editorial

Prosecuting public corruption

Recall that during the 1989 invasion, many innocent people were arrested and had their property confiscated or their businesses ruined because they held government jobs or had other ties with the dictatorship. Some of the most brutal and most venal characters from the old regime were punished, but the dictatorship's constitution and jurisprudence --- which provide many a structural encouragement for corruption --- remained in force. Then in 1994 Ernesto Pérez Balladares, who was never obliged to account for such financial disasters as the Van Dam bridge project and never had to show how he accumulated great wealth while in public office, campaigned for president on an "end to judicial terrorism" platform and appointed a pro-corruption Attorney General who ensured a decade of impunity for people in high places who do low-life things.

For the first time since 1994, we have an administration without a "mutual non-aggression pact" to hinder its calling of figures from the preceding government to account. The looting of Panama's public schools during the Torrijos administration was flagrant and now two ministers are facing criminal prosecution for it. Predictably, such PRD demagogues as Pedro Miguel González are crying "judicial terrorism."

It's an abuse of the t-word. What's happening to Belgis Castro and Salvador Rodríguez doesn't compare to the crimes of Osama bin Laden or the Colombian paramilitaries.

Still, we should all remember that these men are presumed innocent until proven guilty. So should be the many other people who should be called to account for the mass poisoning by government-mixed medications, the 25 tons of bronze sculptures that disappeared from the first lady's custody and were sold for scrap, all the people with criminal records who were allowed to come to Panama and establish residency, the wave of environmental crimes, all of the rigged contracts, all of the conflicts of interest, and on and on and on.

The Martinelli administration has also moved to cancel suspicious gambling concessions from the Pérez Balladares administration, and the Supreme Court has re-opened the investigation of the CEMIS case. But if all anti-corruption actions and investigations point at the PRD and its allies while the predations of the anti-PRD Moscoso kleptocracy are ignored, then it will be a matter of partisan double standards enforced rather than justice done.

Let's have the rule of law, due process for the accused and the setting of examples of justice with which Panamanians will want to live long after the Martinelli administration is history. In the first instance, this will require the right mixture of determination and restraint from those in charge of enforcing our laws. In the long run, we also need a new constitution and other institutional arrangements that systematically discourage corruption.

Condos and hotels

A lot of people, following a lot of bad advice, bet big and lost big in the Panama City upscale real estate bubble. There are still those who advise that Panama's the place to get rich quick by flipping luxury condos, and even a few fools with more money than brains ready to take that advice. Meanwhile, we have all these empty apartments that aren't selling, and more residential towers approaching completion.

So, what to do? There are management companies getting into the business of renting out these unsold condos for short-term guests, as de facto hotels. They don't pay the 10 percent hotel room tax and the incursion of any appreciable percentage of the huge number of empty new high-rise units into competition with the hotels would likely glut the market and ruin some good-faith investments in hotels.

Tourism Minister Salomón Shamah warns that there are existing rules that prohibit the rental of "horizontal properties" --- units in multi-story condominiums --- by the day in competition with hotels, and that he will enforce them. He wants the Housing Ministry (MIVI) to ban housing rentals for less than 90 days.

What Panama should do ought to be based first and foremost on what's best for Panama. Those who played the real estate speculation slot machine and lost have no good reason to insist that the rules of the hotel business be rewritten just so that they can cut their losses. Making more options available for visitors, which would tend to drive hotel prices down a bit, might make sense for the country --- if the people getting into the hotel business have to pay the same fees and meet the same regulations that the established hotels do, and if the conversion of condos to hotels is done in a limited and orderly fashion. An extensive new limit on housing rentals as advocated by Shamah would be difficult for MIVI to enforce and if it's a flat-out ban that doesn't allow anybody to buy into the new system it would be unfair to the many small-time property owners who have been playing by the established rules.

There has been a lot of misrepresentation, fear mongering and "free market" dogmatism stirred up about the tourism minister's actions and suggestions for change. But didn't the rise and fall of the Panama City luxury condo bubble already show us that market worship is a false religion? Hasn't the US financial collapse also taught us that same lesson?

Panama has freedom of religion, so weird market cultists will be and should be allowed to talk up their peculiar faith. However, there are equities to balance and practical issues to address here, and these require reasonable regulations that limit the mass conversion of units built to be people's homes into hotel suites.

Ted Kennedy

No, the Democrats didn't honor a saint, nor did we pretend to do so. We honored a leader, an imperfect human being with feet of clay like all of us, but nevertheless a man who performed exemplary service for his country. He didn't live to see the cause he had championed for so long, universal health care, become a reality. But to the extent that those opposed to reform of the US health care system did so by slinging mud at the memory of Senator Kennedy, they demeaned themselves and they demonstrated how few good arguments the system that they defend has in its favor.