Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Gómez doesn't want to be a notary

The Torrijos administration and the National Assembly are moving to abolish the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) and put most of its organization into the National Police. The National Police are under the Ministry of Government and Justice, while the PTJ is under the Public Ministry, which is headed by Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez. She doesn't like the proposal at all, alleging that the changes would "turn the Public Ministry into a notary for the National Police." Meanwhile the Ministry of Government and Justice is now led by former officers of General Noriega's Panama Defense Forces (the minister having been a colonel and member of the General Staff and the vice minister having been a major and Noriega's adjutant) and the nation's National Maritime Service coast guard and National Air Service air patrol are also being merged into the National Police. Critics say it's the remilitarization of Panama, which formally abolished its military after the 1989 US invasion. Whether or not that's accurate, there is no dispute that power is being concentrated by this series of moves.

High court crony accused of being extortion bagman

Blas "Toto" Velásquez used to be an aide to Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora when the latter was Minister of Government and Justice in the Moscoso administration. Before he went to work as the Minister of Government and Justice's aide US law enforcement authorities wanted to talk to Velásquez about a US - Dutch - Panamanian heroin and ecstasy smuggling ring, for which he was indicted for allegedly using a position he had at Tocumen Airport to aid the conspiracy. (As a Panamanian citizen he couldn't legally be extradited.) Since Spadafora has been on the high court, Velásquez has frequently been seen around its premises in Ancon, hanging out with magistrates Spadafora and José Troyano in particular. Dolores Guerra is a Chiriqui woman with electric pink hair and an argument with a power generating company. AES Panama is claiming to own part of her family's farm by squatters' rights and she has fought the company at all levels and won her case, only to have AES appeal it up to the Supreme Court. Velásquez, she claims, representing himself as an intermediary for high court magistrates Troyano and Alberto Cigarruista, said that she'll have to pay a $2 million bribe to win her case. She filed a criminal complaint against the magistrates and Velásquez, then went and got into an altercation with the latter in an El Cangrejo restaurant. The police came and took Velásquez away. However, he had to be released from jail. The high court has held that in cases in which a person with immunity from prosecution or investigation conspires to commit a crime with a person who has no such immunity in his or her own right, the public official's immunity extends to the civilian accomplice. And thus Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez and the prosecutors serving under her can't touch Velásquez unless the National Assembly lifts the immunity protecting Troyano and Cigarruista and by extension Velásquez --- it would arguably be a crime to investigate whether Velásquez was acting entirely on his own. So far the legislature hasn't been amenable to lifting magistrates' immunity.

High court corruption docket backlog

There are, according to La Prensa, 20 criminal cases involving 17 legislators that have been submitted by prosecutors to the Supreme Court to decide whether legislative immunity from investigation and prosecution may be lifted. Under the 2004 Moscoso - Torrijos package of constitutional reforms, only the National Assembly may lift a Supreme Court magistrate's immunity from prosecution and subsequently the legislature has decided that it lacks the power to investigate the conduct of a magistrate, such that only a completely open and shut case against a magistrate might lead to his or her prosecution (but if there is a case like that, it's proof that it has been investigated and that would be improper so it must be thrown out and the person who brought it investigated for conducting an illegal investigation). Under those same Moscoso - Torrijos reforms, only the Supreme Court can lift a legislator's immunity. Critics say that there is a mutual non-aggression pact between the judicial and legislative branches where they have tacitly agreed not to look into allegations of each others' corruption, but the court has approved a few criminal investigations of legislators.

27 cops charged in drug ring bust

A dozen members of the National Police and 15 members of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) --- including the head of the latter outfit's anti-drug unit in Chiriqui --- have been charged, along with 14 alleged drug traffickers variously of Panamanian, Mexican, Dominican and Nicaraguan citizenship, for their alleged roles in moving Colombian cocaine across the border from Panama into Costa Rica en route to points north. Various media report that some Panamanian Customs officials are also under investigation in the case.

