news special

Bosco caught in bogus travel expense scam
by Eric Jackson

Mere words

It's not about his campaign promise to get rid of all the botellas --- no-show employees --- on the city payroll, and subsequent inability to identify even one of these. It's not about his campaign promise to enact a "three strikes and you're out" life imprisonment law for habitual criminals --- which neither the mayor nor the city government has the power to do. It's not about his campaign promise to buy cars for the municipal police --- a small force that mainly guards city buildings and provides the mayor with bodyguards --- and assign them tasks that belong to the National Police (also impermissible under Panama's constitution). It's not about the many conflicting versions he gave of his US citizenship, or his concealment of his US passport and other documents that would establish which, if any, of his stories were true. It's not about the highly publicized raid on a unlicensed brothel near President Martinelli's house, and the mayor's subsequent claims that he has a list of PRD members who frequented the place (the contents of which of course he won't reveal), and that the establishment was linked to Colombia's FARC guerrillas.

It's none of those things. The dishonest Bosco Vallarino statements that have him facing criminal charges are:

• Bosco Vallarino's lie on a cedula application, wherein he denied having acquired a second citizenship, when actually he had become a US citizen. This is a criminal case pending before the Electoral Tribunal.

• Bosco Vallarino's characterization of his predecessor, Juan Carlos Navarro, as the "narco-mayor." Navarro denies any drug ties and has brought a criminal defamation charge against Vallarino over this. In Vallarino's defense, attorney Herbert Young asserts that the accusation is based on the relationship between former PRD candidate Roberto Velásquez and Colombian racketeer David Murcia Guzmán.

• Bosco Vallarino's televised taunt that former Mayor Navarro is afraid of him because Bosco won't cover for "the racketeers." Navarro brought a second criminal defamation charge based upon the alleged fear and the implicit accusation that he protected criminals.

• Bosco Vallarino's published interview in which he called former Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro "charismatic, astute and corrupt." Navarro brought a third criminal defamation charge against his successor for this.

The courts may string these cases out through the end of Vallarino's five-year term, but Navarro's complaints would be heard by judges under the administration of a Supreme Court with a PRD-appointed majority. On the cedula application charge the Electoral Tribunal will have a two-thirds PRD majority throughout Martinelli's time in office. 

A conviction on any of the pending charges could bring a suspension of Vallarino's right to hold public office, but Martinelli, who supported Vallarino for mayor, would have the power to commute any such sentence. The president might also reverse the PRD's domination of the courts by way of a new constitution that resets the arithmetic of judicial power or by a statutory court-packing scheme. Also, with the right of presidents, vice presidents, attorneys general, high court magistrates and government ministers to bring calumnia e injuria (criminal defamation) charges having been stripped away in the previous administration's Penal Code changes, the courts might take Navarro's complaints as an opportunity to extend the ban to current and former local officials.

However, by the time of the mayor's judicial day of reckoning --- if that day ever comes --- Martinelli might not care to exercise his powers to save Vallarino. It's not so much that Bosco's vice mayor, Roxana Méndez, is a member of Martinelli's Cambio Democratico party while the mayor is not. It's a matter of Vallarino having quickly become an embarrassment for the governing alliance. 

Sticky fingers

Moreover, if Bosco has a fateful day in court it may not be about the words that come out of his mouth, but about his sticky fingers. Not 60 days on the job and the new mayor is embroiled in a scandal about improper travel expenses, and every time he says or does something to limit the damage he seems to make it worse. 

It started with an invitation from the city of Taipei, Taiwan for the mayor and his wife to attend the Deaf Olympics for five days, from September 3 through 7. The hosts said that they would "defray the costs of lodging, meals and local transportation." But Mayor Vallarino was going to be on the road, to Costa Rica and then to Mar de Plata, Argentina for a Latin American congress of city officials, during those days. Thus it was decided to send Vice Mayor Méndez and the mayor's wife, Annabel Espino de Vallarino.

The mayor ordered the writing of municipal checks to defray his wife's and the vice mayor's expenses --- double covering what Taipei was already paying and for 10 days worth of expense each instead of five days. That worked out to $5,000 for Méndez and $4,000 for Annabel. In addition to that, the city bought first-class airline tickets to and from Taiwan for the vice mayor and the vice mayor's wife. Bosco Vallarino put the order for these things through the city's secretary general, Arsenio Fernández, who in turn ordered the city's administrative manager, Carlos Levy, to draft the checks.

Fernández is a Panameñista, part of Bosco Vallarino's entourage. Levy is a member of of Cambio Democratico, part of Roxana Méndez's entourage.

Levy balked at writing the check for the mayor's wife, citing public spending rules that restrict the payment of travel expenses out of public funds to travel for public officials. (Although on the national level there is an Office of the First Lady that makes the presidential spouse a public official, there is no such provision for mayoral spouses.) The national Comptroller General's representative in city government, Nora Marín, also said that "we tried to warn" Vallarino that the check was improper, "but it wasn't possible."

At the same time, Levy claims he was having another problem with another travel expense requested by the mayor. Bosco, Levy claimed, wanted money to rent a convertible while he was in Argentina. That extra expenditure, it seems, was not made.

Under the mayor's orders through the secretary general, the checks for the vice mayor and the mayor's wife were drafted by Levy and signed by the mayor. The Comptroller General's office endorsed the check for Méndez and rejected the check for Mrs. Vallarino, the latter on the basis that she is not a public official. According to Méndez, she was on her way to Taiwan by the time that the check for her travel expenses came through, so it became a matter of reimbursement when she got back.

