge of the voter rolls inevitably gives the party in power the possibility of manipulating the lists to its partisan advantage.

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