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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

Panama News Briefs

Gordón to head prisons

Retired police commissioner Luis Gordón, controversial for his roles in the use of force to suppress a 1997 hunger strike by foreign inmates at La Joya and for leading a police invasion of the University of Panama campus in 1998, has been named by President Torrijos to head the nation's overcrowded prison system. He replaces Carlos Landero, who was fired along with several other corrections officials, including the wardens of both La Joya and La Joyita penitentiaries and a police subcommissioner, for a scandal involving the existence of luxury accommodations for some major drug dealers and bank robbers at La Joyita. Notorious imprisoned gangster David Viteri, for example, had a large plasma-screen TV, a computer with Internet connections, a fridge and a microwave in his fully-tiled prison cell. Because a public official can't be investigated unless summary proof that he or she committed a crime is submitted before an investigation, the prosecutors and courts are unable to look further into or press criminal charges about what's obvious, that bribes were paid for this sort of special treatment. The pro-corruption summary proof requirement that blocks investigations of public officials was kept in the law in the new Penal Code that President Torrijos proposed and signed and the National Assembly passed.

US Consulate moves to cut RP hoops team from Olympics

Does it have something to do with the fact that Panama beat the United States in men's basketball in the Pan-American Games? Probably not. However, the US Consulate here has moved to effectively keep the Panamanian basketball team out of the Olympics by denying visas to its coach and six of its players. The reason? Allegedly these seven individuals can't demonstrate sufficient wealth to avoid suspicion that they really want to come to the United States not to play in the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament that begins in Las Vegas on August 22 but to illegally live and work in the USA. The policy of making it harder to get US visas is one of the gestures that Bush has made to the anti-immigrant far right of the Republican Party, notwithstanding the image and foreign policy problems that it creates for the United States abroad.

Editor's update: After much notice in the Latin American and US Spanish-language press and none at all in the US English-language media, and representations by Panamanian Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro, and also a number of contacts with the embassy directly or through members of Congress from members of the American community here, the coach and athletes were allowed to re-apply and were granted their visas to go to the USA and play. That obstacle behind them, now they face the daunting challenge of a group that includes Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Uruguay. If they get past those teams they'll have a ticket to the Olympics. If not they will have another chance at one of three remaining spots for teams from the Americas.

US-led military maneuvers start August 9

That Panama abolished its military after the 1989 US invasion is sometimes more theoretical than factual. On August 9 we get one of the annual proofs to the contrary with the start of the multinational Panamax 2007 naval maneuvers, which this year will include a substantial land warfare component. The manuevers, led by the US Southern Command, will involve Panamanian armed law enforcement units and military forces from some 20 countries, mostly from Latin America and the Caribbean but also from, in addition to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The theoretical construct for the war games is protecting the canal from an attacking force. At these maneuvers the US arms industry gets to show off its products to forces from throughout the region and the military officers of the different countries get to mingle and establish networks of personal, political and military relationships. They also do actually practice at repelling various kinds of attacks on the Panama Canal.

PRD to meet in September to set party election dates

The ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has some potentially bruising primary battles ahead of it between now and the May 2009 general elections, and has been dragging its feet in setting the schedule in hopes of an arranged slate. However, there won't be any peace between supporters of President Torrijos and former President Pérez Balladares, the latter who wants the 2009 presidential nomination. To complicate matters, there are indications that Torrijos supports neither Toro Pérez Balladares nor the front-running PRD possibility in all the polls, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, but Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro, who garners only single-digit support among party members. Many of the rivalries in the presidential primary race will be fought out by competing slates in the elections for party posts, despite the president's best efforts to arrange all the party affairs in advance. On September 16 the Party's National Executive Council and National Directors Council will meet to set the dates for a party congress and the election of delegates to that congress, which is then expected to change the party statutes ahead of the primaries.