(With the mayor on the road first to Costa Rica and then to Argentina, and the vice mayor traveling to Taiwan, that left the city's executive branch without elected leadership on the scene. That was never a problem with previous administrations, but just before leaving office the Torrijos administration and lame duck PRD legislature passed a government decentralization law with many new provisions about municipal operations, one of which was that the mayor and vice mayor could not both be out of the country at the same time without the permission of the city council. Such permission was neither sought nor granted. It appears that neither Vallarino nor Méndez actually read this law, which, a little more than one month after it went into effect, they found themselves violating. The PRD-dominated city council's attorney, Ricardo Urrutia, declared that "the city is acephalic" and noted that the new law provides for a 30-day suspension in cases where mayors and vice mayors fail to comply with its terms.)

The problem with the checks was reported in the Spanish-language dailies and on television with Vallarino and Méndez out of town, the former communicating with certain contacts in the press by telephone and the latter staying out of touch with the Panamanian media.

Fernández and Bosco Vallarino gave several conflicting versions of events. It was said that there never was a check made out to the mayor's wife. It was said that such a check was made, but annulled before it got out of city hall. It was said that it was all Levy's idea, and, through Fernández on Vallarino's order, Levy was fired for his alleged "administrative error."

Then someone leaked copies of the check bearing Bosco Vallarino's signature, the cover letter submitting the check to the Comptroller General for approval that also bore the mayor's signature, a memorandum by Fernández ordering Levy to draft the checks for the vice mayor and the letter from Taiwan's ambassador specifying that Taipei would pick up expenses for lodging, meals and transportation within Taiwan to La Estrella and El Panama America.

Bosco Vallarino was caught in yet another web of lies, but this time a city council committee was looking not at false statements but financial misconduct and abuse of power with respect to Levy's firing. The prosecutors at the Public Ministry also began to look into these questions.

When Bosco got home, he attended one stormy city council session at which a number of PRD representantes railed against him, some Panameñista deputies came to his defense and the four Cambio Democratico members maintained their silence. The PRD members called for the firing of Fernández rather than the ouster of either the mayor or the vice mayor.

The following day Vallarino boycotted a committee meeting scheduled to consider what to do about the affair, and issued a statement arguing that since during his 10 years in the mayor's office the Comptroller General had rejected three checks submitted by former Mayor Navarro the controversy over the checks in question now is a non-issue.

When Méndez got back to the country, she announced that she would only be accepting a small fraction of the $5,000 check made out to her, for reimbursable expenses that were not covered by Taipei and based on a five-day trip rather than a 10-day one.

So far, the issues that have been getting the most attention in Panama's corporate mainstream media are Bosco trying to send his wife on an Asian vacation at city expense, Levy's dismissal and the web of lies associated with the affair. It may turn out, however, that the stuff that got past the Comptroller General --- 10 days worth of expenses for a five-day trip, and double billing for things paid for by Taipei --- will be the most damaging facts for this municipal administration. Roxana Méndez appears to have quietly insulated herself from blame, but in less than two months on the job Bosco Vallarino has already been caught padding expenses. It's a particularly crude variation on the sticky-fingered politician game, something so simple that those voters who were ignorant enough to believe Vallarino's campaign promises to do things beyond a mayor's powers will understand it to be improper.

Meanwhile, can Vallarino govern?

Virgilio Crespo, the PRD representante for Bella Vista from 2004 until earlier this year, looks like the stereotype of a machine politician. He had multiple opponents in the general election and by the ordinary political math, even though it wasn't a PRD year the split opposition should have been enough to give him another term.

However, Crespo had a hard fought primary challenge and in the general election a fair number of usually stalwart PRD voters cast their ballots for his opponents, or cast no ballots for representante at all. He was one of the PRD city council members who lost and there was a specific local reason for his defeat.

Crespo sided with developers against his constituents.

Via Argentina has twice a day traffic gridlock, but Crespo supported more residential towers that made the problem worse. People in El Cangrejo like Andres Bello Park and the racket that the wild parakeets make in the trees there late every afternoon, but Crespo supported some highly unpopular proposals to build apartment towers adjoining the park, which would have cast shadows to disrupt the fauna and flora of that little urban oasis. There is some interesting architecture, some of it with historical value, in the corregimiento --- but there used to be a lot more of it, with part of the difference being that Crespo sided with those who wanted to tear down the neighborhood's lower-density buildings. Actually, as head of the city council's housing committee in 2006 and 2007, he oversaw the destruction of many historical buildings all over the city, including homes of former presidents of Panama, to promote the now collapsed city real estate speculation boom.

His constituents threw him out for this, but his party still controls the city council. And so it was that on September 1, the city council appointed Virgilio Crespo to fill a vacancy on the city planning board --- the one reserved for a representative of "civil society," no less. Some of the key people who campaigned against Crespo and secured his defeat, and his successor Ricardo Domínguez, have complained about the designation.

Bosco Vallarino has had nothing to say about it.

Vallarino was also a profiteer in the real estate bubble, making his living advertising speculative investments in upscale condo tower projects, many of which failed to materialize. There is no big difference of opinion between the mayor and Mr. Crespo when it comes to urban development. However, Crespo's appointment is the PRD's way of saying that they still run the city and that Bosco Vallarino is a scarcely relevant figurehead.

The mayor's chronic incapacity to tell the truth, and now his having been caught padding travel expenses in the crudest possible fashion, play right into the opposition-dominated city council's hands. It's no wonder that the PRD is pressing for the resignation of the secretary general rather than of the mayor. If they can't control that post, it's better for them to have it filled by a political junior flyweight.