The Martinelli administration's "normalization"

The new government's "normalization"

Is it cause to celebrate? Word comes from Costa Rica that convicted felon fraud artist Mark Boswell (alias Rex Freeman) --- seen by clicking here on the right, posing with his publisher and promoter Don Winner --- has fled Panama, heading for parts undisclosed. According to sources in Costa Rica, "Rex Freeman" has split up with his wife and the latter is trying to negotiate her way out of legal troubles there so that she can return. According to a source in the United States, "Rex Freeman" is telling people who believed Mr. Winner's endorsement of Mr. Boswell and put their money in his "Continental Trust & Credit Union" that the ex-wife, Evelyn Reed, absconded with the funds and that they are out of luck. That same source estimates that Boswell alias Freeman came to Panama with more than $20 million in proceeds from his various frauds, but now Freeman's "offshoreconferences.com" operation --- whose "get rich quick" seminars were held at Herman Bern's Playa Bonita resort --- and his Continental Trust and Venture Resource Group websites have been shut down.

Boswell alias Freeman, regular readers may recall, charged me with criminal defamation, but the court threw those charges out. At the time when I was playing defendant against those scurrilous and malicious charges, I predicted that Mr. Boswell would be gone from Panama soon after a new administration took office. It's not that I have some gift of prophecy, but there is a long-established pattern that foreign criminals who, despite their record of convictions, buy residency in Panama, tend to find that with the next administration the price of protection goes way up. That's what happened to Marc Harris. That's what's likely to happen with another foreign hustler whom Winner presently champions, Mary Sloane.

So is there going to be any change? I posed a question to Ricardo Martinelli's cousin, "Anti-Corruption Czar" Fernando Núñez Fábrega, whether there would be any review of how Migracion granted resident status to Mark Boswell, despite his Colorado felony conviction record and the warrant for his arrest in Costa Rica. And what was the czar's answer? There would be no investigation because it's "a private matter."

And so the admission into this country Martin Erkamps, the Los Santos real estate dealer who did time in Europe for kidnapping beer baron Freddie Heineken and for drug trafficking, is a "private matter." And so the admission into this country of former priest, convicted pedophile, money launderer and the man through whose hands millions of dollars from a Canadian union's pension fund disappeared, Ron Kelly, is a "private matter." And on, and on, and on....

The point has been emphasized by Martinelli's caucus in the National Assembly. It's holding hearings on a law to repeal section 23 of Law 17 of May, 2007. That section authorizes the Registro Civil to void fraudulent birth records, which have been used as a shortcut for foreign criminals to obtain Panamanian citizenship and thus a constitutional exemption from extradition to stand trial for crimes that they have committed elsewhere. While it is true that the fraudulent cancellation of a person's birth records can be a powerful tool of political repression, it seems that the Martinelli faction of the legislature is not about providing a narrow remedy for that possibility but tearing out a gaping hole so that the illicit traffic in Panamanian citizenship and residency continue unabated.

It seems that the historic and lucrative corruption in immigration that we have seen in Panama will continue unchanged under the Martinelli administration. In other words, after a few weeks in which the new president made some dramatic anti-corruption gestures, things are getting back to "normal."

ALSO back to "normal," the Martinelli administration is continuing his predecessors' assaults on indigenous land and water rights, and the protests are heating up again.

(But notice that the Martinelli administration has appointed a special investigator to look into the land grabbing that has become customary in the Bocas del Toro islands, which is not the "normal" thing to do. If you have been a victim of land fraud, attempted land fraud, or another form of corruption affecting the development, construction upon or ownership of land, contact Jim Ansay at jamesansay@msn.com.)

ALSO back to normal, Martinelli's man in the Panama City mayor's office has been caught attempting to charge the public for improper and in any case padded travel expenses; and now it turns out that the man whom Mayor Bosco Vallarino has appointed to head the municipal police, one Edgardo Reeder, is a convicted drug dealer who finagled his way out of prison four years into a nine and one-half year prison term on a most unusual and irregular appeal bond, got a court to deep-six the case (but not actually dismiss it or reverse the conviction) and is, in a formal sense, still appealing to have the conviction overturned.

