Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Many youths to be disenfranchised

Kids who are 17 now but will turn 18 between now and next May's elections have until October 15 to register to vote in those elections, by an order of the Electoral Tribunal that moved this date up earlier than had been the case with previous elections. Lo and behold, with a few days to go more than half of these young potential voters --- some 34,000 of them --- had not registered. The lowest registration rates happen to be in the indigenous comarcas where it's a long way to the nearest Electoral Tribunal office and where, not coincidentally, the PRD and Torrijos administration are unpopular these days.

Billy Ford steps down as Union Patriotica leader

Annoyed by the opposition parties' unwillingness to unite their forces in an anti-PRD alliance for next May's elections, former Vice President Guillermo Ford has resigned as president of the Union Patriotica party. He hasn't quit the party, which has endorsed Ricardo Martinelli as its presidential candidate. Martinelli, the Cambio Democratico leader who is shown by most polls with slightly more support than Panameñista Juan Carlos Varela, has been running a series of negative ads about Varela that are designed to knock him out of the race but which have mainly had the effect of hardening the split in the opposition.

Poll: many expect militarism's return

In a poll taken by Unimer for La Prensa, 48.1 percent of those responding said that under a PRD government headed by Balbina Herrera militarism would make a comeback and threaten democracy. On the other hand, 29.1 percent opined that a Herrera administration would strengthen democracy, nine percent said that she'd run a “civilista” government and 13.8 percent said that they didn't know. All told, this looks like good news for Balbina. Yes, it's a weirdly worded poll whose significance should not be overemphasized, but less than a majority agrees with a principal concern about her that opposition candidates raise. Moreover, there are people who like militarism and don't trust in democracy, so not all of that 48.1 percent think that what they expect her to do is a bad thing.

Panama City mayoral debates

The PRD's Roberto Velásquez, Panameñista / MOLIRENA candidate Bosco Vallarino, Independent / Liberal nominee Miguel Antonio Bernal, Vanguardia Moral's Miguel Batista and Union Patriotica / Cambio Democratico hopeful Iván Blasser will all finally be in the same rooms at the same times for televised Panama City mayoral debates on October 17 and 19. The confrontations will be waged live on RPC (channel 4, broadcast from the Universidad Latina on Thursday the 16th at 7 p.m.) and TVN (channel 2 at 6 p.m. on Sunday the 19th). The TVN debate will be moderated by journalists Siria Miranda and Jesús Morales and people may submit suggested questions to them via TVN's website.

Panama, the submarine base

El Panama America reports that US and Colombian law enforcement agencies learned of a plot, hatched at a meeting in Panama between alleged Colombian drug kingpins Gustavo Adolfo de Jesús García Velásquez (alias "el Ingeniero") and Antonio “el Gringo” López Ortega, to move large quantities of drugs from Panamanian territory to Mexico and the United States. So, what's so unusual and newsworthy about that? Mainly that they intended to do it in submarines of Colombian manufacture.

Alleged Colombian drug lord nabbed here

“Are you going to kill me?” asked William Johnny Tamayo Hernández when masked National Police agents grabbed him at an Obarrio restaurant on October 9 and took him away in handcuffs as a trophy to show reporters. Tamayo reputedly was the enforcer and number two man in the Valle del Norte Cartel, which was thrown into disarray last year with an international series of raids that netted the drug ring's alleged leader, Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía and dozens of other alleged associates. Ramírez, who was caught in Brazil, was extradited to the United States and the Americans want Tamayo too. Colombia also has murder and drug trafficking warrants out for Tamayo, and with information obtained in conjunction with his arrest here rounded up another 39 suspects in Colombia's Antioquia province. There are two particular concerns centering around Tamayo: first, it is suspected that in Panama he was meeting with Mexican drug cartel emissaries and forging alliances between Colombian and Mexican gangs (which is the “industry standard” these days) and also with Venezuelan racketeers now operating out of Panama; and second, that he was living under his own name in a Panama City hotel, which suggests that he may have believed he had some protection from Panamanian law enforcement authorities. The National Police claim that not long after Tamayo's arrest four men attempted to free him, escaping in a car when they were unsuccessful. Afterwards the suspect was moved to a more secure place of detention.