"Only following orders" becomes an accepted excuse

On December 10, the anniversary of the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Panama learned of the previous week's presidential decree that grants the SPI presidential guards and intelligence unit a defense that the Nuremberg Tribunals would not allow Nazi war criminals to use. Under President Torrijos's new regulations, if a SPI agent shoots some innocent and defenseless person down in cold blood or seeks information by waterboarding torture, that agent will be immune from disciplinary measures if he or she can show that the act was committed under orders. The president defended the new "I was only following orders" defense by calling them just "little words."

SPI patrols in the Casco Viejo

The Institutional Protection Service (SPI), which includes the presidential guards, the government ministers' bodyguards and the nation's intelligence unit, has been assigned to take over street patrols in the Casco Viejo from the National Police. The SPI is big into beating up protesters and protest marches tend to end up in Plaza Catedral near the Palacio de las Garzas, so the move may presage an increase in political violence.

Maybe not the best Darwin Award candidates

There has been an international feeding frenzy about John and Anne Darwin, the British couple who were down here after he faked his death five years ago and she collected insurance and sold the family properties in England to move here. Although both of the Darwins are under arrest back in England on various charges, so far it seems that the essence of the case has not been broken. Why? Because they bought a house in Coronado, a large parcel of land on Gatun Lake near Escobal and an apartment in Panama City --- of which is known --- plus they lived a lavish lifestyle. It appears that they had more money than the sale of their property in the UK plus the proceeds of the insurance fraud could account for. So what was the game that he, the prison official, and she, the medical office receptionist were playing? There are some obvious things to suspect, but the couple has also had five years and Panamanian banking and corporate secrecy to cover their tracks. To pierce the veil of banking and corporate secrecy here authorities in the UK would have to show probable cause of certain predicate crimes (laundering the proceeds of drug trafficking or of public corruption, for example) before they could get Panamanian authorities to look at the Darwins' corporations or bank accounts here. Theirs was a bizarre crime and it was not a good idea to have had their photo taken and published on the Internet, but maybe their racket was not as exceptionally stupid as it may appear at first glance. The Darwin Awards are "prizes" given annually for particularly foolish crimes and were jokingly named after the famed 19th century naturalist who pioneered the theory of evolution rather than this particular Mr. and Mrs. Darwin.

Gringo pervs may have headed this way

The FBI has issued a warning that seven different sex offenders may have fled to Panama or one of the nearby countries. Wanted are Roy Stephen Hyatt, age 60; Grant Lavalle Hudson III, (61); Wayne Arthur Silsbee (51); Jon Savarino Schillaci (36); Edward Eugene Harper (61); and Elby Jessie Hars (64). For the most part they are wanted for pedophile offenses. The one the authorities want most urgently is Schillaci, for whom a $100,000 reward is offered if information leading to his arrest is provided.

140 Chiriqui teachers accused of cheating

University of Panama rector "Dr." Gustavo García de Paredes isn't the only Panamanian educator flaunting false academic credentials. In Chiriqui 140 teachers have been notified that they will be transferred because they won their teaching positions by getting points for continuing education courses that they never actually attended. The Ministry of Education, already at the center of a major embezzlement scandal and the target of teacher union criticism of a new school curriculum that cuts the teaching of history, the fine arts and physical education, promises that such academic fraud won't be allowed to continue. However, the ministry isn't saying that any teacher will be fired for the falsified credentials, as would happen in most countries.

