news

Also in this section:

SPI director gets 30 days off for beatings
Allegations against anti-corruption prosecutor cause high court split

Instituto Nacional rector removed

US government helps RP cops computerize
Panama News Briefs

SPI chief gets 30 days off

Fallout continues in beatings of protesting poison victims

by Eric Jackson

On August 3 Minister of the Presidency Ubaldino Real announced that José Gómez, the director of the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) that guards the president, had been suspended for 30 day for "the lack of control of the SPI units" that beat and kicked diethylene glyclol (DEG) poisoning patients and relatives of those who died from the government-distributed toxin in a July 19 incident near the Palacio de las Garzas. Also suspended were a SPI agent who sprayed chemical mace on one protester and another who stomped on a demonstrator who had been knocked down. A SPI lieutenant who was shown on Telemetro news videos kicking protest leader Gabriel Pascual was not sanctioned. The Torrijos administration declined to say whether the three SPI members were suspended with or without pay.

Gómez, who was at the scene and in charge during the presidential guards' attack on the protesters, was originally put in charge of the investigation of the incident by President Torrijos, but after public protests a three-member commission, including two of Gómez's subordinates, was given the task of investigating.

The president himself has had no comment about the actions of his guards, and over the past year very little to say about the at least 102 and possibly more than 600 poisoning deaths caused by his administration's production and distribution of DEG-tainted medicines.

The Relatives Committee for the Right to Health and Life, the group that organized the July 19 protest, called the disciplinary measures a "mockery." Across the spectrum of opposition groups, from left to right, similar opinions were issued. The labor/left FRENADESO umbrella group, referring to General Noriegas' infamous riot squad, called the SPI "the same Dobermans as always" and accused the investigators of covering up a second beating of protester Ransés García while he was in custody. Law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal said that the violence presages the Torrijos administration's intention to move Panama in the direction of becoming a police state. Former President Guillermo Endara accused the current administration of trying to insult Panamanians' intelligence.

The videos of the beating were widely seen on television. The network that recorded the incident, Telemetro, is part of the MEDCOM conglomerate and politically aligned with the PRD. However, there is a power struggle brewing within the ruling party over the 2009 presidential nomination and MEDCOM is run by relatives of former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, whose quest for another term as president is opposed by Martín Torrijos. Thus the network, which is normally not very subtle about its partisan allegiances, apparently put family and faction before party in its decision to air the damaging videos.

SPI director gets 30 days off for beatings
Allegations against anti-corruption prosecutor cause high court split

Instituto Nacional rector removed

US government helps RP cops computerize
Panama News Briefs