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Article 13 of the Panamanian Constitution is unambiguous: "Panamanian citizenship by origins or birth can't be lost, but express or tacit renunciation of it will suspend the citizenship." Elsewhere in the Constitution it provides that the National Assembly can specify how a suspended citizenship is restored, something that the legislature has never done.

The oath that a person who becomes a naturalized US citizen is also unambiguous: to take on the rights and oblications of American citizenship by choice, one must "abjure" citizenship in any other nation. There's nothing "tacit" about a naturalized US citizen's renunciation of his or her prior citizenship --- it's very clearly expressed.

Now comes Bosco Vallarino, naturalized US citizen, running for mayor of Panama City. Strictly speaking, that's not legal. However, the PRD has a scandal-tainted mayoral candidate who is likely to get the one-third of public support that the party got in Noriega times, and thus it needs Bosco Vallarino in the race to avoid a crushing defeat in a one-on-one race against a man that party attempted to kill, Miguel Antonio Bernal.

The story of Bosco's American citizenship first broke on April 1. First, he wouldn't talk about it. Then, he said he was proud to be an American, and that he had been obliged to acquire it as an exile from his mother's persecution during the Noriega dictatorship. Then, as Article 13 of the Panamanian Constitution was brought to his attention, he and his campaign told various conflicting stories about how he was American by birth --- by way of his allegedly American maternal grandmother, or was it his father? Then, when it was pointed out that one does not acquire American citizenship by birth through grandparents, but only from US citizen parents or birth in the United States, Bosco said he wouldn't talk about it anymore, that the inquiring media would "have to wait until my father gets home." That became the subject of many a joke, so Bosco did talk about it anymore. He said that if it was a problem he'd renounce his US citizenship, and claimed that in effect he already had, pursuant to a superseded 1911 treaty that allowed nations to reciprocally restore their nationals' citizenship upon return to their countries of origin after having naturalized in another country. (In any event, in addition to conflicting subsequent Panamanian constitutional and treaty provisons, the United States abrogated the treaty in question about 30 years ago.)

In the end it turned out that Bosco had acquired US citizenship not during Noriega times, but in 1994, and, if one believes the resume published on his website, without having lived in the United States for the five years required in an ordinary naturalization process. (He might have avoided that process if he got his citizenship as a reward for running a CIA-financed anti-Noriega clandestine radio station in the late 80s, or he might simply have lied about his place of residence, either to US immigration and naturalization authorities, the Panamanian people or both.)

In any case Vallarino was caught in a series of lies and a vulnerable legal situation. And so it was that the PRD's slow-minded but doggedly loyal Electoral Prosecutor, Boris Barrios, petitioned to have Vallarino and two other opposition candidates in similar circumstances thrown off the ballot on account of suspended citizenship rights.

But the certainty of defeat by a 2-1 or more margin of the PRD's mayoral candidate and subsequent loss of control over about 4,000 city jobs and a $100 million municipal budget wasn't the only problem for the ailing ruling party. A bunch of their public officials are also naturalized US citizens. So were several of Mireya Moscoso's key people. To enforce the unambiguous law against Bosco Vallarino was to open a Pandora's box.

The PRD-controlled Electoral Tribunal, which had most recently pronounced on a politician's citizenship rights by finding that former legislator Haydée Milanés de Lay wasn't Panamanian, hemmed and hawed, and decided that it really didn't have the competence to decide who enjoys the full benefits of Panamanian citizenship. Thus they punted to the Registro Civil, whose PRD appointee director Sharon Sinclair Dumanoir asked for notarized copies of Vallarino's US passport and naturalization papers, and asked the US Embassy for information on his status as an American citizen. But whether or not she received these things, she decided that she doesn't have the competence to decide whether someone's citizenship is suspended and sent a document to the Electoral Tribunal saying that the Registro Civil had no record of Vallarino's citizenship having been suspended. With that in hand, the Electoral Tribunal ruled that Bosco Vallarino will stay on the ballot and Bobby Velásquez will therefore face a divided opposition.

But, assuming Vallarino is elected, he would be vulnerable to PRD blackmail. The PRD controls the Supreme Court, the Electoral Tribunal and Registro Civil having said that the man's citizenship is none of their business and Article 13 saying what it says, the PRD-controlled high court would have the opportunity to remove Vallarino at its pleasure.