Prosecutor supports Olympic Committee charges

The struggle for control of the Panamanian Olympic Committee has been ongoing for a long time, and at one time Miguel Vanegas, leader of one of the contending factions, brought private charges of creating and filing false documents against leaders of the other faction, whom he accused of falsifying an election to keep themselves in power. Now the prosecutor has taken up the cause and moved to bring Melitón Sánchez, Roger Moscote, Miguel Sanchiz, Fernando Samaniego, Ricardo Turner and José Félix Rodríguez to trial. There may, however, be a problem. A seventh would-be defendant, Franz Wever, is a legislator as well as the president of FEDEBEIS baseball federation that's part of the Olympic movement. As a legislator he's immune from investigation or prosecution, so the Public Ministry has petitioned the Supreme Court to lift his immunity. However, the courts have ruled that if a legislator commits a crime in league with a non-legislator, the politician's immunity protects the offender who doesn't enjoy immunity in his or her own right. That could get the entire case thrown out if the court decides to rule that way. In Panama's system of law precedents need not be followed by the courts, so it's unclear how Wever's part in the alleged falsified election will affect the others who are accused.

Creative budget savings

According to La Prensa, the Torrijos administration is spending $71,000 per day on advertising to promote the president's image. According to the budget that President Torrijos sent to the National Assembly, there is a $3 million appropriation for Carnival celebrations in Panama City. The Institute for Legal Medicine, however, is slated to get only $2.4 million, most emphatically NOT including the sophisticated equipment, training and reagent chemicals needed to do tests on the remains of more than 500 people who are believed to have died from using cough syrup laced with toxic diethylene glycol that the Torrijos administration mixed at the government medicine production lab and distributed around the country. Prosecutors have received more than 700 complaints about poisoning deaths, but because of the medical examiners' limited resources they have only been able to positively prove that slightly fewer than 200 of these were caused by the government medications. The government has admitted to causing about 170 deaths and promised compensation, but because it wants waivers of liability and disaffiliation with protest groups and agreements among affected relatives, only a small percentage of those whom the government now admits having poisoned have received compensation. By blocking adequate funding for the medical examiners, it seems, President Torrijos can skimp on compensation to the victims and continue to deny the full enormity of the disaster he and his team caused. The poison came in mislabeled jugs from China, which were never tested here. The disaster mushroomed when doctors, nurses and pharmacists complained in July of 2006 of a strange rash of deaths and illnesses but the Torrijos administration suppressed information about this until mid-October for political reasons, leading to many more deaths had prompt action been taken.

BUY NOW! BUY NOW!

It's not that they run the gamut from crooks to gutless wonders who won't confront crooks. It's not that they are the products of a despised political class playing the role of dance band on a ship of state on a course toward oblivion. No, no, none of that. It's just bad marketing. Thus the National Assembly has hired Latin Marketing & Comunications to do some opinion polling and discover what can be done to improve the legislature's public image. The deputies will get $22,730 worth of image analysis, assuming they are not cheated. The problem, the assembly's secretary general Carlos Smith told El Panama America, is that "the community doesn't recognize the effectiveness of the projects that are approved." Ah, but we do, despite the large amounts of money already spend to convince us that our perceptions are wrong. As things look right now at this early point, it appears that 2009 will be another one of those election years in which the voters throw most incumbent legislators out of office.

Billy Ford likes anti-smoking law

As he was hospitalized for several days with a lung infection, former Vice President Guillermo Ford, who used to be a smoker, said that he supported further restrictions on smoking in public places and a total ban on tobacco ads that the legislature was considering. The measure, which the deputies ultimately passed and sent to the president, was passed out of concern for a sharp rise in recent years of smoking among younger Panamanians. That by and large began during the Moscoso administration, when the government brought Philip Morris into the public schools to conduct an "anti-smoking" campaign whose message was that smoking is an adult thing to do. The concern is that a few decades from now this generation of young smokers will become a drain on public health care system resources as they start to get sick from their habit. Ford, meanwhile, leads the Union Patriotica party, says that he wants to be the opposition candidate for president in 2009 and maintains that his health isn't a problem.