Chilean racist offends national hero

Panama never had an Olympic gold medalist before, and although long jumper Irving Saladino says that he likes success in his field better than the fame that goes with it, there are certain pecuniary benefits. One of these is the resources to rent a nice apartment in Punta Pacifica's Costa Pacific building. However, to the building's Chilean administrator, Raimundo Valdés, Saladino's just a black maleante to be excluded. Saladino was locked out of the building and there has been a nationwide outcry about the incident, including from the Chilean community and embassy here, and including calls for the deportation of Valdés.

Carew to conduct baseball clinics here

Hall of Famer Rodney Carew will be back in his native Panama to conduct youth baseball clinics between November 10 and 15. The clinics, backed by Major League Baseball and the national government, are a prelude to the creation of a baseball academy to develop the skills of talented young players. In his playing days Carew was very difficult to keep off base and may go down in baseball history as the last player to win a league batting championship without hitting a home run that season.

New addition to the usual fight card

Well, everyone knows that in one corner of street confrontations on the Transistmica near the University of Panama you always have the riot police. Usually in the opposing corner you have radical student groups from the university, and sometimes you have high school kids from the nearby Artes y Oficios vocational high school (where many are studying trades that will make them skilled members of the SUNTRACS construction workers' union). Then there is Seguro Social's Arnulfo Arias Hospital Complex nearby, and sometimes you have unions representing employees there, and sometimes patients who can't get their medications or who have other grievances blocking the road. But on October 10 it was none of these usual opponents facing off against the riot squad. It was residents from Nuevo Veranillo, the neighborhood next to and behind that part of the university across the street from the central campus. The electric company had shut off power to the neighborhood, much of which keeps its lights on via illegal connections, for non-payment of the bill. The cops used their new water cannon tank to rout the young men blocking the road and thought they had traffic flow restored --- but they neglected to consider the crowds on top of the now-darkened apartment towers adjacent to the road, who let loose a hail of rocks and bottles at both the police and the drivers to whom the police had signaled that it was safe to proceed through the area. The problem for police then became two-fold: not everyone in the buildings was participating in the riot and the use of tear gas might asphyxiate an innocent person (most likely a senior citizen or an infant); and because the power for the lights and elevators was out, entering the buildings to clear the people throwing missiles from the rooftops would mean an uphill rumble in darkened staircases. So what's a riot cop to do? A rain dance, of course. Actually, after about three hours of blockading and fighting, Mother Nature obliged the police without need of any special ceremonies. A tropical cloudburst sent both police and protesters running for shelter, ending the riot.

Cornejo quits

Anti-corruption prosecutor Maribel Cornejo has resigned from the Public Ministry after 13 years on the job. She'll be working in the private sector advising banks on dealing with money laundering and other financial crimes. Former Supreme Court presiding magistrate Graciela Dixon had tried to cut short Cornejo's career by accusing her of exceeding her authority by investigating the possible corruption of minor public officials for offenses that were related to allegations of corruption involving another former high court magistrate. However, she fought those charges and was ultimately exonerated. Despite the ruling there remains a sordid gray area in Panamanian law about whether it's legal to investigate an unprotected accomplice of a public official who enjoys legal immunity from criminal investigation or prosecution.

Balbina loses her candidate's immunity

She may have gotten away with using the Housing Ministry's funds for a “women's leadership luncheon” that was a thinly disguised campaign event, but that was the PRD-dominated Electoral Tribunal's call. Meanwhile, Balbina Herrera is facing other questions related to her allegedly improper exoneration of contractual fines for 41 builders who were late finishing public housing projects they were hired to do. (Balbina's list of presidential donors has not been revealed but it is reputedly full of developers with whom she dealt as Housing Minister.) It's not an electoral prosecutor but the Public Ministry's anti-corruption prosecutor who's pursuing the questions, and it will be the regular courts rather than the Electoral Tribunal that would hear any case if the investigation gets that far.

Electoral prosecutors raid Ancon's Junta Comunal

The Junta Comunal for the Panama City corregimiento of ANCON was raided by assistant electoral prosecutor Víctor Almengor on October 9, in an investigation of allegations that the public institution's funds, controlled by representante and now legislative candidate Joaquín Vásquez, were used to support eight candidates for public office during the PRD primaries. Vásquez denies doing anything wrong, but prosecutors are asking the Electoral Tribunal to lift his candidate's immunity against criminal investigation and prosecution.

