Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

White House nominates Stephenson as new ambassador

US Ambassador to Panama William A. Eaton's three-year rotation in Panama is about up and President George W. Bush has nominated Barbara J. Stephenson, another career diplomat, to be his replacement. Stephenson has served in Panama before, as political and economic officer to the embassy during the Clinton administration. At the moment she is Deputy Coordinator for Iraq at the State Department's Foggy Bottom headquarters, and before that she was the principal US diplomat in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her higher formal education, which culminated in a PhD, was at the University of Florida. Despite an acrimonious relationship between Congress and the White House the nomination is expected to be approved. In contrast to the Clinton administration, which sent two political appointees as ambassadors to Panama, the Bush practice of looking to civil servants to serve as ambassadors here has not left Democrats disposed to complain. Stephenson's nomination was announced along with those of new US ambassadors for Ecuador and Nicaragua.

Endara wins the first presidential primary

It doesn't necessarily mean that come May of 2009 he will be at the top of the party ticket, but former President Guillermo Endara has won the first presidential primary to be held in this election cycle. Running unopposed and thus in a low-turnout affair on January 13, Endara took the Vanguardia Moral nomination. Other opposition parties will have their separate contests, but then at the end of this year or early next year there will be a negotiating process in which it's expected that alliances will be forged and some of the primary winners will step down. There are likely to be an ego or two and maybe some encouragement from the present ruling party in the way of a unified opposition to the PRD, but that sort of united front is the goal that Endara and several others who are running for their parties' presidential nominations have set. At the January 21 ceremony proclaiming Endara's win, most of the other opposition party presidential hopefuls were present, the big exceptions being Cambio Democratico boss Ricardo Martinelli and Panameñistas Juan Carlos Varela and Marco Ameglio.

Bernal likely to run on Vanguardia Moral ticket

Law professor, journalists and human rights activist Miguel Antonio Bernal, who has been waging an independent campaign for mayor of Panama City in 2009, looks like he will avoid the PRD-dominated Electoral Tribunal's made-up obstacles to getting on the ballot as an independent. Vanguardia Moral de la Patria presidential nominee Guillermo Endara has announced that he will back Bernal for his party's mayoral nomination. In 1999 Bernal finished a close second to Juan Carlos Navarro in a three-way race that he began as an independent but appeared on the ballot of the Arnulfista and MOLIRENA parties. Bernal's core of campaign activists, the Independent Youth Alternative (AJI), includes a lot of his current and former law students and is not planning to join any of the existing political parties. On the "Confrontacion en Radio" show of fellow radio talk show journalist Maribel Cuervo de Paredes Bernal said the he'd accept Vanguardia Moral's nomination but will maintain his usual independence.

Blandón running for re-election to legislature

In announcement that will have implications for the Panama City mayoral race, Panameñista deputy José Blandón said he'll run for re-election to the National Assembly, in a larger multi-member Panama City circuit than the one that he now represents due to the redistricting and reduction of assembly seats to 71. That means that he'll have to make himself known to the voters of Calidonia, El Chorrillo, Santa Ana, San Felipe and Curundu, neighborhoods that have been added to his old circuit. He had been considering a run for mayor of Panama City, but his exit from that race increases the possibility that the Panameñistas may support independent Miguel Antonio Bernal as they did in 1999 or just stay out of the office, so as to create a united opposition to the PRD candidate next year. Although there are maneuvers to be made and a primary contest to be fought, it appears at this early date that Housing Minister Balbina Herrera will be the PRD candidate for mayor.

Week and one-half after PRD elections, no results

As these briefs were written 10 days after the January 20 internal PRD elections, the party still hadn't announced the winners in the races for convention delegates and corregimiento party leader posts. When asked whether his faction had won the election, Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro told The Panama News that "we did well." Housing Minister Balbina Herrera is claiming that her supporters won 95 percent of the delegate spots, while her opponent for the party presidency, former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, claims that 55 to 57 percent of the delegates are loyal to him. Navarro scoffed at both claims, saying that he has about 40 percent of the delegates, with Herrera and Pérez Balladares splitting about 45 percent between them and other party factions taking the rest. It seems that many of the expected Panama City delegates Navarro counts as his are more loyal to the representantes of their corregimientos than to the mayor, however. The delayed announcement of voting results may have something to do with reports that President Torrijos didn't do well enough to control the party machine and thus have a lot of influence in the selection of its 2009 standard bearer. The presidential primary will include Mayor Navarro and former President Pérez Balladares as major candidates, but it appears that Torrijos isn't entirely happy with the former and despises the latter. Just where things stand will become a bit more clear at the party's March 9 convention.

