Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Detective slain in Felipillo

On August 29 Judicial Investigation Directorate (DIJ) detective Leslie Beitía was shot and killed in a robbery in Felipillo. Two men and a minor have been arrested.

Cop wounded in botched Free Zone heist

A sergeant in the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) was shot in the knee on September 4 when he intervened to stop the robbery of a Colon Free Zone buyer who was carrying some $100,000 in a knapsack. The two robbers fled on foot and tried to hide the loot in a kiosk on Calle 10 and Melendez, but pursuing police officers were able to recover the bag and its contents.

Prominent Santa Clara couple hurt in accident

Sheila and Dennis Persick, the proprietors of Santa Clara's XS Memories bar, restaurant and recreational vehicle park, were seriously injured on September 10 when their car ran into a truck that was turning across the Pan-American Highway to enter the Lasso automotive service center in San Carlos. Dennis was released from the hospital with multiple broken bones but as this brief was written Sheila remained hospitalized with a broken back and other injuries. XS Memories is a community gathering spot but also a small business that ran primarily on Sheila's and Dennis's labor, so a group of friends and neighbors has pitched in to keep the business going while the Persicks recover from their injuries.

Raúl Rodríguez heads legislature

A much cited US - Panamanian foreign relations problem ran its course on September 1 when Pedro Miguel González handed the National Assembly presidency off to Raúl Rodríguez. For practical purposes within Panama, there was and will be no substantial change in the legislature --- 46 of its 78 deputies, including González and Rodríguez, are members of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and members of that party's legislative caucus rarely have public disagreements among themselves. However, American politicians who favor ratification of a free trade pact with Panama can allege that the change means more than it does and few of their constituents will know otherwise.

Franz Wever chosen to head transportation committee

He's best known recently as the butt of macho jokes about his offer to show his penis to press photographers at the Beijing Olympics (but being unable to find it, not having a microscope handy, and so on...). Because of repeated money scandals in the FEDEBEIS baseball federation that he heads, Major League Baseball wants to see him ousted from that post. He has been rejected by PRD primary voters in the Chame - San Carlos area to which he moved for another term in the legislature. But someone loves Franz Wever. His colleagues in the National Assembly made him president of the legislature's Transportation Committee. And who was the first to protest the appointment? It was Maribel Jaén, president of the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission.

Evo Morales to visit on September 19

Bolivian President Evo Morales will be at the University of Panama on September 19 to receive an honorary doctorate and give a speech. Morales is expected to be in Panama for only about half a day, and there is a multi-sided tug-of-war for his time among the Torrijos administration, university officials, politicians who want to get their picture taken with the honored visitor and indigenous and leftist groups who want to meet with and cheer on one of their heroes.

Small concession to independent candidates

The Electoral Tribunal, whose ruling that only voters who are not members of political parties may sign ballot petitions for independent candidates is under challenge in the courts, has announced that in the petition forms there will be a check-off box by which any person who is a member of a party may resign from that party and thus be counted as a petitioner for an independent candidate.

Torrijos remains popular

Although voters seem to be far less enchanted with some of his policies and with his party, according to a Unimer poll conducted for La Prensa, in late August 49.7 percent of the more than 3,000 people surveyed gave President Torrijos good or very good performance ratings. The poll excluded the islands, Darien province and the indigenous comarcas, the latter areas tending to be an important swing factor in national politics.

Balbina distances herself

How unpopular are the president's security decrees? One indicator is the presidential candidate of his own party, Balbina Herrera, who before the September 7 primary gave her full support to the decrees. Now, however, she says that if she becomes president she'll scrap one part of them, the National Security Council, because any administration she leads won't be in the business of ordering wiretaps.

Not the cleanest primary, it's alleged

The allegation that Franz Wever was buying votes in the race for the PRD nomination in the San Carlos - Chame area legislative race is more or less moot --- it seems that for many reasons voters there preferred local candidate Kike Florez over the disreputable carpetbagger from Panama City, no matter what blandishments were offered. There were four other vote buying allegations in various other locales, one allegation of an altered acta in San Miguelito that changed the result of the legislative races, and an acta that was challenged because it was delivered late by a candidate instead of an election official as required. And then, while the presidential race was settled by a claim of victory and concessions within a few hours of the polls closing, the actual counting took the better part of a week and Balbina's margin of victory turned out to be smaller than announced: she finished with a little less than half of the vote, beating Panama City's Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro by 4.5 percent in a primary in which slightly less than two-thirds of party members voted. There was the appearance that the vote count was managed to start with the areas where Balbina won, but it ended up that Navarro won six of the nine provinces and three of the five indigenous comarcas. Despite the slow and possibly manipulated count, the complaints and a number of contested races, the party is pulling together into its usual solid block of about one-third of the electorate. The two questions that will determine the 2009 election are how many voters outside of their usual base the PRD can attract and how badly divided the opposition will be come Election Day.

Two drowned, hundreds left homeless by floods

On September 3 the Fonseca River overflowed its banks in the Soloy area of Chiriqui and the Ngobe - Bugle Comarca, leaving two persons dead and more than 200 homeless. It was the worst flood in the area in living memory, reaching more than 300 meters beyond the river's banks in many places, and its effects were made worse because many of the displaced families had relocated their homes from higher ground to places that ended up being flooded so that they could be closer to the public school in Soloy for their children's sake.