Belgis Castro loses his candidate's immunity

Former Education Minister Belgis Castro is running for the legislature in Chiriqui's circuit 4-1, but now he's running without the immunity from criminal investigation and prosecution that candidates ordinarily enjoy. The Electoral Tribunal has lifted his protection and an investigation of allegations of illegal steering of contracts, paying companies and individuals for work that wasn't done and other abuses related to a $9 million program to remove fiberglass insulation from public schools when he was minister in 2007 and early 2008. Castro says it's all a political smear.

Benjamín Colamarco loses his candidate's immunity

Until a controversial decision by the Electoral Tribunal, Minister of Public Works Benjamín Colamarco would have been subject to the same legal procedures as anyone else, at least theoretically. However the former Dignity Battalions --- or DingBats, as US forces were fond of calling Noriega's goon squad --- commander was the beneficiary of a ruling that gave immunity from investigation or prosecution to thousands of candidates for party offices as well as those for elected public offices. Ah, but there are crimes and then there are crimes. This time Colamarco is not accused of organizing the brutal beatings of the president-elect and vice president-elect or the killings of Noriega's opponents. He's accused of allowing a company doing work on an expansion of the Pan-American Highway east of the city to extract sand from the Pacora River without an environmental permit. Of course, environmental permits are not his department, but the bailiwick of the National Environmental Authority, so the question would have to be his role in the company's decision to commit that environmental offense. In any case, the Electoral Tribunal has lifted Colamarco's immunity from investigation so that such questions may be asked.

Prosecutor wants to lift Mariela Jiménez's candidate's immunity

It is alleged that this past April, in the course of an altercation with one Enock Pineda, a Mr. Miguel García took recourse to the use of a baseball bat, seriously injuring the former. Now the prosecutors in the Fiscalia Cuarta Superior want to investigate whether García's wife, former legislator and current Cambio Democratico legislative candidate Mariela Jiménez, was an accomplice. Thus they have asked the Electoral Tribunal to lift the immunity from investigation and prosecution that Jiménez has as a candidate for public office.

Casco Viejo bird massacre?

The government has decided that it wants to dramatically reduce the bird populations around the Muelle Fiscal and Municipal Seafood Market and the Casco Viejo in general. The fear is that a collision with one of the gulls or vultures that congregate there could bring down the presidential helicopter. But what to do? One alternative that doesn't seem to be on the agenda is to buy BB guns for all the neighborhood's twelve-year-olds. One measure that definitely is being taken is a crackdown on fishermen who dump by-catch and other wastes in the bay near the fish market and docks, and there will also be an attempt to deny birds access to garbage at the seafood market. Fireworks designed to scare off the birds and various means of killing them off are some of the measures being considered. In many cities peregrine falcons have been imported to control unwanted pigeon and rat populations, but the problem with vultures and seagulls is that they're too big and too gross to be desirable to any convenient predator that might be introduced.

Rains rout 22 families in Paraiso

On the morning of October 12 heavy rains fell on already waterlogged soil and unmaintained drainage systems, causing landslides and floods that forced 22 families out of their homes in Paraiso, which is part of the district of San Miguelito. The heavy October rains have also swept away a brand new bridge over the Guarare River in Los Santos, leaving the communities of Guarare Arriba and Perales isolated, and made some rural dirt roads in Chiriqui and Cocle provinces impassable and thus cut off farmers from the markets for their produce.

Last mass in the Gatun Chapel

The last mass in the little wooden church in Gatun --- the last wooden house of worship in the province --- was celebrated on October 5. The 71-year-old building is being torn down by the Panama Canal Authority to make way for offices. The church's contents have been rescued and donated to other congregations along Colon's Costa Abajo.

Orgies for dummies

Appropriate technology is an alien concept to many Panamanians. If one can do something mechanically or electronically that could be done as easily by hand, it is thought to be a gesture of sophistication to do it the more expensive way. If one has a car alarm, it's de rigueur to flaunt it by blasting the neighbors out with it, so many of our yeyes believe. And then there was the fool who went to the Las Flores pushbutton for a really good time with three young women on October 10. Apparently to impress everyone with what a really cool SUV he had, he left it running in the enclosed carport while they went inside for fun and games. All four died of carbon monoxide inhalation.