Prosecutor OKs Balbina campaigning with public funds

The law is quite clear that one can't use public funds to conduct political campaigns. But since the public-financed "yes" campaign for the canal referendum it has been equally clear that the PRD has no intention of following this law. Housing Minister Balbina Herrera, on the government's dime, held a "women in politics" luncheon for 700 women, mostly PRD activists, at which anti-corruption czarina Alma Montenegro de Fletcher and other public officials gave speeches in favor of Balbina's campaign to be mayor of Panama City. But now, PRD Electoral Prosecutor Orlando Barsallo has petitioned the two-thirds PRD Electoral Tribunal to throw out charges brought by several people against Montenegro and others, on the unwritten and recently invented exception to the law that since Balbina has not yet been nominated as a mayoral candidate there is no election so public spending on her campaign isn't really campaign spending. Anti-corruption, human rights and business groups' responses, as well as that of Balbina's likely opponent, Miguel Antonio Bernal, may be best described as sneers about yet more overt PRD corruption.

Culiolis acquitted for politicking with public funds

The complaint was that the Panama Maritime Authority finance director, Partido Popular activist Aníbal Culiolis, was promoting a dinner for his party while on the job. When agents of the former Electoral Prosecutor raided his office, they found the invitation for the event among the documents on file in Culiolis's secretary's computer. However, alternate electoral judge Raquel Núñez Ferrer held that there wasn't enough evidence to convict Culiolis for using public funds for partisan political activities and has provisionally acquitted him. Theoretically the prosecution might find new evidence and revive the case, or appeal and get the decision reversed.

28 prosecutions for illegal voting address changes

The Electoral Prosecutor's office has asked the Electoral Tribunal to try 28 people on charges that they illegally registered to vote where they don't live. Most of the cases come from the Chame - San Carlos area, and the rest from Chepo. Assistant prosecutor Nubia de García said that most of the would-be voters are young and warned young adults not to be persuaded by politicians to vote in the wrong place. However, it does not seem that she or her superiors are interested in prosecuting the politicians who orchestrated the mass false registrations.

Mayor Navarro's bodyguard slain

At about 4 a.m. on January 24, as he was leaving the house of a relative where he had been staying to go to work, Boris Quirós Morales, one of Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro's bodyguard, was shot twice and died of his wounds about an hour later. It was allegedly the act of a couple of juvenile members of a 14 de Diciembre street gang trying to steal his pistol. The youths were later arrested and accused of the crime. Quirós was 37 years old and is survived by a widow and two children. He had been shot in the chest and leg, but six or seven shots were fired, some entering the homes of neighbors, one hitting a dog. The crime elicited complaints from local residents about constant gang violence in the area and calls by the mayor and others for tougher measures against violent young offenders.

Son of Electoral Tribunal magistrate kidnapped

It was one of those "express" kidnappings, wherein the victim was forced to empty out bank accounts by four armed men. That's ordinary enough these days in Panama City. In this case the victim of the January 21 crime was Erasmo Pinilla Aparicio, the son of Electoral Tribunal magistrate Erasmo Pinilla. The police have identified four suspects.

Former presidential guard sentenced for kidnapping

Marck Davis Rosales, a former member of the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) presidential guard, has been sentenced to prison along with his brother Víctor Mario Evers Rosales, for an "express" kidnapping. They got seven and one-half and five year terms respectively.

Five-year-old killed in attempted gang hit

Police say that the January 18 pistol shots fired in Calidonia from passing motorcycles which claimed the life of five-year-old Kevin Joane Gómez were meant for "Toto," one of the leaders of Curundu's "Matar o Morir" street gang. Matar o Morir is a fairly violent organization itself. The boy was playing with a friend outside his home on Calle Mariano Arosemena when he was shot in the head and instantly killed. The intended target of the apparent contract killing attempt was not hit.

Cops think they've solved the BANISTMO job

The New Year's extraction of at least a half-million dollars worth of loot from the vault of the BANISTMO branch in the El Dorado shopping center turns out to be in part an inside job. The thieves bored a hole through the ceiling from an upstairs office, apparently with help of a security guard and a bank janitor. In a raid some of the jewelry taken from safety deposit boxes was found in the janitor's home. Most of the valuables are unrecovered and police are looking for a veteran bank robber who has served time in prison for his previous pursuit of that occupation whom they suspect to have been the mastermind behind the crime.