Sculpture theft likely an inside job

Let's see --- a 24-piece set of bronze sculptures of children at play, weighing 35 tons, disappears along with a large tractor from Parque Omar, where these properties were being guarded by the SPI presidential guards. All these things had to have passed through a gate with a 24-hour, seven-day police guard. No doubt the "Los Juegos de Antaño," the artistic work valued at some $1.5 million, has been cut up or melted down and sold for scrap by now. There has so far been no suggestion from the government side of an investigation of the presidential guards, despite every appearance that this theft was an inside job that would have required their participation.

High court orders durodollars lady's interrogation

Do they have ways of making her talk? Well, at least they'll have to call her in for a formal interrogation under oath, at which she may assert her right not to testify against herself. The Supreme Court has ordered the indagatoria of Dalvis Xiomara Sánchez, the notorious secretary for former President Mireya Moscoso, who complained that some men who were working on a remodeling job at her house stole $38,000 in cash from her freezer. The men were caught, confessed and returned the money. But that she had so much cash in her freezer raised questions, as did the new mansion she was having built on Playa Esmeralda in San Carlos. It didn't help that she had ditched her husband when she hit the big time --- she said that the cash was her life's savings and he said that she had never saved anything approaching that kind of money. Accountants were brought in and it was determined that, while holding a public job, it appeared that Sánchez had amassed far more wealth than she could legitimately explain. Thus she is one of the very few current or former public officials to be charged under the law that makes unjustifiable enrichment while holding a public job a crime. The case is being appealed up and down the court system in pretrial maneuvering, but the Supreme Court has cleared one obstacle to trial by ordering the formal interrogation of the “durodollars lady.” If what's likely to be the whole truth comes out in the questioning, then there could be another procedural delay --- former President Moscoso has immunity from prosecution and if the investigation of someone else implicates her, then another procedure to lift her immunity from prosecution must be undertaken in the Supreme Court before the investigation can proceed.

Mickey Finn heist in Coronado

On September 2 two women used a disabling substance to immobilize three security guards at a supermarket in Coronado and steal a pouch full of cash from them. The women posed as demonstrators of a new energy drink, which they convince the guards to sample. When the guards regained their senses, the money was gone. (Or so the story was reported in La Critica, although one might imagine that police and the guards' employers were checking out other possibilities.) The use of intoxicating substances, usually gases, is a common robbery technique in Panama and is especially common among teams of crooks who prey upon tourists on the streets of Panama City.

Shootout in La Joya

Prisoners aren't supposed to have guns in jail, and except for those in the towers or on the outside, guards aren't supposed to carry them either (to avoid inmates taking them away from them). Yet on August 28 two gang factions had a shootout in La Joya Penitentiary's Pavilion 3, with one gang leader being wounded. In the ensuing shakedown no weapons were recovered, which by itself raises a number of interesting questions.

New minimum security pavilion at La Joya

La Joya Penitentiary is set to open a new minimum security pavilion designed to hold 320 inmates who are considered low risks for escape, acts of violence or other infractions. Panama's jails and prisons are notoriously overcrowded and difficult to run. Every now and then there is a hue and cry about certain inmates living in luxury cells, and although the complaints are justified when it's a matter of major underworld leaders enjoying privileges bought from prison officials, the potential of an easier time with more privileges --- which can be withdrawn for misconduct --- is a tried and proven way to get most prisoners to behave themselves behind bars. Thus the new minimum security section may help bring a bit more order to the La Joya - La Joyita complex.

Not to worry --- it's just tear gas

At around noon on September 2, students at the Porfirio Melendez and Republica de Bolivia elementary schools in the city of Colon, and in nearby residences, started to shed tears. No great tragedy, and nothing to worry about, Police Major Fernando Cedeño assured reporters --- it's just that while cleaning the National Police's juvenile section offices, somebody accidentally set off an old pepper gas sprayer.

This time the stereotype held

Ask many Panamanians and they'll blame Colombians for the problems this country has with violent crime. This is demonstrably unfair, but there is a grain of truth. On September 6 that grain apparently manifested itself when police arrested four Colombian men, all of them in their 40s, in the course of a burglary in the middle class Los Angeles section of Panama City's corregimiento of Betania. Police say that they believe that this gang is also responsible for a number of other armed home invasion robberies and burglaries at residences in Paitilla, El Cangrejo, San Francisco and Betania.

2.8-ton coke bust

On September 2 police arrested four Colombians and seized 2.8 metric tons of cocaine in a raid on an apartment in the Pacific Hill building in the Dos Mares subdivision of Betania. The apparent plan, according to police, was to send the stuff to Mexico. The seizure of such a large lot of cocaine is no longer as unusual as it once was, but this was still a larger than ordinary bust.

FARC rebel gives up, gets asylum

Usually guerrillas from Colombia's FARC rebel army are not well received when they cross over into Panama. But the government reports that a FARC member came into Panama on September 2, gave up his weapon and asked for political asylum. After a few days of questioning and investigation, the government granted the man refugee status. Apparently one of the points in the young man's favor was that his parents were already in Panama as war refugees.

Patronato Panama Aprende

The “Panama Learns Foundation” --- that's the quasi-official organization that President Torrijos has just fleshed out by appointing a board of directors mostly composed of predictable members of the PRD and its allied groups, but also some people of note from the arts and sports scenes. Milton Henríquez, Yolanda Eleta, Gary Stemple, Jorge Arosemena, Paulina Franceschi, Frederick Obediente, Carlos E. Ramírez and Jacinto Wong will lead the effort to promote learning and culture. But meanwhile the Ministry of Education has this “curriculum reform” plan that would cut back on the teaching of art, music, physical education and history in the schools.

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