Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Slightly deadlier roads in 2008

Considering that 2008 was a leap year with an extra day and figuring in population growth, last year your chances of being slaughtered on one of Panama's roads were about the same as the year before. There were 442 traffic fatalities in 2008, as compared to 435 in 2007. The country started 2009 with a fatal smash, with eight people killed on the roads over the first four days of the year, a long holiday weekend.

More city street direction changes

On January 20 the Torrijos administration, which has not been able to carry out any of the promises of improved city traffic that it has made over nearly five years, made another effort to show that it was doing something. It rearranged the traffic flow in streets in Panama City's banking district. Aquilino de la Guardia, Elvira Mendez and Ricardo Arango streets, formerly two-way, will now have one-way traffic, and some PRD activists in Transito vests will have temporary jobs.

Only two lanes on the Bridge of the Americas

Will voters be overjoyed just a few weeks before the May elections when (if everything goes according to schedule) all four lanes of traffic on the Bridge of the Americas will be open again? Perhaps. Right now, however, both drivers who have a vote and those who do not --- and people who take the bus of both persuasions as well --- tend to find the traffic bottleneck on the bridge and its approaches downright annoying. Transito is trying various things like having traffic go one way on two lanes for 15-minute stretches during rush hours, which may alleviate some of the problem. However, what tends to happen is that once in the city traffic slows to near-gridlock in several places for several reasons every day, and the odds are that somebody or something is blocking traffic somewhere in the Interior as well. While the intention may be to create the impression of a government hard at work, to many people the sense is of public infrastructures that are broken down everywhere at once.

Court upholds voter roll purge

It's not provided for by statute or in the constitution, but the Electoral Tribunal has decreed that those who have not voted in the past three elections lose their right to vote. This works in favor of the PRD, whose supporters are highly disciplined. The decree was challenged before the Supreme Court, but the high court magistrates have upheld it.

Electoral Tribunal moving voting sites

What to do in an area where the ruling party is likely to be defeated by a wide margin? The margin of defeat in such areas might be kept down if the number of votes is reduced, and one way to do that is to move polling places from their customary locations, especially in rural areas where it's not easy to grab a cab or bus to the new venue. The PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal has closed six voting sites in Cocle, Herrera, Chiriqui and Veraguas provinces and in the Ngobe-Bugle comarca and created a couple of new ones in Cocle and Veraguas.

Dispute over Ngobe - Bugle elections

The presidentially appointed governor of the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca is embroiled in a bitter dispute with the semi-autonomous indigenous commonwealth's traditional leaders over when elections for general cacique and the three regional caciques are to take place. Governor Ausencio Palacios wants to hold the elections this coming March, but a January 4 meeting of the caciques an a number of organizations in the comarca called for elections in January of 2010. At stake is whether the Torrijos administration gets to use the tools at its disposal to control the elections process --- and thus install people who support the president's unpopular policy of displacing indigenous communities with hydroelectric dams, strip mines and upscale resorts over which local authorities have no say and from which most local people derive no benefit --- or whether the elections will happen after Torrijos leaves office.

Bobby Velásquez picks Culiolis

Traditionally, a mayor and a vice-mayor from different parties --- or even different factions of the same party --- create the risk of problems if and when the mayor has to take time off the job. The vice mayor will often do things to aid his or her party, family or friends when the chance arises, which can lead to a mayor returning after a leave of absence or suspension on bad terms with an erstwhile running mate. Be that as it may, alliances are alliances and the PRD promised the number two spot at city hall to the Partido Popular (former Christian Democrats.) Thus the PRD hopeful for mayor of Panama City, Bobby Velásquez, has chosen Partido Popular secretary Aníbal Culiolis, a former legislator, as his running mate for vice-mayor. The polls have the PRD candidate ahead in the race but without a majority and with a lot of volatility among opposition candidates.

Noriega for Central American Parliament

Sandra Noriega, daughter of former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, has been chosen by the PRD as a member of its slate of candidates for the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN). The organization doesn't do very much, but the pay is good and its deputies enjoy immunity from arrest, prosecution or investigation for any crimes they may commit while in office.

Kung fu PRD politicians

These are limited skills kung fu masters --- not a single PRD activist can catch a fly with chopsticks like in the chop sockie movies, or even use proper praying mantis technique. But disgraced legislator Franz Wever, whose penga nobody in the press corps or on the national baseball team wants to see, and Enrique Florez, who humiliated Wever in the September primary for the San Carlos - Chame area, did the best they could. Wever, who began his losing primary campaign to move from his old Panama City circuit to Panama Oeste with an announcement that his supporters would be armed, thought that he deserved to be nominated as Florez's suplente (alternate). Florez chose Edgar Bethancourt instead and the result was fisticuffs in the PRD headquarters. Possibly because the proposal of the circuit's current legislator, Liberal Arturo Araúz, to teach Mandarin in the public schools did not prosper, it is reported that neither Wever nor Florez got the inflections right in their martial arts trash talk.