Fotokina judge in a double boiler

In Panama the Supreme Court exercises supervision over all inferior courts, and this has sometimes been used by high court magistrates as an opportunity to extort payoffs to interfere in cases before lower tribunals. But the Supreme Court's presiding magistrate, Harley Mitchell, says he's serious about cleaning up the corruption and malpractice that has brought the judiciary into public disrepute and now some lower court judges are feeling some pressure. One of these is Fifth Penal Circuit judge César Salazar, who has been presiding over the Fotokina bankruptcy fraud case. He held a preliminary hearing on it in January of 2007 and has yet to issue a ruling, and meanwhile time is ticking away toward the statute of limitations applying and Mitchell is demanding an explanation. Meanwhile in a separate case Salazar has been accused of soliciting a $5,000 payment for a ruling in favor of another criminal defendant.

Police captain, lieutenant charged in prisoner's beating death

Prosecutors have filed murder charges against National Police Captain Clemente Buitrago and Lieutenant Cleofe Domínguez for the October 9, 2007 beating death of recaptured prison escapee Daniel Vela Rodríguez. The officers claimed that Vela had died from injuries sustained in a fall from a tree, but more than a dozen prison inmates at La Joyita Penitentiary said that they witnessed the fatal beating and the medical examiner determined from Vela's wounds that the police version of what happened was fraudulent.

Gómez appointed RP ambassador to Cuba

Attorney Luis Antonio Gómez Pérez, a veteran PRD apparatchik from the days of the dictatorship, has been appointed as Panama's ambassador to Cuba. He has served in the legislature and the Central American Parliament. Human rights activists accused him of involvement in the 1977 disappearance of 17-year-old high school student and pro-democracy activist Rita Wald and the 1978 shooting deaths of two campus radicals at the University of Panama and when the United States invaded Panama in 1989 he fled into exile in Cuba. Gómez was acquitted in the campus shootings and a 1994 pardon by former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares has precluded any investigation of any involvement in Rita Wald's disappearance.

International trial for 1970 disappearance

On January 28 the government of Panama went on trial before the Inter-American Human Rights Court for the 1970 disappearance and murder of political activist Heliodoro Portugal. He was last seen alive in public when agents of the old Guardia Nacional took him away from the Coca-Cola Cafe in Santa Ana. In 1999 his bones were found with those of several other disappeared dissidents in the "Tunnel of Death" under a parking lot at the former Pumas Infantry company barracks in Tocumen. The commander of the Pumas at the time of Portugal's death, Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo Garibaldo, was charged with the crime but died before he could be brought to trial. Before the tribunal in San Jose, Costa Rica, attorneys for the Torrijos administration objected that the disappearance and murder that happened under the president's father's dictatorship happened 20 years before Panama accepted the jurisdiction of that court in such cases and thus that the court is not competent to hear this case. Patria Portugal, the victim's daughter who was a toddler when her father disappeared, has been relentless in pursuing this case, while President Martín Torrijos has been equally relentless in trying to prevent all investigations and trials of crimes committed during the 21-year dictatorship led for 13 of those years by his father, General Omar Torrijos. However, at the trial in San Jose Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez said she was limited in what she could say about the matter because there is still a pending criminal investigation in the case.

Italian triplets drown in Las Cumbres pool

Prosecutors may file homicide charges in the January 13 drownings of three triplets, aged 16 months, in their family's Las Cumbres pool. The children's father, an Italian citizen, works for a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization program that has its office at Clayton. Although there was no clear evidence of an intentional crime, the circumstances would suggest negligent homicide. However, in the courts here it's hard to win a negligent homicide case on circumstantial evidence, which is why, for example, so few drivers who kill people go to jail.

Another DEG death

On December 27 Salvador Broce, a 47-year-old taxi driver who had been ailing since taking toxic cough syrup distributed by the government, died from complications of the poisoning. According to the official count he was the 115th person to die from diethylene glycol (DEG) that was mixed into medications at the Social Security Fund (CSS) medicine lab, and that number was reported as definitive in La Prensa and the other PRD-aligned news media. However, the Torrijos administration denied funds to do timely toxicology tests in the more than 700 reported poisoning cases and is now claiming that only those cases that toxicologists can definitively link to DEG actually happened. The actual death toll is far higher than what the government will admit. One prosecutor who has accepted proofs other than conclusively positive toxicology tests has estimated a substantiated death toll of around 400.