Torrijos restricts reporters' questions

President Torrijos already restricts access to press conferences and issuance of press releases to media and reporters whom he approves. Now he has gone a step further and announced that when he calls in reporters, he will only take questions about the subject he raises. In the press conference where he announced that policy, called to discuss changes in the school nutrition program, he also refused to answer a radio reporter's question about that subject. As well he might --- as a cost cutting measure the program to provide a carton of milk and a biscuit to needy school kids is being discontinued in the nation's most poverty stricken regions, the remote rural areas. Maybe not coincidentally, former legislator Teresita Yániz de Arias, a prominent member of the ruling coalition's junior partner the Partido Popular, resigned as the nutrition program's national secretary at the same time.

Ex-prosecutor files criminal charges after high court rules

Is a prosecutor a "judicial officer?" Looking at some of the powers that come with the job, it can be argued that she or he is. In this country, for example, a prosecutor can order a suspect held in jail in preventive detention. However, for the purposes of ordering a wiretap a prosecutor is not a judicial officer, a Supreme Court divided 7-2 with magistrates Adán Arnulfo Arjona and Esmeralda de Troitiño dissenting held. The question arose in a case where Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez ordered wiretaps of former prosecutor Arquímedes Saéz's communications and not only fired him for corruption but had him arrested on the basis of information so obtained. Now Saéz is charging Gómez with a series of crimes over the matter. The high court decision didn't address whether what Gómez did was a crime, but just held that she lacked the power to do it.

Appeals court throws out judge's order to arrest reporter

The Second Superior Tribunal has thrown out an order by 17th Civil Circuit Judge Jorge Isaac Escobar to jail reporter Carlos Zavala. The judge ordered Zavala jailed for six days for contempt for a television report about a matter that was pending before his court that the judge considered disrespectful. However, the appeals magistrates found that it was a violation of due process for Escobar to act as accuser and judge on a matter that didn't happen in his presence. The magistrates accused Escobar of "inexcusable ignorance" of the law.

Panama to return money stolen from El Salvador

What to do if you are a Salvadoran crook, embezzling money from your nation's water and sewer utility? Why, park the funds in a Panamanian bank, of course. Well, maybe not. The Salvadoran government detected the embezzlement and the deposit of the stolen money into the Panamanian bank accounts of dummy corporations, asked for this country's courts to assist, and $2.1 million was frozen and will be returned to El Salvador.

Ruling for Noriega, US judge makes torture law retroactive

Tom Bleming, a former guerrilla and political prisoner in Panama, has lost his lawsuit for torture against former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega. US federal district judge Alan B. Johnson ruled that Bleming had brought his lawsuit years too late to get by the statute of limitations. But the judgment was not entirely good news for the world's sadistic torturers. The 1992 Torture Victims Protection Act applies retroactively to acts of torture committed before its passages, the judge held, because that law creates no duty or liability that didn't already exist in the law. There are some similar precedents in other federal courts, but no guiding Supreme Court precedent on the matter. The judge found that in fact Noriega was responsible for Bleming being tortured and moreover overruled President Aristides Royo's order to release Bleming from custody. However, Bleming waited too long to bring his lawsuit.

Colon residents block road over road conditions

On August 2 residents of the San Isidro neighborhood in the Colon corregimiento of Puerto Pilon blocked the road through their neighborhood for three hours, because they said it was becoming impassable and they had a culprit in mind. They said that heavy trucks and machinery used by the V&V development company had broken up their road and they wouldn't let traffic through --- especially V&V's traffic --- unless the problem was resolved. The blockade was lifted after the company agreed to repair the broken pavement slabs.

Pre-Columbian find behind parsonage in Los Santos?

On July 25 workers repairing a sewer line behind the Catholic priest's house near the church in La Villa de Los Santos encountered remains that appear to be from the pre-Columbian era. Archaeologists were brought in to evaluate the find. What it might tend to demonstrate is the church's role in the Spanish Conquest. Often the holy places of a community would be taken over for a Catholic church, and the main local religious festival would be continued as the festival of the saint of that particular day, who would be declared the community's patron saint. The memories of existing towns that the Spaniards took over were either suppressed or not considered important, such that only later archaeological finds revived the knowledge that it was not the European settlers who founded the communities.

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