Arosemena's brother-in-law got incinerator concession despite environmental laws

"Trayectoria Comprobada" --- proven record in office --- is
Rubén Arosemena's campaign slogan. The meanest critics
wouldn't dispute that --- they'd just differ on precisely what
that record of VP Arosemena's proves. Photo by Eric Jackson

Second Vice President Arosemena wants his old seat in the legislature back, but he's running into some problems

Caught in conflicts of interest and environmental improprieties
by Eric Jackson, mostly from other media

This is Panama. Throughout our existence as a republic, the nation has been sold out time and again by people charged with protecting the public interest who have instead given priority to conflicting private concerns.

That, as a junior partner of the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), the Partido Popular was given the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) as a political fiefdom, and that the little party then milked the position for all it's worth, was newsworthy but nothing particularly unprecedented. Partido Popular leader and Second Vice President Ruben Arosemena started out in the Torrijos administration as director of the AMP and by the time he was shifted to other government posts and other members of his party took the AMP job, the pattern of contracts and jobs being diverted to Partido Popular members and their relatives was well established. Eyebrows were raised, but nothing was very surprising.

But this being Panama, one would think that Arosemena and his family would be a little sensitive to contracts against the public interest "in perpetuity." Ah, but then we are largely run by one of the dumber factions of our US-educated elite, and to the extent that there are Panamanian-educated people in the mix, by people who apparently flunked history.

(The president's father, the late General Omar Torrijos, has his name on some 1977 treaties that abrogated the notorious 1903 Hay-Herran Treaty that ceded control over the former Canal Zone to the United States "in perpetuity." Generations of Panamanians fought to end that infamous deal, negotiated on this country's side by a Frenchman who had a pecuniary interest in a treaty that would allow the sale of a company in which he owned shares to the Americans.)

History has progressed. Nowadays those who sell out Panama's public trust sell less, at substantially higher prices. But only the exceptionally foolish, or the incredibly brazen, go so far as to talk about perpetuity.

Panama has environmental laws about incinerators, which have been flouted over the years because the disposal of wastes from passing ships is a lucrative business.

The France Field / Coco Solo area, which is home to the busy Manzanillo International Terminal (Stevedoring Services of America) and Colon Container Terminal (Evergreen) ports, had no convenient waste disposal facilities for visiting ships. Thus in September 2007, while Arosemena still headed the AMP, a company named Ships Incineration Services and Plus SA (SISAPSA) applied for a concession to run an incinerator on the Manzanillo International Terminal property. With Arosemena in charge, the AMP decided to go forward with a no-bid procedure to grant such a concession to SISAPSA.

Was there a problem? Leaving the identities of SISAPSA and its officers aside for a moment, there certainly was. It is written in Panama's environmental laws that no incinerator shall be established within 1.5 kilometers of a residence. SISAPSA's incinerator is a little more than two-thirds of a kilometer from the residential area of France Field.

In October 2007 Arosemena was shuffled out of the AMP post, replaced by another Partido Popular dignitary. A few days later the SISAPSA incinerator concession was provisionally approved, subject to the company obtaining the necessary environmental permits from the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and the Ministry of Health.

ANAM's investigators found that the proposed incinerator would be illegally close to a residential area, and the Ministry of Health also complained about this. Nevertheless, in keeping with the Torrijos administration's environmental practices and against the findings of its own investigators, in August of 2008 ANAM approved an environmental permit for SISAPSA.

Just another example of Ligia Castro and ANAM taking a dive in their alleged fight to protect the environment? Well, not just. You see, the president of SISAPSA is one Modesto Luis Castaner. Castaner is married to one Vanessa Raquel Arosemena Valdés, who happens to be the sister of Vice President (and former AMP director) Rubén Arosemena Valdés. The company's treasurer, shrimp exporter Fotis Lymberópulos, also has a familial tie with the AMP: his brother, Dionisio Lymberópulos, is and has been since the start of the Torrijos administration a member of the authority's board of directors.

Family ties can get a business a lot in Panama. As in the July 2008 AMP Resolution 055-2008, wherein the authority forgave SISAPSA $9,000 in back rent for the time that it occupied space at Manzanillo International Terminal but couldn't operate for lack of a permit from ANAM.

Despite the irregularities, the concession didn't get much public attention and received no press coverage back in 2007 and 2008, when the conventional wisdom was that the PRD would maintain control of the government in the May 2009 elections.

Move the calendar up to the beginning of February 2009, and the fortunes of the PRD - Partido Popular alliance had taken a turn for the very much worse. The polls were indicating a blowout loss for the PRD on May 3 --- as in no more Partido Popular fiefdoms, no special inside connections for SISAPSA.

So on February 2, SISAPSA applied to the AMP for a change in the status of its incinerator business. They want a "perpetual" operating license instead of a concession with an expiration date. The AMP is processing that application, but now the residents at France Field, also known as Gold Hill, are taking notice and raising objections, and now La Prensa's Rafael Berrocal has dug into details along the paper trail, uncovering and publishing the tale of the family connections.

Arosemena? He's running for the legislature, but he's also on sick leave for his bad back again. Through his spokeswoman, he denied that there are or were any conflicts of interest in the SISAPSA concession.