Boys killed in Curundu fire

Brothers Emanuel Rodríguez and John Jairo Gudiño, aged three and one and one-half years respectively, were burned to death in a January 18 fire that swept through seven wooden tenement buildings in Curundu. Some witnesses say that the fire was electrical in origin, while other neighbors suspect that local gangs were behind it. However, when fire marshals came to the scene to review the physical evidence and determine what happened, they were fired upon by gang members and withdrew. The area was then bulldozed and fenced to prevent people who were displaced from moving back in, which meant that there will never be a definitive determination about what started the deadly fire.

Another disaster for Ñurum

The remote and impoverished Ñurum district in the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca, which saw a rash of children's deaths due to an epidemic last year, has seen another disaster in the new year, this time in the form of a wind storm that damaged some 37 houses and destroyed crops upon which some 100 families depend. The Housing and Agriculture Ministries are sending in aid to the stricken community.

Measles vaccination campaign in March

Measles is just a regular childhood disease for a lot of people, but to some it causes death or permanent disabilities, with the problem particularly acute in the indigenous comarcas and other pockets of extreme poverty where the illness's effects are amplified by malnutrition. The Ministry of Health is thus getting ready for a campaign to vaccinate every child between the ages of one and four years against measles that will be conducted all through the month of March. The goal, which has been set and not accomplished in prior such campaigns, is the complete eradication of measles in Panama.

Leftists form rival rural alliances

A split in the Panamanian left has widened with two conventions in Santiago. The first, hosted by the Veraguas Educators Association (AEVE) teachers union and supported by the campus radical group Thought and Transformative Action (PAT), the Partido Alternativa Popular and the Partido de los Trabajadores Panameños, formed the Union de Lucha Integral por el Pueblo. The second, supported by the November 29th National Liberation Movement (MLN-29) and its student group FER-29, SUNTRACS construction workers union and the labor/left FRENADESO umbrella group, founded the Union Campesina de Panama. Both groups encompass various farmers' and indigenous groups and other organizations in the Interior. The former, although not an electoral party or alliance, is more open to the creation of a leftist electoral force and criticizes FRENADESO for opposing leftist initiatives that it doesn't control and for stale tactics that tend not to get any more creative than blocking the street. The latter criticize the former as naive and too interested in getting an inconsequential share of a corrupt political system.

Caribbean ministers meet here

Foreign ministers from the member nations of the Association of Caribbean States gathered here on January 25 to elect new officers and discuss travel policies within the Caribbean region, disaster response planning, trade ties and sustainable tourism. Under the association's revolving presidency, Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro chaired the last summit before Panama handed the presidency off to a successor.

Panama's Colombians call anti-FARC protest

The biggest group of non-citizens in Panama is Colombian, and includes not just the stereotypical drug traffickers and prostitutes, but a large majority of those who are neither --- people from across that country's political spectrum, those who have fled across our border from the AUC paramilitaries, as well as others who ran from the FARC guerrillas. Among most Colombians as well as most Panamanians, FARC is perceived in the category of "bunch of thugs." On February 4 the Colombia-Panama Chamber of Commerce has called for an anti-FARC march, to start at 10 a.m. at the National Sanctuary. The problem that the anti-FARC folks will have with Panamanian public opinion is that the AUC, the Colombian government and a lot of the Colombian business owners here are also popularly perceived by Panamanians as members of the "bunch of thugs" category of humanity. A huge majority of Panamanians believes that this country should stay out of Colombia's political strife.

Prodi and Morales to get honorary degrees

Some local right-wing commentators aren't happy about it, but the University of Panama has decided to award honorary doctoral degrees to Italian center-left politician Romano Prodi and leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales. The most vocal objections --- and such cheering as is being heard --- are about Morales. The caretaker Italian prime minister causes little excitement one way or another, but when Morales comes to the university to get his honors there will be a huge indigenous and leftist mobilization to greet him.

News \| Business \| Editorial \| Opinion \| Letters \| Arts \| Review \| Community \| Fun \| Travel Unclassified Ads \| Calendar \| Outdoors \| Dining \| Science \| Sports \| Español \| Front Page Archives	Volume 14, Number 2 Jan. 20 - Feb. 2, 2008