Bosco Vallarino is a pathological liar. A lot of politicians lie, but Bosco's lies are so flagrant, and so easily shown to be what they are, that it's readily apparent that he lies without any regard to whether he can get away with it. It's a deep-seated pyschological impulse rather than a political tactic for him, and the habit has spread to his underlings. And thus, when one of Panama's outstanding investigative journalists, Adelita Coriat, broke the story about Mr. Reeder's criminal past and present legal predicament, Bosco's administrative assistant Jaime Barroso denied Reeder's criminal record. But she had the documents in order to refute City Hall's knee-jerk denials and meanwhile over at the Supreme Court the presiding magistrate, Harley Mitchell, is and has been incensed about the crooked games that are played in our judicial system and it looks likely that one or more jobs will be lost over the special treatment that let Reeder out of jail. Odds are that by the time you read this Reeder will have been stripped of his uniform and will be living behind bars.

And yet, Ricardo Martinelli steadfastly stands behind the embarrassment whom his coalition put in the mayor's office. As in, he's going after the sticky-fingered among the PRD and to a lesser extent some of their more prominent friends, but criminal behavior and connections in his own faction he will tolerate.

Is is "guilt by association?" It's a lot more than that. Bosco Vallarino explicitly renounced his Panamanian citizenship, then lied about doing it, and before the courts could act on the facts of the case Martinelli promoted a retroactive --- just for Bosco --- restoration of citizenship that purportedly legalizes Vallarino's holding the mayor's office. Martinelli knows who Vallarino is, what he is, and the null value of the man's word and it's only fair to say that Bosco Vallarino's corruption is Ricardo Martinelli's corruption. You live with the consequences of your actions, Your Excellency.

ALSO back to normal, we have more complaints about conflict of interest, this time in the biggest public works contract of them all. (Ever since it was first uploaded, this story elicits an error message until I upload it again. I don't believe that the problem is me or the story or my web server. You figure out the remaining possibilities. If you can't get this story, send me an email and I will send it to you.)

ALSO back to normal, we have chaos in our public transportation system. The number two man in the Transito Authority (ATTT), Roberto Moreno, issued hundreds of new taxi permits for Arraijan when he came to office. His boss, Sandra Escorcia, questioned this.

There is a long-standing racket about the improper sale of taxi permits, and there was this immediate hue and cry about Moreno's actions, including from Escorcia. The matter was referred to prosecutors and Moreno voluntarily stepped down while the investigation was underway.

But at first glance, it seems that at least the paperwork for the new taxi permits was in order --- the real question not being whether paperwork was proper but whether improper payments were demanded or made. At second glance, Arraijan has turned into a sprawling bedroom community of more than 300,000 inhabitants and has many fewer taxis per person than any of Panama's other large-population municipalities.

And at third glance, Escorcia resigned, citing personal reasons. Was it that Martinelli didn't back her when she looked askance at her deputy's actions?

Maybe not. On the heels of Escorcia's announcement the government said that it would merge the ATTT with the Ministry of Public Works to create a Ministry of Road Infrastructure and Land Transport. Pending the merger's consummation Vice Minister of Government and Justice Jorge Ricardo Fábrega is in charge of the Transito Authority.

The planned merger was not something pulled out of thin air, so that, rather than the situation with the taxi permits in Arraijan, might have been the "personal reason" that led Escorcia to step down after a little more than two months on the job.

Over at Transito it's chaos as usual, but that's a mess that Martinelli inherited. Is it also the customary corruption? I don't think that it would be fair to conclude that at this point. Let's give the president a chance to sort out a difficult situation there, and for the prosecutors to report on Moreno's actions, first.

ALSO back to normal --- or maybe it's not. The new administration has raised taxes. They haven't allowed for much debate about it, but neither have they misrepresented what they have done.

I suppose that this may drive away some of the people who are considering a move to Panama because they have been told that it's a fiscal paradise with no taxes and no need for social responsibility. (Yes, and the propaganda directed toward this crowd also tends to depict a Panama with no black people.) If it discourages such new neighbors, let us count that as a blessing.

Nobody likes to pay more taxes but if we want passable roads, a public school system that turns out a competent work forces liberally sprinkled with brilliant creative minds, cops who feel no need to turn to corruption in order to support their families and all the other things that a good government should provide, then there wasn't much choice about this tax increase.