Prosecutors embrace criminal defamation loophole

In the new Penal Code, government ministers lost the right to bring criminal defamation charges against their critics, while retaining a right to file civil libel or slander suits. However, last October then-Minister of Government and Justice Daniel Delgado Diamante, who is now facing a murder investigation for the slaying of a military subordinate decades ago, took a leave of absence and filed criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria) charges against anti-corruption activist Angélica Maytín and several other persons, who were then calling for Delgado's ouster from his position. Delgado was eventually forced out, but now the Public Ministry has taken on his complaint and assigned the case to Seventh Circuit Prosecutor Sofanor Espinoza. It would have a long road through the courts to travel, but the case could establish a loophole that allows top government officials to take a leave and charge their critics with criminal defamation despite the new Penal Code's provisions.

Attorney General loses another firing case

The Supreme Court has ordered former prosecutor Nedelka Díaz, whom Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez fired for poor performance in 2005, reinstated with back pay. Díaz was the chief prosecutor for Los Santos and Herrera provinces and was blamed for a huge backlog of cases there.

Weirdness over icon

Pickets at a church, a bishop being roughed up, dissidents among the faithful seeing ominous symbolism --- all this over the switching of an icon of Jesus Christ at the Basilica Menor San Miguel Arcangel at Atalaya in Veraguas province. Lent begins in Panama with a large pilgrimage to the place, and as part of a restoration effort a not very good replica was placed in the Basilica and originally the church alleged that the replica was the original. A committee was formed, picket lines were organized and the riot squad had to be called out when a priest attempted to celebrate a baptism under the gaze of the replica. Ultimately Bishop Oscar Brown admitted that it was a not-so-good replica and explained that it was a temporary replacement while the original is being restored. That only calmed tempers a little bit, as the allegation shifted from the disappearance of a sacred icon to a church hierarchy that lacks transparency.

Arnoldo Alemán demands money back

Former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán recently had his conviction and 20-year prison term for looting his country's treasury overturned, and now he's demanding that Panama unfreeze bank accounts containing some $3 million in funds that were said to be the proceeds of this skimming. He's saying that the money doesn't really belong to him, but to his political faction.

FBI returns artifacts to Panama

The general rules to bear in mind is that for most of its existence as an independent country Panama has prohibited the sale or export of archaeological artifacts found in its territorial domains, declaring them public property; and that since 1977 the United States by international treaty has recognized Panama's claims to such property. So when the widow of an amateur archaeologist who worked for the Department of Defense and in the 1980s shipped dozens of artifacts to Klamath Falls, Oregon, began offering pieces for sale over the Internet, she got a visit from the FBI. Some 100 artifacts, including jewelry from between 1100 and 1500 AD, were seized and handed over to the Panamanian Embassy in Washington. The widow will probably not be charged with a crime.

For the year's first non-holiday weekend...

Over the weekend of January 16 through 18 the Panama City metro area had nine homicides. The most publicized of these was a gangland-style execution of an unidentified man at a Via Tocumen pushbutton. Also in the weekend carnage a 36-year-old woman was beheaded in Curundu, a 54-year-old man was shot to death in Santa Ana, a 17-year-old boy was gunned down at a playground in San Miguelito, 29-year-old man was shot in Tocumen, a 20-year-old man was stabbed to death in Rio Abajo and there were three other slayings whose details were a bit sketchier in police reports.

911 emergency number coming to some on February 19

What's so difficult about creating a 911 emergency phone call system? There are certain issues of coordination, training and equipment installation that come up everywhere. In Panama, the creation of a private foundation run and staffed by the "right" people with the proper connections, with all the proper companies and individuals being paid off, takes precedence over such mundane details. Years after the intention to create a 911 emergency number, on February 19 the system will go into operation in Panama City and San Miguelito only.

Pellín Ávila loses his final bout

Pedro "Pellín" Ávila, who trained and advised four of Panama's world champion boxers --- Hilario Zapata, Víctor Córdoba, Rosendo Álvarez and Roberto "La Araña" Vásquez --- succumbed to prostate cancer at his home on January 15. He was 70 years old. Despite the noteworthy professional successes in his life, Ávila died poor like most of Panama's legendary pugilists tend to do. His passing did not, however, go without notice in the national and international boxing world.

news