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Bosco gets his certificate of Election from the Electoral Tribunal. Photo by the Presidencia

Electoral Tribunal declares Bosco Vallarino mayor
by Eric Jackson

The Electoral Tribunal has issued credentials to Bosco Vallarino certifying him as the mayor of Panama City. He will assume the functions of that office on July 20.

The ruling came after the legislature passed and the president signed a law restoring Vallarino's citizenship rights retroactively to 2000. His citizenship rights had been suspended pursuant to Article 13 of the Panamanian constitution, which provides for this in the event that someone renounces his or her citizenship --- which one must explicitly do in the oath to become an American citizen.

A series of cases challenging Vallarino's qualifications to be mayor had been stalled by his attorneys first invoking the old Suarez Doctrine, which provided that a person regains citizenship upon return to his or her country of origin with intent to abandon the naturalized citizenship taken, and then by Vallarino concealing the best documentary evidence of his true intent --- his US passport, which he used as recently as last year, thus invoking the rights and privileges of US citizenship and defeating his argument that he intended to abandon US citizenship.

The law passed by the legislature and president applied to Vallarino only, not to the thousands of Panamanians who had married foreigners, emigrated and taken out other citizenships; or who served in the US military and become US citizens in that way, then returned to Panama to retire. As far as the Electoral Tribunal is concerned, those people still have their citizenship rights suspended.

Applying the law to Vallarino only was probably not an oversight. The founder of his Panameñista Party, Dr. Arnulfo Arias, once stripped all Panamanians of West Indian descent of their citizenship. Most Panamanians who obtained US citizenship through service in the US Armed Forces are blacks of West Indian descent and Panameñista politics still include a streak of racism that would approve of restoring citizenship rights to a white man from the Vallarino family while denying these to a black man in similar legal circumstances.

In any case the Electoral Tribunal set aside all arguments and held that it had to bow to the National Assembly's discretion, given that Article 134 of the constitution provides that "The Law will regulate the suspension and recovery of citizenship." But the notion that this can be done retroactively is likely to be challenged on appeal before the Supreme Court, which, however, has been legendarily slow in ruling on cases with political implications. There is also another case pending before the Electoral Tribunal against Vallarino, who lied in his cedula application by not disclosing that he had obtained US citizenship. If he loses that case Vallarino's rights to hold office could be suspended, in which case Vice-mayor Roxana Méndez would step back in as acting mayor.