Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Despite change in law, fewer independent candidates

In the 2004 elections, independents could only run for local offices (mayor or representante) but later that year a constitutional amendment allowed independent candidates for the National Assembly as well. However, the Electoral Tribunal created onerous new requirements to get on the ballot as an independent so despite the opening of legislative races in 2009 there will be many fewer independent candidates overall than in 2004. Last time there were 264 independents on the ballot, while this time there will be only 151. Of these 14 are seeking seats in the legislature and seven are seeking to be mayors. A few candidates who started out as independents, such as legislative hopeful Guillermo Ferrufino and Panama City mayoral candidate Miguel Antonio Bernal, were eventually nominated by political parties.

Religious leaders object to public funds for PRD

The Catholic Church hierarchy, which has politically aligned itself with the Torrijos administration on issues ranging from Seguro Social reforms to the militarization of the National Police, had been promoting a code of campaign ethics that, under PRD pressure, failed to condemn the use of public funds to promote the fortunes of the ruling party. All of the opposition parties rejected this proposed agreement, causing considerable embarrassment to the church. When opposition presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli opened up a double-digit lead over the PRD's Balbina Herrera and President Torrijos began to make pronouncements about how he "would not allow" Herrera to lose, the church's slant became an even more acute political problem. Now the Catholic Church, which counts some 80 percent of Panamanians as nominal members of its congregation but is losing ground to other denominations (particularly to the Evangelicals and the Muslims), is easing its way out of a political commitment by going along with a pronouncement of the Ecumenical Committee of Panama, which includes the leaders of most of Panama's faiths. The committee passed a resolution opposing the use of government funds to favor ruling party candidates. On paper the practice is illegal but the Electoral Tribunal has declared that it has no jurisdiction over the president and thus President Torrijos can spend whatever public funds he chooses to support Balbina Herrera.

After long delay, Teresita takes her seat

According to Panama's complicated proportional representation laws, the Partido Popular was owed a seat in the National Assembly by virtue of having won enough total votes to stay alive as a party but not having actually won a seat in its own right. This, of course, was if one did not count the seat won by party leader Rubén Arosemena, who was elected both as second vice president and as legislator, but ran on both the Partido Popular and PRD tickets and got most of his votes for both offices as a PRD candidate. (Arosemena resigned from the legislature and was replaced by his suplente.) After four and one-half years of litigation the Supreme Court finally decided that the Partido Popular was improperly cheated out of a seat and declared that the party's top legislative vote-getter, Teresita Yániz de Arias, should be seated for the final legislative session of this government. She got her credentials from the Electoral Tribunal on February 11. What has not been decided is whether she gets back pay for the four and one-half years that she was improperly excluded from the National Assembly.

Carnival death toll

The highway death toll from this year's Carnival was lower than many years in the past, but 2009 was a particularly bad year for homicides and drownings. There were 15 homicides over the long holiday, 13 in which firearms were used and two fatal stabbings. Seven people drowned at various swimming spots along the rivers and beaches of the Interior. Out of more than 400 traffic accidents eight fatalities were recorded.

Three die in helicopter explosion over Tocumen

On February 19 Captain Gary Lee Vaucher, a 1966 graduate of Balboa High School, and passengers Ramón Ricardo Pérez and Arturo Kan Tello, were killed when the private helicopter that Vaucher had been flying exploded 800 feet in the air above Tocumen International Airport. The flight began in the Darien, where Pérez and Kan were inspecting a power plant in Tucuti, and was supposed to end at Albrook. However, there were mechanical problems and an attempt to change plans and make an emergency landing at Tocumen was not successful.

Mingthoy leaves office

Quietly over the Carnival holidays, it was announced that Mingthoy Giro, the former TV anchorwoman and close friend of the first lady who ran the First Lady's Office from its Parque Omar headquarters, has quit her government job. Giro will be best known as the custodian of the 35-ton "Juegos de Antaño" set of bronze sculptures that disappeared on her watch. Giro is not one of the six people so far charged in the continuing investigation, but people should probably avoid reading too much into that fact at this point. Before this year Giro also ran Carnival in Panama City for the Torrijos administration, getting mixed reviews for her performance in that role.

Dragnet doesn't get escapees

You have to be bad to live in Pavillion 14 at La Joyita Penitentiary. This is maximum security for violent offenders, and what a police officer was doing carrying a firearm inside there would be a big question in most of the world's prison system. But such was the case, so it was reported, somewhat before noon on February 10 when 12 inmates, in for either armed robbery or homicide in various degrees, overpowered a cop and took his guns and keys, then fled the facility. (The collaboration or negligence of police or guards in the escape are among the possibilities under investigation by prosecutors.) The alarm went off sometime later, police combed the scene, and only two of the inmates were quickly recaptured. Another one was picked up later. So might the nine remaining fugitives have been moving with Carnival crowds to disperse around the country? The police were looking for that to happen, but their searches and ID checks didn't net them the men for whom they were looking.

