Panama business & economy briefs

Drivers license changes

For Panamanian citizens in the metro area who need to replace their Polaroid drivers licenses with the new digital ones, the place to go now is Auto Depot, on Via Domingo Diaz. Non-citizens will get this done at Transito in Albrook. A procedural problem has been that Transito has been getting the digital photos of Panamanians with cedulas from the Electoral Tribunal, but foreigners' ID comes from Migracion and isn't compatible with the new drivers license system so they must get photos taken by Transito, or, more often, by its private contractor SERTRACEN. So does that mean two trips into the city for foreigners living in the Interior, one to get their photo taken and another to pick up the license? Maybe not. We are told that on Saturday mornings between now and the end of February, drivers can get their photos taken at the SERTRACEN office in Penonome. Can they then pick up their licenses in Penonome? According to one version, if their licenses were not expired in the first place, they can but another version says they have to go into the city. Transito has, as with the entire license renewal process, issued conflicting directions without any public clarifications.

Rodman container port contract approved

The Comptroller General has approved a contract between the government and PSA Internacional Terminal SA that will turn the Rodman piers into a new commercial container port. The National Maritime Service will have to move, and the government will get nine bucks for each container that's moved by the new port.

Some 1,500 protesters, most of them from the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, marched through Santiago on January 8 to protest against hydroelectric dam projects which they claim are not only flooding homes and farms for which proper compensation is not being paid but also are depriving communities of their historic water supplies. Photo by FOCIV

Ngobe, environmentalist protests against Bocas dams

Indigenous protesters and some environmentalist supporters have been conducting a series of road and bridge blockade protests against the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Changuinola River and its tributaries by the multinational AES power company. On January 3 riot police moved in to arrest about 50 Ngobe protesters from the community of Charco La Pava, who had erected roadblocks to keep company trucks and equipment out and there were complaints from the protesters about uncalled-for brutality and women being strip-searched. The local corregidor freed those arrested the next day. Charco La Pava, a village of about 150 residents, is scheduled to disappear under the reservoir and the government and company said that the residents had been given new homes in compensation. However, at Charco La Pava they had lived long enough to own title by squatters' rights as individuals or families and claim indigenous collective property rights in the area. The houses they were offered in compensation was without title or even documentation giving them right of possession. Spokespeople for the Torrijos administration and AES said that's all the compensation they're going to get and sent in the cops. On January 9 about 180 environmentalist and Ngobe protesters blocked a bridge along the road between David and Chiriqui Grande in solidarity with the people of Charco La Pava, but were driven away by riot police after about an hour and one-half.

UK bribery scandal implicates Panama

A decade ago the Pérez Balladares administration bought 16 steel Mabey bridges from the British company Mabey & Johnson, and some of them are still in the process of being installed. Now a bribery scandal had broken out in the UK, wherein a former top company official has alleged that kickbacks were routinely paid to officials of governments that bought Mabey bridges. Panama is alleged to be one of the places where payoffs were made, along with the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. The allegation here, made by The Guardian, is that a 15 percent kickback was paid into a Bahamian bank account under the control of Rogelio Dumanoir, who served as Minister of Public Works under Toro Pérez Balladares. The person who ran the bridges project for that administration was then Vice President Tomás Gabriel Altamirano Duque.

Government lends Odebrecht money for toll road

The Torrijos administration, through the Banco Nacional de Panama, has lent Brazilian multinational construction company Norberto Odebrecht SA, whose employees last year murdered an unarmed labor activist with the government's blessing, $51 million to build the Madden-Colon Autopista. This reporter has never been able to get a forthright denial that the president's cousin, Hugo Torrijos, owns an interest in Odebrecht's Panamanian subsidiary.

BANAICO prison terms upheld

Former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares's campaign treasurer, Mayor Alemán, was chairman of the board, took unsecured loans and his bank-financed aircraft leasing company precipitated the final crisis when one of its planes was caught in the United States carrying cocaine. When word got out about the aircraft seizure and consequent probable failure of the company that leased it, word was quietly spread to certain Colombian large depositors and there was a run on the Banco Agro Industrial y Comercial de Panama (BANAICO). That led banking authorities to take over the bank and ultimately to liquidate it. That was in 1996. Alemán was never charged or even investigated, but in 2004 a trial court sentenced four BANAICO officials to prison terms ranging from three to eight years. Now those prison sentences have been upheld by the Supreme Court --- but the four former bankers are asking the court to reconsider.