Forget all the denials and look behind the comforting statistics that are cited. The worldwide economic crisis is also affecting us, and our ability to counter a downturn through economic stimuli is limited by our status as a not-so-rich small country. It was necessary to raise taxes, and this was done --- as these things normally are done --- in the early part of an administration's term.

* * *

The old twice-per-month production cycle for The Panama News has gone by the wayside, in large part because there are now more pages in every issue, but for other reasons as well. This time the gap between the last front page and this one was longer than usual, due to distractions foreign and domestic.

Let me mention one of the most domestic of all distractions, and give thanks and credit where it is due.

My mother passed out while shopping at the El Rey supermarket in Coronado, falling down, cutting her head and breaking her tailbone. It could have been far worse, but it was a painful enough injury and the event spells the end of her driving days and a convalescence in which she really can't contribute as she did to the care of my Alzheimer's-afflicted stepfather. The situation has indirectly but none the less really affected production of The Panama News.

Things happen. I am not a partisan of GOP-style "tort reform," but one of the reasons why I became disillusioned with the practice of law in the United States was this insane routine about how, regardless of the facts, whenever anybody falls in a supermarket a huge lawsuit is likely be filed.

My mother's fall was not El Rey's fault. As a matter of fact, El Rey employees reacted quickly, with intelligence, calmness and caring, to come to my mother's assistance and to get her to the new San Fernando clinic that's just up the street. They could have just called an ambulance and waited, but they went well out of their way to help. The supermarket employees who came to my mother's assistance have the family's appreciation and gratitude, and the Tagaropulos Group family of companies of which El Rey is a part is to be commended on its good selection of managers and workers and for maintaining a corporate culture in which profits are not considered to be opposed to ordinary --- or in this case, a bit more than ordinary --- human decency.

* * *

I am a news junkie and an avid follower of Latin American affairs and of what goes on at the United Nations, and these and other overseas developments have made for yet more distractions these past few days.

To wit:

Honduras

President Zelaya's return to Honduras and the ongoing confrontation in that country have highlighted many things.

First, just as Al Jazeera rose to become the most prominent organization covering the Muslim world after the events of September 11, 2001, TeleSur has taken on this role in Latin America. TeleSur has a long way to go before it catches up to Al Jazeera, which now reports in English as well as in its native Arabic and which has fewer political constraints than TeleSur. But still, the Spanish-language Latin American public TV channel that's jointly owned by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela has been regularly scooping the formerly dominant news agencies from the industrialized north during this crisis.

Second, Brazil has come to the fore as a Latin American power in the world's efforts to confront the Honduran situation, becoming an active protagonist in an area where the United States is increasingly a passive observer. I would expect Brazil to elect a somewhat more conservative president than the current one the next time around, but this geopolitical role is bigger than ideology so look for Lula's successor to carry on a similar foreign policy.

Third, although it may shore up GOP support in South Florida and other parts of the old Confederacy, US conservatives' screeching about Hugo Chávez in response to the Honduran crisis goes over like a lead balloon in Latin America. Mel Zelaya signed on to both George W. Bush's CAFTA and Hugo Chávez's ALBA. He sought closer economic ties with other Central American countries, both of the left and of the right. He tried to set into motion a process to replace a constitution inherited from the days when the military ran the government through civilian figureheads, on a schedule that would have had the process of writing a new constitution take place with his successor in the presidency. Yes, the banana companies that finance the politicians behind the coup hired slick US lobbyists --- the most disgusting of whom is Lanny Davis, the man behind Hillary Clinton's failed primary and caucus strategy and the mudslinging she employed to try to recover from that failure. Yes, these people portrayed it as a Hugo Chávez plot to make Zelaya the Honduran president for life. But the problem with that argument is that it's not supported by any facts. Zelaya made his mistakes and lost popularity in the face of a corporate vilification campaign, but the so-called grass roots support for the coup against him is pure astroturf on the ground in Honduras. In the rest of Latin America, it's a matter of principle to reject any and all military coups in our region. We've been there and done that, and if Washington politicians and their stupidest followers want to see this principled position as the evil influence of a cartoon character bad guy, it should be expected that Latin Americans will walk right by them, as if they were winos talking gibberish on the street.