So does this pave the way for Bobby Velásquez to be elected mayor, despite the scandals?

Don't count on it. On the morning that the Electoral Tribunal was expected to rule on Vallarino's situation, the daily newspapers reported that Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez had declared that the criminal investigations against Velásquez and PRD presidential standard bearer Balbina Herrera were at an impasse --- as was another investigation against opposition presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli --- because campaign finance reports (which are not made available to the public) aren't due until 60 days after the election. It has been alleged by jailed Colombian financier David Murcia Guzmán (accused by Bogota of being a pyramid scam operator and by Washington of being a drug money launderer) that via Velásquez's father the PRD mayoral and presidential campaigns were given $3 million in cash apiece. Both Bobby and Balbina deny this, and it seems that Panamanian justice is willing to say that everything was done in cash without leaving a paper trail this didn't happen.

But on the morning that the Electoral Tribunal issued its ruling on Vallarino, La Prensa set off a bombshell. In an exclusive series of interviews with three presidential guards who were fired for having guarded Murcia, the former SPI (Institutional Protection Service) agents said that when Bobby Velásquez and his father came to meet Murcia at the presidential suite at the Sheraton Hotel they came empty handed, but when they left the mayoral candidate was carrying a suitcase. Meanwhile in La Estrella, Gómez was implicitly calling President Torrijos a liar in the Murcia scandal. She said that last November her husband had bought her a weekend away from it all in Sheraton suite down the hall from the one in which Murcia was staying, and that her SPI guards had recognized colleagues guarding Murcia. After Murcia's arrest later that month, she said, she informed the Presidencia that SPI guards had been watching over the Colombian --- but some two and one-half months later, Martín Torrijos was flatly denying that the SPI had ever guarded Murcia.

On the day after Bosco won his election reprieve, that story was forced down the page on all the broadsheet dailies by further coverage of the Murcia scandal. Brazilian real estate scammer Alex Ventura Nogueira, a business associate of Bosco Vallarino's and friend of Murcia's, said that he was there when the Velásquezes paid their visit to Murcia and that he, too, saw the Velásquezes leave with a suitcase. Ventura said that he asked Murcia about its contents, and was told that it was $2 million in cash, an installment on the alleged $6 million in financing for PRD campaigns.

That morning's news also brought word from Gómez that given the specific allegations about the suitcase, she would seek security videotapes from the Sheraton to see if there is any corroboration for the story. If the tapes end up missing in one way or another, or if they bear out the guards' Ventura's allegations about the Velásquezes and the suitcase, it will probably not cost the PRD mayoral candidate the votes of anyone who supported the Noriega dictatorship, roughly 30 percent of the electorate. It will, however, mean that Bobby Velásquez won't get any votes beyond the hardcore PRD base.

And what if, as now seems likely, Alex Ventura, also under investigation on suspicion of money laundering for Murcia, becomes a central figure in the Murcia scandal?

Bobby will surely say that nobody should believe a guy who's under investigation for criminal activity, just like he said that nobody should trust people who were fired from their jobs with the SPI, just like he said that nobody should believe Murcia because he's in jail. But Bobby first said that he had never met Murcia, then said that he had met him once at the Miramar, and now it's revealed by a number of witnesses, including (indirectly) the Attorney General that he had met Murcia at the Sheraton as well. So nobody's going to believe Bobby, but he'll still get the votes of people who don't care about lies and crimes.

And as Ventura takes center stage, Bosco Vallarino's work for him will gather more attention. Ventura ran a number of phantom luxury high-rise tower projects, the most notorious of them the Ice Tower / Iron Tower project on Avenida Balboa. His game is getting people's pre-construction purchase deposits, collecting interest on them for as long as possible, then canceling the much-hyped but never seriously undertaken projects. Bosco's game is doing the hype --- or was, until the Panama City upper end real estate speculation bubble burst. As long as Ventura is in the news, so will be Bosco's trip to Cancun at Ventura's expense to promote Ventura's real estate scams, Bosco's promotion of the specious Palacio de la Bahia project, Bosco's business relationship with the thuggish Isla Viveros project, and Bosco's ties with the controversial Gabriel Diezes, father and son, controversial developers as they both are and Torrijos's Housing Minister as the father is.

So with a little more than two weeks to go until Election Day, look for further fireworks in the mayor's race.