No rural carnivals in Cocle

Cocle province, which despite the attractions of the Penonome Water Carnival has in recent years been unfriendly to the festivities in general by, among other things, using Carnival as the occasion to exercise the riot police, says there will be no Carnival celebrations in the province's small communities this year. The reason? They want all their cops to be available to make shows of force in Penonome.

No Carnival in La Chorrera

Chorrera has called off this year's Carnival celebrations. The reason? No money.

Salazar moves to take over Chorrera Fair

Panama's mafia-connected Minister of Agricultural Development Guillermo Salazar may not have made much money moonlighting as the local figurehead of the Prime Forestry teak investment scam --- the Swiss government shut that one down because it was a fraud and because of the involvement of mafia figures --- but he presses on undaunted. This time Salazar is moving to take over the Chorrera Fair. He has sued Luis Guerra, the mayor of La Chorrera, to challenge his and the city representantes' power to run the local fair, and has named a committee composed of members of the Chamber of Commerce and cattle ranchers loyal to him to put on the fair next March. But the city owns the fairgrounds, has named a municipal commission to organize a "Folkloric, Artesanal, Commercial and Agricultural Festival" and has barred the group appointed by Salazar from using the premises.

University of Panama moves against Ngobe-Bugle University

Panamanian law says that the University of Panama has control over all other universities in this country, and the chartering of universities without libraries or any other real justification to call themselves a university has been a lucrative business. But the indigenous comarcas consider themselves to be autonomous nations outside of the purview of "Dr." García de Paredes's racket and in the largest and poorest of these, the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca, local authorities have created the Ngobe-Bugle University. But now the University of Panama's vice rector María Benavides complains that the indigenous university is illegal because it wasn't created by the Ministry of Education and its curriculum isn't controlled by the University of Panama. The threat by the university headed by a guy with a fake doctorate bought from a Franco-era Spanish diploma mill is that the educational credentials of those who earn degrees at the Ngobe-Bugle University won't be recognized. The Ngobe-Bugle University is just starting up and has only one professor on its faculty so far.

Certified nuts by a doctor with a fake degree

The English proficiency exam has been used as an excuse to cut enrollment at the University of Panama, but this year imitation doctor Gustavo García de Paredes et al have found another filter to cut costs on students so that there's enough money for the rector, the seven vice-rectors and the 500 or so administrators. It's a psychological exam. Some 24,000 youngsters applied to the university for admission, but only 17,000 got certification that they were sane enough to study and participate in such extracurricular activities as blocking the street in front of the university. No word on what mental deficiencies the university headed by a rector with a morally deficient fake doctoral diploma says the youngsters had. The 17,000 who were judged not insane will have to then pass entrance exams, including the English proficiency test, to get into the nation's main public university.

Bus fuel subsidy extended

In order to avoid a bus fare increase that would create an inflationary ripple through the national economy, the Torrijos administration has decreed a $2 million fuel subsidy for buses in the metro area that encompasses Colon and Panama provinces. The subsidy will last through the first four months of 2008.

Prosecutors say complaint against dolphin park unfounded

Those media which, unlike the great majority of Panamanians, support the proposed Ocean Embassy dolphin park in San Carlos, are calling it the green light for the project. Actually, it's less than that, but it is one less obstacle. The special prosecutor for environmental crimes has asked a court to dismiss a criminal complaint brought by attorney Celma Moncada, who heads the Fundacion Humanitas animal welfare organization, which alleged that the park intended to illegally capture marine mammals. The prosecutor said that no crime had been committed. There are still several other civil legal cases pending and meanwhile the case has become a political hot potato that has, among other things, divided the ruling PRD. By all indications other than Ocean Embassy's denials, the company intends that a major part of its business in Panama would be the capture of dolphins in Panamanian waters for export to other countries. It seems, however, that having those intentions is not itself a crime.

News \| Business \| Editorial \| Opinion \| Letters \| Arts \| Review \| Community \| Fun \| Travel Unclassified Ads \| Calendar \| Outdoors \| Dining \| Science \| Sports \| Español \| Front Page Archives	Volume 14, Number 1 January 6 - 19, 2008