Panama news briefs

Panama News Briefs

Torrijos to legislate by decree

President Torrijos has asked for and the Legislative Assembly has voted to grant him special powers to legislate by decree about immigration, tourism, customs and banking. The decree making powers will be in effect between January 1 and February 29, while the assembly is in recess. There is a regional agreement among Panama and the Central American countries about uniform customs procedures, so that would be part of any customs reform decree, which is expected to create a customs authority. The administration also wants to transform the Panamanian Tourism Institute (IPAT) into an authority and that will be part of the tourism decree but there is a lot of speculation about what the particulars of tourism reform might entail, especially as to whether it will touch land tenure issues. There have been a lot of ideas floated in political circles about immigration --- some of the blatantly xenophobic --- and it seems likely that restoring the 90-day tourist visa or something like it will be a part of the reform package but there may or may not be a lot more than that. Banking reform is the big mystery, but it would appear unlikely from past performances that Torrijos decree any consumer-friendly or anti-monopolistic reforms.

Denial season

Panameñista legislator Miguel Fanovich is the latest in a growing line of prominent individuals from the worlds of Panamanian politics and business to deny anything more than a casual acquaintance with one Irma Ortiz. The latter is in jail for being an alleged queenpin in a Chiriqui drug smuggling and money laundering operation in which 27 cops have been charged, more than one hundred vehicles, $470,000 in cash and several houses and businesses have been seized. Ortiz is said to have been a big political contributor to Chiriqui politicians and is known to have had a wide-ranging network of business ties, some of which she is accused of using to launder drug money. Maybe the most prominent name to be mentioned so far is PRD member of the Panama Canal Authority board of directors and former dictatorship-era figurehead President Ricardo de La Espriella, who is tied to Ortiz by a left-wing website out of Spain. There are two major impediments to following Ms. Ortiz's money trail into the world of politics: first, there is no public disclosure of campaign contributions in Panama; and second, one needs complete summary proof that a public official has committed a crime to begin a criminal investigation of that person. Beyond that, judges, legislators, members of the Central American Parliament and current and former presidents are protected by legal immunity from investigation and prosecution.

Evangelicals protest RP-Vatican police chaplain pact

The Panamanian government and the Holy See have agreed to create a special Catholic bishopric to run a government-financed organization of chaplains for Panama's National Police. On December 19 Evangelicals packed the galleries of the National Assembly to protest the state funding of the Catholic Church that this agreement entails.

Cosmetic fluff campaign reform

Now that the PRD has construction projects going on here and there all over the capital and the country that are scheduled for ribbon cuttings in the weeks before the May 2009 election and is spending tens of thousands of dollars per day in self-praise advertising, Pedro Miguel González and the National Assembly have discovered the virtues of fiscal responsibility and campaign reform. As these briefs were written the legislators were considering a law to prohibit the signing of unbudgeted contract obligations in the last six months of the presidential term. This is an idea from the PRD caucus, not from anti-corruption groups.

González wants to scrap US-RP drug accord

National Assembly president Pedro Miguel González is calling for the abrogation of the 2002 Salas-Baker Accord, which allows US Coast Guard and Navy vessels to pursue suspected drug traffickers into Panamanian waters and make arrests, provided a Panamanian law enforcement official is riding along. González calls it a violation of this country's sovereignty because it allows those arrested to be taken to the United States for trial. Generally the practice is to turn Panamanian suspects over to this country's authority, one legal reasoning being the Panama's constitution prohibits the extradition of its citizens. When Colombians or citizens of other third countries arrested in Panamanian waters get sent to the USA for trial, it can represent a substantial loss in bribe income for Panamanian judges and prosecutors.

Charges dropped against DEA-accused ex-prosecutor

Judge Maricela Ceballos of the Second Penal Court in Colon has thrown out charges against former anti-drug prosecutor Aminta Corro, brought after a complaint by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that between 2002 and 2004 Corro obstructed justice by leaking information of upcoming raids to drug cartels, destroyed evidence, manipulated information in drug case files and improperly sought to dismiss charges against certain drug defendants. The prosecution, still in the investigation phase, began in mid-2006 but the judge ruled that it can't continue because by now the acts that Corro is accused of engaging in happened more that three years ago so by the judge's interpretation the statute of limitations has lapsed. The judge didn't get into the underlying issue of whether Corro actually did sell out to drug traffickers.

Electoral Tribunal gives PRD activists immunity

By law, candidates for public office are immune from arrest, prosecution or criminal investigation during and just after election season. Now, however, the PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal has extended that principle of impunity for the criminal activities of the political class by holding that candidates for delegate to the PRD national convention or for the ruling party's offices also get immunity. Opposition parties are criticizing the move, but there's so far no legal challenge to it --- they might be inclined to say nasty things about the policy and then claim its protections for themselves.

PRD, Panameñistas pick up members

The nation's two largest political parties, the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the opposition Panameñista Party, were both adding members as 2007 approached its end, with the former's membership up to 581,377 and the latter's at 199,814. All other parties saw membership declines, most of them slight but the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (MOLIRENA) and the Partido Popular a bit more substantial. The two biggest parties' growth is largely because there will be hotly contested primary and internal party elections in those groups and the contending factions are signing up new members. People who do not belong to political parties can't take part in the primary process of selecting candidates. About half of Panamanians who are eligible to vote belong to a political party and about half don't.

