Land tenure law set to be jammed through the legislature

Proposed law on sale of island and beach properties advances
by Eric Jackson

The National Assembly is considering proposed Law 459, which would give Agraria Reforma (which is in the Ministry of Agricultural Development) jurisdiction over the disposition of beach and island lands currently overseen by Catastro (which is in the Ministry of Economy and Finance). It has passed first reading in committee, without any of the various amendments that were proposed.

One series of amendments, proposed by National Assembly Deputy Freidi Torres (PRD-Veraguas), would have provided that "possession" for the purpose of squatters' rights would be "manifested by habitational, residential, environmental, touristic, commercial or productive" use (as in, not fishing villages that have existed since before anyone remembers); would have given Catastro (with the assistance of the militarized National Police) the power to issue documents that would resolve disputes about rights of possession; and would have set high prices --- up to $50,000 per hectare --- for people who retain their land by squatters' rights to maintain their tenure by obtaining title.

The proposed law is a complicated bundle of issues, one of the principal ones essentially a power struggle among factions of the PRD, and between government offices that both have odious reputations for corruption. It's also an ideological struggle pitting those who believe in the superiority of private ownership under title over private rights of possession to properties that are theoretically public-owned.

In and under and behind everything, there is the fact of massive land grabbing by wealthy and politically connected interests that seek to appropriate choice public properties, many of them occupied by poor families for generations, as their private property. There are factions that have their hooks in to Catastro, and others that are better connected to Reforma Agraria, and then, while title to land is held forth as a way for poor families to get access to credit, it would also become a way for properties that were more difficult to alienate to be readily foreclosed for impossible debts.

Support and opposition cut across class lines.

"It's for the benefit of people who are interested in public assets, attempting to sell the land along coasts and beaches at bargain prices --- that's the proposal that the government's attempting to pass through the Assembly as if it were an emergency, and which is fervently supported by Pedro Miguel González, Fredy Torres, Felipe Rodríguez and others who are attempting to make millions off of tourism and other project, hiding behind a false interest in the poor, who have historically held rights of possession over these lands," argued SUNTRACS construction workers union leader Genaro López in his weekly column in La Estrella.

But in the hearings on the law, a number of individual holders of rights of possession land along the coasts and on islands off of Bocas del Toro, Colon and Darien provinces argued that they prefer the protection of title rather than their present squatters' rights, which may or may not be formally recognized by certificates acknowledging their rights of possession.

The Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE) supported the law, with Torres's amendments, complaining that Catastro has a backlog of 5,000 applications for title by people with rights of possession. Generally APEDE members in that situation (of whom there are few) would be able to pay the high land prices that the Torres amendments demanded, but the great majority of those with squatters' rights would not be able to afford the land and would thus stand to be dispossessed in favor of developers, politicians' relatives and so on.

But Angélica Maytín of the Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Libertad Ciudadana --- which is closely associated with I. Roberto Eisenmann Jr., who is of the family that developed Coronado --- argued in La Prensa that what's in play are extremely valuable lands that have long had people living on them and should not be in effect put on sale to the highest bidders.

Probably because this argument involves infighting within the PRD, that party's 2009 presidential candidate, Balbina Herrera, has not made public pronouncements about Law 459. Presidential front runner Ricardo Martinelli (of the opposition Cambio Democratico) opposed the law when it appeared that the Torres amendments would be part of it, but is now conditionally supporting it. However, Martinelli says that people who have squatters rights should be able to get title for free, rather than having to pay the $6 per hectare provided for in the current version of the proposal.

Late the night before Christmas Eve the legislature's Public Lands, Planning and Economic Policy Committee passed the proposal on first reading without the Torres amendments and declared it a "notorious emergency," which means that if passed it would go into effect immediately upon publication in the Gaceta Oficial instead of in one year's time, (thus, to the extent that it makes looting easier, give the current elected officials and their friends and relatives a chance to take advantage of the law before next July's change of government). The proposal was put at the top of the National Assembly's agenda for December 29.

To become law the legislature as a whole would have to pass the law on second and third readings before the legislative session ends on December 31 and the president would have to sign it. As the PRD is divided on this it's not entirely certain that those things will happen, nor what amendments might yet be inserted.

economy