Slow and untidy Panamanian exit from PARLACEN

Panama's prolonged and messy divorce from PARLACEN
by Eric Jackson

Withdrawing Panama from the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) was one of the few specific things that Ricardo Martinelli promised to do in his election campaign. The businessman's judgment that it was money spent for little or no return was part of it, but the aroma of corruption that has always surrounded the organization was also there. Last August, in a televised argument for his policy, the president was scathing. He called PARLACEN "a unique setting for a large group of losers, who hang around to party, to get drunk with immunity."

That the PRD-dominated Electoral Tribunal had illegally disqualified his party's slate of candidates for PARLACEN, that the Martinelli administration in this matter as well as others announced a plan of action on which it had to backtrack because it hadn't taken the law into account before determining what to do, and a late-breaking scandal that highlighted the president's party's and his family's sleazy connections with PARLACEN --- all of these made for interesting side shows. The evidence, however, points to a Martinelli decision to pull Panama out of PARLACEN for the reasons the president has given.

The move to quit PARLACEN was one of the first bits of legislation that was introduced when the new government and legislature took office in July. The legislation moved reasonably quickly through the legislative process, until certain legal issues manifested themselves:

An appeal to the Supreme Court of the previous April's Electoral Tribunal eliminating the Cambio Democratic slate of PARLACEN candidates --- on the basis of an extemporaneous PRD complaint that, in violation of the PRD's ambitions, Ricardo Martinelli personally chose the slate rather than holding a party primary to select it --- appeared to have a good chance of success. (The high court ultimately did overturn the Electoral Tribunal's decision, ousting three PRD members and a Panameñista and giving their seats to Cambio Democratico members.)
A bunch of PARLACEN deputies were suing or threatening to sue, on various grounds, to stop their ouster from the $4,000 per month plus perks and opportunities for corrupt gain sinecures that they enjoy. The biggest hook is a constitutional argument that a public official's term in office can't be shortened, and it will surely come back before the Supreme Court. If precedent is any guide --- and it's not binding in our legal system --- then one likely decision is a ratification of Panama's exit from PARLACEN but an order to pay the deputies' salaries through June of 2014.
Somebody pointed out one of the fundamental documents in international law, the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which provides for due notice before a treaty such as the one by which Panama joined PARLACEN may be abrogated.

Thus the National Assembly's regular session ended with the law to pull out of PARLACEN stalled. Under Panama's legislative scheme, that required a fresh start to any legislative effort on the subject. This was done in a special November legislative session. On November 30 the Panamanian National Assembly voted 39 to 14, with 18 absences, to quit the Central American Parliament. It was Martinelli's alliance against the PRD, with nobody in Panama caring to fight very hard for PARLACEN. This time, however, due recognition was taken about the legalities of abrogating a treaty and Panama's exit was put off until late November of next year.

The delay in passing the legislation gave just enough time for an embarrassing arrest. On November 20 Mexican authorities arrested one Ramón Martinelli Corro, formerly treasurer of the president's Cambio Democratico party, formerly one of that party's PARLACEN deputies, and in fact the president's first cousin. The charge is that for years Martinelli Corro had been laundering large sums of money for Mexico's Beltrán Leyva Cartel, which in alliance with the Fort Benning-trained Zetas (think of Murder Incorporated on steroids and speaking in Spanish) is waging a bloody war for domination of the drug trade, a war that has left Mexico in chaos and corpses scattered around Panama.

So was Martinelli Corro working for the drug lords when he served in PARLACEN from 1999 to 2004? That has not been formally alleged, but two things are reasonably well known about PARLACEN's history:

The organization was beset by repeated scandals including drug dealing from its security office that involved not only a PARLACEN security official but also the brother-in-law of the Honduran drug czarina of that time; the arrest, conviction and incarceration of a Honduran deputy who was caught smuggling heroin through Nicaragua; allegations of a multinational stolen car ring run by Honduran legislators and PARLACEN deputies; a series of police-assisted gangland executions that included the murders in Guatemala of three Salvadoran PARLACEN deputies; and the seizure in the wake of the arrest of Colombian racketeer David Murcia Guzmán (now in a Colombian prison awaiting extradition to the United States to face drug money laundering charges), of a Ferrari G12 Scaglietti --- purchase price about $325,000 --- that was registered in the name of one Harmodio Villarreal, a Panamanian alternate PARLACEN deputy of the PRD caucus at the time.
Martinelli Corro avoided a criminal investigation into an illegal scheme whereby Cambio Democratico party dues were deducted from IDAAN public water and sewer utility workers' paychecks, by virtue of his immunity from investigation or prosecution as a member of PARLACEN.

President Martinelli said that he can't answer for the acts of his relatives, and claimed that he had knowledge of a Panamanian investigation of some sort aimed at his cousin and didn't interfere with it. Might it be reasonably said that his derogatory comments about PARLACEN deputies were not only sincere, but based upon close familiarity with the subject?

In any case, Martín Torrijos and his vice presidents get another year or so of immunity before Panama's withdrawal from PARLACEN becomes official. And immunity for people like that is, after all, the reason for PARLACEN's existence. It was created in the Esquipulas II accords that ended Central America's bloody civil wars of the 1980s, and its immunity provisions and membership for immediate past presidents and vice presidents were intended as assurances that top death squad bosses wouldn't be put on trial and sent to prison the moment they left office. Since those times former President Guillermo Endara and former Vice President Guillermo Ford have been the only Panamanian ex-presidents to refuse seats in PARLACEN, both arguing that they didn't need immunity for what they did in office.

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