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Rash of deaths in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca prompts criticism of Torrijos information controls
An epidemic as photo op

Panama rejoining the Andean Community

Sucking up to Pedro Miguel González

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is Winner's new columnist
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Wever to run in Chame - San Carlos with armed committee

PRD legislator Franz Wever, who retained his office in the multi-member Panama City Circuit 8-7 in a 2004 election that featured more votes counted than cast and witnesses accusing him of buying votes out front of polling stations, wants to get elected again in 2009. Despite the Electoral Prosecutor's request, no investigation of the vote buying was permitted by his fellow legislators. The Electoral Tribunal also turned back a challenge to the election result because the candidate who thought she was defrauded couldn't prove without an investigation both that there had been fraud and it had been sufficient to sway the election, so an investigation was barred by law. Now it seems that Wever figures that his old district is not so friendly and he wants to run next time in the single-member Circuit 8-3, in Chame and San Carlos. He's got billboards on the Pan-American Highway, and when one of them was toppled he announced that from now on his campaign committee will be armed. As a taxi syndicate leader Wever was known to pull guns on dissidents at meetings, and as Panama's baseball czar he has gained international notoriety for his public defense of racial epithets used against former national baseball team coach Roberto Kelly. There are not as many black people in circuit 8-3 as in Wever's old circuit, which included El Chorrillo, Curundu, Calidonia, Santa Ana and San Felipe. With redistricting that old circuit has been expanded, probably to Wever's disadvantage.

Tonosi mayor suspected in stabbing

Tonosi Mayor Félix Rodríguez Hoa is under investigation for the October 7 stabbing of an 18-year-old man in the course of an altercation. The PRD politician has not been jailed, but has been suspended from his office for 30 days while prosecutors continue to investigate. The man who was stabbed, whose family had previously filed various complaints about the mayor's actions in office, suffered a punctured lung but is expected to recover. The mayor's lawyer is claiming that it was a matter of self-defense.

Permanent protest barriers

How accustomed to enraging people has the government become? So much so that the Torrijos administration proposes to set up permanent gates on a perimeter going one block in each direction from the Palacio de las Garzas, so that the cops don't have to put up their temporary fence each time the protesters head down to the Presidencia.

Jované exonerated

Former Seguro Social director Juan Jované, accused of responsibility for the poisoning deaths of at least 112 and likely well over 600 people because the alleged lack of medicine lab quality controls that existed in his administration lasted into the next two administrations, has had the charges against him thrown out by the Supreme Court. Just because he once held the job, the court held, doesn't make him responsible for a disaster that took place on someone else's shift. What the charges were really about was an attempt by the Torrijos administration, which has still not answered for why it suppressed information about the rash of deaths from late July to mid-October of 2006 and thus contributed to the death toll, to shift blame onto a political foe from a prior administration.

US drug fugitive busted here

Von Cammron Odom, an American who was on the US Drug Enforcement Agency's list of five most wanted fugitives for allegedly running an international designer drug ring from Amsterdam was arrested in an October 2 raid on a Bella Vista apartment. He was deported to the USA on October 5. Odom faces 240 years in prison for trafficking in MDMA and other charges involving kidnapping and assault. He came into Panama in 2004 as a tourist and went deep underground, never venturing from an apartment held under another person's name and having others run all his errands from him. Although the circumstances that led to his arrest were not revealed, there was a reward for information leading to his arrest and several people who allegedly helped him have been identified and are being sought, which would indicate a turncoat in his protective circle.

Prosecutor moves to try five in UP diploma scandal

As far as rector Gustavo García de Paredes --- who himself flaunts a fake doctorate --- is concerned, the problem is over and amnesties have been issued. However, prosecutors have moved to bring five individuals to trial for a scandal arising from the University of Panama's issuance of diplomas to people who had not taken the required courses to earn them.

Police, business groups push to open criminal records

During the Moscoso administration the government banned the disclosure of individuals' criminal records and since then there have been a number of tragic incidents wherein people with long records of violent behavior have been hired by people who had no way of knowing that and then continued their lives of crime in their new jobs. Now National Police chief Rolando Mirones, with the backing of most of the country's business groups, is pushing for the legislature to repeal that ban. There is some resistance, based on the idea that someone who has paid his or her debt to society ought to have a chance for a new start at life, but it looks likely that in at least some situations --- like for those individuals applying for security guard jobs --- potential employers will regain access to applicants' criminal records.

High court presidency contest

The Supreme Court's presiding magistrate, Graciela Dixon, won't be there after her term expires in December. President Torrijos has nominated Dixon for a spot on the International Criminal Court, which has run into international opposition from human rights groups because of a series of rulings in which she forbade investigations of murder, torture and disappearances during the time of the dictatorship. The president will be appointing someone else to take Dixon's place on the high court. That creates a vacancy, and so far it's looking like a three-way contest among magistrates Esmeralda de Troitiño, Harley Mitchell and Aníbal Salas. Dixon was appointed to the Supreme Court by another PRD president, Ernesto Pérez Balladares, so from a narrowly partisan perspective it won't affect the court's balance, but in practice it ought to give Torrijos a more solidly supportive judiciary for the last year and three-quarters of his time in office.

ACP proposes to cover firing range

The Panama Canal Authority says that it will eliminate the hazards posed by unexploded ordnance left by US military forces on the Empire Range by burying the scene of nearly a century of maneuvers under some 46 million cubic meters of rock and dirt to be excavated from the Pacific side of the canal expansion project. It will surely work to reduce the risks, but old shells have a way of moving up and down in the soil, especially with water seepage, and this phenomenon was not mentioned in the sketchy environmental impact studies that the ACP submitted to the National Environmental Authority. Over the years more than two dozen Panamanians have been killed by old explosives left on the firing ranges by US forces. The Americans' failure to clean the ranges before leaving has been the gist of an ongoing bilateral dispute about whether the United States complied with the Panama Canal Treaty provision to remove all hazards insofar as is practicable.

Gólcher to Argentina

Olga Gólcher, who was recently obliged to step down as Minister of Government and Justice in a cabinet shuffle, has been given a much less controversial public office. She's now Panama's ambassador to Argentina.

Dolphin argument coming back

The Aquatic Resources Authority of Panama (ARAP), now with a new director, is convening a meeting of the Marine Corridor Commission on October 22 or 23 to discuss Ocean Embassy's proposal to capture dozens of dolphins in Panamanian waters, the company says for a dolphin park in San Carlos. Opponents, who are generally against the dolphin park in any case, allege that what's really contemplated is the capture of dolphins for export. Polls suggest that a large majority of Panamanians oppose dolphin captures. However, although the proposal's opponents include some prominent PRD members the Torrijos administration has so far appeared to favor Ocean Embassy's proposal.

La Joya jailbreak

On October 9 in Tinajitas 14 inmates, most of them convicted murderers, broke out of cell block 12 at the maximum security La Joya Penitentiary. By the next morning five had been recaptured and nine remained at large.

Ngobes block road over decrepit schools

On October 9 parents from the Pueblo Nuevo elementary school in the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca blocked the road from Chiriqui into Bocas for several hours to demand that the national government build new schools and fix existing ones in the semi-autonomous indigenous commonwealth. The parents said that the protests will be continued so long as the Minister of Education does not personally come to the area to meet with them and satisfy their demands.

Rash of deaths in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca prompts criticism of Torrijos information controls
An epidemic as photo op

Panama rejoining the Andean Community

Sucking up to Pedro Miguel González

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is Winner's new columnist
Panama News Briefs