Three die, one survives in holiday plane crash

Twelve-year-old Francesca Lewis survived the December 23 crash of a small airplane on the slopes of Volcan Baru, but her friend Thalia Klein, Thalia's hedge fund owner father Michael Klein and 21-year-old pilot Edwin Lasso were not so lucky. The plane went down in bad weather and it took a couple of days for rescuers to find the wreck, in which they found Lewis suffering from multiple injuries and hypothermia. It then took a five-hour trek, borne in a stretcher, before the survivor got to a place from whence she could be airlifted to a hospital in David.

Mixed ruling, plea for expanded probe in bus fire case

After more than one year behind bars, bus mechanic Edwin Jiménez was set free on December 13 and won't have to stand trial. He had been accused of bypassing a fuse box on a bus with an air conditioning system that used explosive chemicals and thus creating the spark that started a fire that killed 18 people. He denies that he did that and investigators found months ago that the theory of how the fire started that attributed it to a short circuit from a bypassed fuse box was just plain wrong. So judge Rolando Quezada Vallespi of the First Penal Court dropped the charges against Jiménez. Ordered to stand trial for for negligent homicide in the October 23, 2006 incident, however, were brothers Ariel and Próspero Ortega, the owner and driver of the bus respectively. The judge found that there is enough evidence to try the men for operating a bus they knew or should have known was unsafe and the driver for not letting passengers get off as soon as the fire started. (Once it grew out of control it became impossible for many to escape.) The judge also called for further criminal investigations of Banco Nacional de Panama officials, who allegedly insisted that as a condition for the government loan that the Ortega brothers obtained to buy the bus they get this particular Guatemalan-made bus model, which not only used an explosive chemical in the air conditioning system but also had no emergency escape.

Bocas hydro dam foes cite archaeological sites

AES Changuinola, which is building a controversial series of hydroelectric dams on the Changuinola River and its tributaries, has for some time been the target of criticism from environmental groups that say it will affect an adjacent national park and the mostly indigenous communities that stand to be displaced. Now, according to La Prensa, 13 archaeological sites have been identified and historic preservationists are opposing the dams for that reason. The company argues that the sites will not be in the areas to be bulldozed, but just in places that will be flooded, so they really won't be destroying any of Panama's historical legacy.

Martín's Christmas amnesty

President Torrijos, in keeping with long-standing practices, commuted the sentences of 104 prisoners just before Christmas. There were some criticisms of the move, especially from opposition politicians who asserted as a general principle that convicts should do their time. The most celebrated of the beneficiaries were a couple of female schoolteachers in Penonome who were jailed for sexually abusing students a little more than two months before, in a decision that many locals criticized at the time as a miscarriage of justice.

Is your gardener a serial machete murderer?

Can't tell the child molesters from the serial killers and the harmless body art devotees from the tattoos on that guy applying to weed and water your garden? The legislature has passed a law that once again makes it possible to look up his criminal record --- assuming, inter alia, that he gives you the right name and proper ID. The new Judicial Investigation Directorate (DIJ), under the supervision of those trustworthy Noriega boys Colonel Delgado and Major Mejía who run the Ministry of Government and Justice, will be the people in charge of issuing criminal rap sheets to prospective employers.

Chiriqui kiddie porn bust

Six individuals are under arrest and several others are being sought in what police and prosecutors say was the breakup of a child pornography ring that had been making and exchanging photographs and videos of sex involving minors between the ages of 11 and 15 for at least a year and one-half. Now under investigation are records of Internet traffic, in part to see whether and if so to what extent the operation reached abroad.

Domestic violence order against deputy

One of the exceptions to legislators' immunity from the legal consequences of what they do is in domestic relations cases. They don't, for examples, get to escape child support payments or manipulate divorce cases due to their status in public office. They are immune from assault and battery charges but, as Panameñista deputy Javier Tejeira found out, the Supreme Court will depart from its usual political stall to order a legislator to get out of a house and stay away in the event that domestic violence is alleged. Tejeira's live-in companion complained of abuse and the legislator was ordered by the high court to stay away from her and the place they were living for six months. There was no ruling, however, about immunity on any criminal charge that may be filed in the matter. He's very unhappy about it, he says because he's falsely accused and because he says that the issue should be aired before a judge and not in the news media. In Panama the culture and press practices are such that politicians are allowed private lives outside the glare of publicity. That a politician has a mistress in addition to a wife, or kids outside of wedlock is considered beyond the pale of media attention here. However, in recent years domestic violence has been treated as something different and fit to report about in the news, much to the chagrin of those public figures who have been accused of it. Despite the preventive order, Tejeira has not been found guilty of anything.

Prominent lawyer slain

On December 13 the body of 46-year-old attorney Juan Carlos Dudley, the vice president of Panama's Colegio de Abogados bar association, was found in the Paris Motel, a pushbutton on the Transistmica. He had apparently been stabbed with a sharp instrument, which was not found at the scene. Two women were seen leaving the premises and after a series of police raids on places where prostitutes live a Dominican woman was arrested in the case.

Carnival costume restrictions

Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro has decreed that in 2008, as in previous years, no Carnival reveler may dress as a cop, a priest, a firefighter or any employee of a private company that requires its workers to wear uniforms. At least you can spoof the mayor --- except if you're wearing a Juan Carlos Navarro mask or any other disguise that keeps the police who will be on duty at the Carnival festivities from identifying you, that's also prohibited.