Cuba

Is the US embargo against Cuba relevant to anything anymore? There are people who talk and act as if it is, but from both Cubans and people who visit Cuba with some regularity I have been hearing that it's mostly an empty symbol.

Recall that, with strong support from Republican lawmakers from farm states, the sale of US agricultural products to Cuba was legalized some years ago. There remain certain restrictions on credit for such sales, but essentially Cuba can shop in the United States for whatever food or medicine it can afford.

They can't buy their cars, trucks or construction equipment in the USA, however. These they buy largely from Asian suppliers, quite frequently through the Colon Free Zone. So do you think that Cuban buyers are going to rescue Detroit if the embargo against US car sales comes down? That's a strange fantasy.

Obama lifted restrictions on Americans wanting to travel to Cuba, and limits on the sending of money by Cuban-Americans to their relatives in Cuba.

The Castro dictatorship responded with a purge within the Cuban Communist Party, stern warnings to the general public about associating with foreigners, and new arrests of dissidents and journalists. There are now 26 journalists being held as political prisoners in Cuba.

So surprise, surprise: President Obama extended the remaining economic sanctions against Cuba for one more year. Listen to the Cuban government and you will hear that it's because Obama is this imperialist reactionary who's not much different from George W. Bush. If you understand anything at all about Obama, you will recognize that he's a cautious Chicago politician who's not going to make political gestures that will get him criticized if there has been no sign of some sort of reciprocal concession after his earlier gestures. So we will have another year of nearly meaningless embargo restrictions, and Raúl Castro will tell an economically ailing Cuba that it's the Americans' fault.

But meanwhile, a cultural embargo that has been officially on and off by way of Washington's decisions about visas, and when it's officially off largely enforced by the Miami exile movement leaders' threats of boycotts or terrorism against any musician who plays in Cuba, broke down. Colombian singer Juanes, Puerto Rico's Olga Tañón and a number of other outstanding musicians from the Spanish-speaking world held the second "Peace Without Borders" concert --- the first had been near the Colombian-Venezuelan border when tensions were high between those countries --- in Havana.

It was a resounding success that drew a huge crowd --- estimated at one million or more mostly young fans --- and was also an occasion for the Cuban government to act obnoxiously, first by making announcements about certain Cuban musicians in the United States being ineligible to come to Havana to participate, then by annoying Juanes and the other performers by having them tailed by secret police and trying to control their movements and contacts by way of official minders. Meanwhile in Miami, there was a pathetic little demonstration against the concert and the professional Cuban exiles got into loud arguments with one another.

It was a great success, when you think about it, because the mostly patriotic and socialistic young people of Cuba voted with their feet against cultural isolation, the capitalistic Univision television network voted with its signals against the musical embargo, and buzzardly old leaders on both sides of the Straits of Florida demonstrated their incapacity to speak coherently for themselves, let alone lead the Cuban nation or community. On the northern side of the strait, a group that for years held virtual veto power over US policy toward all of Latin America was discredited. On the southern side of the strait, brothers who have held nearly absolute power over the island of Cuba for 50 years were discredited. It was not such a bad result for a bunch of people who sing, dance or play musical instruments for a living.

The United Nations

Although these things are difficult to conclusively prove, it appears that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad enjoys his position by virtue of an election marred by serious fraud. That would not be so unusual in the world. The president of Mexico's legitimacy is equally suspect.

Taking a dim view of the things that Israel does is also nothing unique on the world scene, nor for that matter is outright hatred of Jews. The two things are not the same, even if the latter generally includes the former. The leaders and diplomats of lots of countries say harsh things about Israel at the United Nations. For example, the UN's recent report on the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in and around Gaza this past December and January, written by distinguished South African jurist Richard Goldstone --- who happens to be Jewish and says he's a Zionist, a supporter of an independent Jewish state of Israel --- was fairly scathing about the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Gaza offensive and also condemned the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel.

(This reporter was reviled as an anti-semite for publishing similiar things at the time, by local fanatics, some of them surely among the 100,000 Internet trolls whom the Israeli government boasted that it had recruited to vilify critical journalists worldwide. One of those local trolls, Susan Guberman Garcia, recently graced one of Panama's English-language email groups with a talk of a nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia.)