Panama loses in Inter-American Human Rights Court again

Back in 1996, then Attorney General José Antonio Sossa played a tape recording of a telephone conversation between attorney Santander Tristán Donoso and one of his clients for a gathering of lawyers and also leaked the tape to the Catholic archbishop of Panama and to certain reporters. Tristán Donoso complained that Sossa had tapped his phone and for that Sossa charged him with criminal defamation. The precise provenance of the wiretap was never revealed. Both in response to a suit against the government by Tristán Donoso and in the course of the criminal defamation prosecution the government maintained that it was a secret and should remain so. Tristán Donoso was convicted of criminal defamation and did 75 days in jail before getting an appeal bond. The various cases were consolidated and went to the Inter-American Human Rights Court, which by treaty can review final decisions by Panama's courts when issues of internationally protected human rights are involved. The court ruled in Tristán Donoso's favor on three counts, finding that his freedom of expression, the right to the privacy of his conversations with his clients and his reputation had been violated, and awarded him $30,000 in damages and costs. Because the criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria) law has since been revised to prohibit prosecutions brought by government ministers as was done in this case, the court did not rule on the current criminal defamation statute and thus the test case that many human rights activists had hoped for was avoided.

US State Department human rights report errs

"In May the new [Penal] Code came into effect with mixed results for freedom of the press. The new Code abolished Article 175, which sanctioned criminal and civil libel cases against journalists." Thus spake the US State Department, in its annual report about human rights in Panama in 2008. What it neglected to mention is that Article 175 was replaced by Articles 189 through 195, the new criminal defamation statute. Some abuses, like the possibility for being jailed for injuring the reputation of the dead by publishing a true history, seem to have been abolished. The law also bans criminal prosecutions --- but not civil suits --- brought by top government officials. But the State Department also neglected to report that the latter reform was in 2008 and still is under attack, as in when former Minister of Government and Justice and current murder suspect Daniel Delgado Diamante took a leave of absence and then filed criminal defamation charges against anti-corruption activist Angélica Maytín for something she said when Delgado was minister (and which, by the way, was true). The State Department report also ignored many abuses of labor rights during 2008, including the refusal to certify unions because they were aligned with the leftist CONUSI federation, the refusal to certify a University of Panama workers' union because the members are public employees, and the promotion of company unions. The fraudulent decertification of the SUNTRACS construction workers union at the Isla Viveros project, an act for which a Ministry of Labor Development official was criminally charged in 2008, also went unmentioned.

UNESCO rejects report on historic sites

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has rejected the Torrijos administration's report on Panama's protected historical sites, in particular the colonial fortifications at Portobelo and Fort San Lorenzo on the Atlantic side and Panama City's Casco Viejo. The Panamanian government submitted a report with details of the sites' histories but none of the required information about efforts to conserve them. This led to further investigation and UNESCO experts found multiple instances in which Panama's own laws about conserving these sites were being ignored and a general lack of budget for their maintenance. With respect to the Casco Viejo, UNESCO found that some of the people in charge of preservation had conflicts of interest that would tend to make them favor demolition of historic buildings.

New protected wild area

The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) has declared an 85,652-hectare coastal area extending from Costa del Este to the Chiman estuary to be a protected nature reserve. This new reserve encompasses the Juan Diaz mangroves and some beaches that are important for migrating shore birds. There have been some permits issued --- but not by ANAM --- for buildings and a golf course community that would allow extensive destruction of the mangroves in this area.

Six hantavirus cases this year

On February 26 the Ministry of Health confirmed two more hantavirus cases, one from the Chitre area and the other from La Villa de Los Santos. This makes six hantavirus illnesses in Panama this year, all from the central provinces. These infections can be deadly, but since the disease made its appearance in Panama in late 1999 our hospitals and clinics have improved their abilities to rapidly diagnose and treat the illness and thus usually avoid the deadly respiratory symptoms. So far we have not had a hantavirus fatality this year. Hantavirus is spread by rodents and anybody working in an area that may be contaminated by rodent feces or urine --- a barn or grain storage facility, for example --- should use a protective face mask to avoid inhaling infectious dust and wear rubber gloves to avoid contracting the infection by touch.

Colombian intruders slay compatriot

On February 19 just outside the Darien town of Boca del Cupe, three armed Colombian intruders, alleged to be members of the leftist Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), gunned down Aureliano Sepúlveda, a Colombian who fled from his country's civil conflict to Panama in 1996. Sometimes rightist paramilitary groups or ordinary criminal gangs have come into Panama impersonating FARC and there's a prosecutors' investigation trying to determine the facts of the case.

FARC rebels surrender to Panama, sent back to Colombia

Four members of the 57th Front of Colombia's leftist FARC guerrilla army crossed into Panama on February 10 and surrendered to Panamanian police, saying that they didn't want to fight anymore. The three men and one woman were then given assurances by the Colombian government and were repatriated the next day.

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