Bail in coke smuggling case

The general rule, sometimes trumped by bribery, is that there is no bail for drug offenses in Panama. This past March the ship Gatun Panama was arrested with 19.5 tons of cocaine in its hold and the crew was thrown in jail. Now, however, three Panamanian crew members have been released on their own recognizance pending trial by the Penal Bench of the Supreme Court, with the stipulation that they can't leave the country and must sign in with prosecutors twice a month.

Unusual heroin bust

The most commonly used illegal drug in Panama is marijuana, with cocaine use fairly common and ecstasy a fad among certain night club crowds. We generally haven't had many heroin junkies. On December 3, however, police and prosecutors raided a home in El Criso on Via Tocumen and seized 12 kilos of heroin. The home was apparently used to repackage the heroin for retail distribution. If that appearance holds true then it's an unusual development on the Panamanian drug scene. Previously this country has been a transit zone for heroin coming out of Colombia, but has not been much of a consumer market for the banned substance.

Guns in prison

Riots in the nation's hellish prisons are not particularly unusual, but on November 20 in La Joyita Penitentiary's Pavillion 11 there was a most unusual disturbance. Two inmates were wounded when members of a rival gang arrived at the door of their cell and opened fire with at least one pistol that had been smuggled into the prison. There has never been such a shooting within a Panamanian prison of this sort reported before.

Two killed, two hurt in tug explosion

On November 25 there was an explosion and fire on the privately owned tugboat Viveros near the island of Taboguilla, which left two crew members dead and two seriously burned. Six others jumped overboard to escape the flames and avoided injury.

Fire blankets much of the city in smoke

A fire that started at about noon on December 11 in a stock room at the Conway store in Albrook Mall took more than 18 hours for the bomberos to extinguish and caused 12 injuries, mostly from smoke inhalation and none of them life threatening. A huge cloud of acrid smoke blanketed much of the city, particularly the corregimientos of Curundu and Calidonia but also for a time Paitilla and the Casco Viejo. The fire revealed non-functioning hydrants, unmarked fire exits, illegal parking that hindered the access of fire trucks and other serious safety hazards at the mall. Although the flames did not spread beyond Conway, the smoke did and damaged merchandise at many other businesses during the height of Christmas shopping season.

Thousands isolated by Sona bridge collapse

On December 10 a tractor trailer almost got across the old Bailey bridge that spanned the Rio San Pedro in the community of Trinidad Rio de Jesus, Sona district, Veraguas province. The cab actually got across the bridge. However, the span collapsed under the trailer and with the bridge out some 30,000 Veraguas residents are left cut off from the rest of Panama. Nobody was hurt in the accident, but the economic disruption has been enormous and will continue to be a problem for several weeks.

Panama's Venezuelans voted no

The Venezuelan community in Panama, many of whose members are here precisely because they don't like their country's present government, as in past elections demonstrated an antipathy to Hugo Chávez in the December 2 referendum. In voting at the Venezuelan Embassy here, the count was 138 votes against the constitutional changes that Chávez wanted and 16 for them. In Venezuela itself the result was much closer, with the "no" side winning by just over a one percent margin.

Mandarin in the schools?

Liberal legislator Arturo Araúz has proposed that Panama's public schools start teaching Mandarin as a foreign language. China is a growing world power and Panama has close relations with Taiwan, and both of these countries use Mandarin as their official language even if other Chinese dialects are more widely spoken in their homes. By some estimates there may be as many as 150,000 people in Panama who speak at least some Mandarin. However, Chinese community activist and historian Juan Tam says that he doesn't think that the proposed legislation will pass and that even if it does he doubts that the nation's public schools would be able to do a good job of teaching Mandarin.

Change from one metric system to another

Wait a minute --- except for gasoline and precious metals, isn't Panama already on the metric system (kilometers rather than miles, liters rather than gallons and so on)? Well, the National Assembly has changed Panama from the Decimal (CGS) metric system to the International Standard (MKS) metric system. Unless your job has you dealing in tiny units of measure, you are unlikely to notice the difference, which will be phased in over five years.

news