Anyway, as Ahmadinejad spoke, he got around to the subject of Israel and was making some of the criticisms that others make. However, the president of Iran has in the past called for the annihilation of Israel. He's played host to a rogue's gallery of the world's creepiest racists, including the USA's own David Duke, for a pseudo-historical Holocaust denial convention. So at the point when Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, the French delegation got up and walked out. They were joined by the delegations from Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand and the United States.

A reader sent me an email and asked why Panama didn't walk out, too. It's a good question and I won't try to answer it for President Martinelli.

(I would point out, however, that the principal defense of the Panama Canal is premised on the canal's and this country's neutrality. The past several administrations have not been all that neutral with respect to the disparate ways that they treat Colombia's left-wing guerrillas and Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries who come into this country, and Martinelli was not all that neutral when he went to Italy and criticized Latin America's leftist governments. But despite such tilts, the canal is open to users from all nations of the world and Martinelli shows a certain amount of restraint in airing his differences with Hugo Chávez and some other Latin American leaders.)

In his speech to the UN, Martinelli argued against letting differences get out of hand, essentially explaining that as a capitalist he considers warfare and turmoil bad for business. Here, in two parts, is what Martinelli had to say, in the Spanish original:

Major League Baseball

One of the things that President Martinelli did in the course of his trip to the United Nations was to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a New York Yankees game.

I realize that Panama has a huge contingent of Yankees fans, and that Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is a fine athlete, a model citizen and a Panamanian national hero. However, I lived half of my life in the Detroit area. No, Barack Obama's unfortunate support for the Chicago White Sox has not stopped me from supporting him. No, I won't condemn Ricardo Martinelli for his basball loyalties. But I take a more progressive point of view:

Yankees go home! Go get 'em, Tigers!

* * *

Krista Quinn, who composed the music for the upcoming bilingual multimedia show Strangely Familiar, which will be playing at the Teatro Anita Villalaz (on the Casco Viejo's Plaza Francia) from October 23 through 25. The play, the music, the choreography, the costumes and the artwork for this massive production are all original. Photo by Eric Jackson

Most of Panama's English-speaking community is at least partly bilingual. It's one of the reasons why The Panama News has Spanish sections. (Another is that we provide a forum for news and opinions that this country's Spanish-language corporate mainstream media ignore.) A younger generation of thespians has come to the fore in the Theatre Guild's English-language stage scene, and many of the newcomers as well as many of the older generation speak English as a second language anyway. There are actors who cross over from one language to the other (and back, sometimes), and that trend is even more pronounced among musicians. We are now witnessing the rise of a bilingual multimedia arts scene that will manifest itself in Kimberly Hall's original Strangely Familiar play and then later in a foundation and arts collective that will promote the cultural originality of which we see far too little in this country. It's especially important in these hard times, when there's not a lot of money for art and when corporate television is importing the cheapest trash that they can get away with foisting on the Panamanian people.

(Will there be some idiot from "the expat community" to complain that Strangely Familiar is not English-only? I doubt it. We do have people who think like that, but these are generally people with little culture or curiosity to begin with, and they rarely go to the theater.)

Before you take the opportunity to be able to say "I was there" at the start of a new bilingual cultural movement by catching Strangely Familiar, go to the Ancon Theater to catch the Theatre Guild's version of Glengarry Glen Ross, a adult satire about cutthroat sleazery in the real estate business. We've had plenty of that here, to the point that maybe you will see some wannabe condo flippers in the audience, in search of business ideas.

* * *

Finally, we approach the end of September, one of our two fundraising months. It's a tough economy out there and The Panama News is hurting along with a lot of others. We have had some modest and generous responses to our requests for donations so far, and we thank those who contributed.

If you haven't donated this time, there is time and you have read this far so there has to be something that you appreciate in The Panama News. Click here for instructions on how to use a credit card to contribute toward the cause. Or send your contributions (checks, because money orders, even "international" ones, are not negotiable in Panama; made out to "Eric Jackson" because The Panama News is not big enough to have a business account as far as Panama's benighted banking system is concerned) to the mailing address shown in the red box at the bottom of this page.

Enjoy.

Eric Jackson
editor & publisher

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The Panama News Editors

Editor & Publisher - Eric Jackson
Contributing Editor - Silvio Sirias
Contributing Editor - José F. Ponce
Copy Editor - Sue Hindman