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News
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| Nature |
Volume
14, Number 18 |
Also in
this section: Torrijos administration officials, government institutions in denial, pointing fingers at one another about major art theft Sculpture theft scandal grows by Eric Jackson, from other media Let’s see --- a set of bronze sculptures weighing 35 tons, moved from a museum run by the National Institute of Culture (INAC) to a storehouse in Parque Omar that’s run by the Office of Special Projects (a department of the First Lady’s Office). The park is guarded by the Institutional Protection Service (SPI) presidential guards, including by way of a constantly staffed gate through which all vehicles coming and going must pass. The only key to the storehouse is in the office of Special Projects director Mingthoy Giro. There are no signs of forced entry into the storehouse, but the sculptures are gone. Also gone is one tractor, and La Estrella reports that a source within the SPI told them that the presidential guards reported not one but three tractors missing. Mingthoy? She knows nothing, she says, adding that she was on vacation when the “Los Juegos de Antaño” sculptures, valued at about $1.5 million as artwork, went missing. The SPI? They issue a statement that they were not in charge of guarding the park, but only doing security there because of VIPs who own homes adjacent to the park such as the president and first lady, the president’s mother, Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro and some government ministers. INAC? The head of the institute’s historical legacy department is called upon by prosecutors to testify, then tells La Prensa that the set of 42 sculptures has no particular value except that which the artist, Colombian sculptor Héctor Lombana Piñeres, places upon them. The first lady and the Ministry of the Presidency (within which the SPI exists)? Silence. The president? He says that he’s doing everything he can so that “the full weight of the law” falls upon the thieves. The paper trail? Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez finds the official documentation about Los Juegos de Antaño to be incomplete, incoherent, and lacking in any register of the statues’ movements. Gómez, noting the “suggestion of public corruption” arising from the facts of the case, assigns the investigation to anti-corruption prosecutor Grissel Mojica and calls upon the public to be patient as the wheels of justice grind along at their own pace. It has been a field day for the nation’s editorial cartoonists, who have been especially savage with Mingthoy Giro and the SPI. The affair has been something of a full employment for investigative journalists program as well, with La Estrella and La Prensa in the lead, the latter with the resources to put a lot of people on the story, the former with the sources that skewered the SPI cover story about having nothing to do with guarding assets in Parque Omar by revealing the SPI memo about the disappearance of three tractors from the park. The theft was almost surely for the scrap metal value of the bronze rather than for the black market in stolen art. But the problem is that this sort of crime has been allowed to prosper in Panama for many years without any serious effort at catching the traffickers of all the stolen storm drain gates and sewer caps. The long-running impunity suggests that it’s a matter of protection by corrupt public officials rather than clever crooks outsmarting law enforcement. Were Panama to have a serious approach to ending the systematic stripping of state-owned metal for illicit sale as scrap the investigation of the Los Juegos de Antaño theft would include a careful examination of known or suspected fences and all of the buyers and exporters of scrap metal. But for whatever reason the main opponents that those who strip this country’s infrastructures face are not governmental, but the private detectives hired by the utility companies that are tired of their cables being stolen. Meanwhile the latest opinion polls suggest that the PRD’s Balbina Herrera is running a few points ahead of her party’s hardcore one-third of the electorate and leading businessman Ricardo Martinelli, who’s in second place. Herrera appears to have nothing at all to do with this latest scandal, but it’s almost certainly a matter of corruption within an administration headed by her party so it’s bound to hurt her chances. How much? Probably not much more than Panamanians value public art. But a slow investigation means that except from the PRD-aligned television stations there will be constant reminders about the case in the press over the course of Balbina’s campaign. Mingthoy Giro’s main job in the course of a year is running Panama City’s Carnival celebrations. A lot of people have been unimpressed by the job she has done at that, but annoyance with the change of locations, the spending priorities, the intrusive but ineffective security and so on would pale beside the attention that this scandal has brought her. If she’s still in charge of Carnival when the upcoming festivities are held, even if this case is solved by then, the crowds would surely be very rude to her if she put in any public appearance. The scandal may lower the first lady’s public profile, even though she has yet to be and, whatever the facts, is unlikely to be directly linked to the case. The keys were in her department’s office, after all. The circumstances might indicate a quick “solution” that involves some low-level official taking the fall. Here, however, it appears that multiple individuals had to be involved, including people in the First Lady’s Office and in the SPI, and it’s notoriously hard to keep patsies silent in a widespread political scandal.
So look for further
coverage of this story in the weeks and months to come. Also in
this section: News
| Economy
| Culture
| Opinion
| Lifestyle
| Nature
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2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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