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Bosco's on a losing streak
by Eric Jackson

December 4 was a bad day for Bosco Vallarino. He learned that in one of his predecessor's defamation cases against him, a judge had awarded former Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro a civil judgment of $121,000.30 for Bosco calling him a "narco-alcalde" on the Lo Mejor del Boxeo television program last March. A garnishment was duly issued, but so far it's minor --- 15 percent of all wages, bonuses and other income in excess of the minimum wage. Bosco won't starve, but Navarro has two more defamation actions pending for similar unsubstantiated epithets. The mayor's supporters are claiming a PRD plot, pointing to the mere eight-month gap between the slur and the court ruling as proof of a judicial rush to judgment.

Also on that day, Bosco skipped an appointment for an indagatoria --- a sworn deposition before a prosecutor, to be used in the trial dossier --- this time pleading new lawyers who hadn't read the file. This was his second failure to attend, in the most dangerous case of all for Vallarino, the one about the $4,000 check for travel expenses made out to his wife, which he signed. Politically he blamed underlings, but it's his signature on the check and not only was his wife not eligible to travel on the public dime, but the check represented a double charge for expenses that the government of Taiwan had picked up. Bosco got caught trying to steal from the city treasury in one of his first acts in office, and a conviction on that sort of thing is likely to prompt a judge to order an elected official removed from office.

The appearance and testimony was put off until December 9.

On the third failure to attend an indagatoria, the prosecutors can get an "orden de conduccion," an order to the police to arrest the reluctant witness and bring him or her in for the indagatoria. (It's the inquisitorial system of criminal procedure, but not quite like the Spanish Inquisition or its old Common Law kin, the Star Chamber. The accused does have the right not to testify. However, if the facts don't look good at first blush, refusal to explain is usually going to be taken as revealing by the trial judge.)

But come December 9, Bosco Vallarino was in a hospital bed rather than a prosecutor's office. A couple of days before he had checked into Paitilla Hospital for a heart arrhythmia, a medical problem that he's apparently had before.

Prosecutors can go through a proceeding before a judge wherein it can be determined whether a defendant's medical condition would allow an indagatoria to be taken at the hospital. An annoyed anti-corruption prosecutor Ramsés Barrera suggested to the media that he just might do that, but on the appointed day he didn't.

Vallarino faces three defamation charges brought by Navarro, two charges of abusing the public treasury --- one for the check and one for sending aides who are on the city payroll to attend a prosecutor's press conference about the check case during working hours --- plus two more cases, one about lying about his naturalization as a US citizen on a cedula application and the other about voting in elections when his citizenship was suspended due to his naturalization.

It's the sticky fingers with travel expenses that's the political dynamite, but in any of these cases a judge could remove Vallarino from office. In that case his estranged alternate, Vice Mayor Roxana Méndez, would step in, unless President Martinelli pardoned him or commuted his sentence.

Would Martinelli do that? Bosco's purge of members of the president's Cambio Democratic party from his administration may not be the best way of wooing Martinelli, and the president did go off on a brief angry outburst in which he admonished both Vallarino and San Miguelito Mayor Héctor Valdés Carrasquilla to cut out all the foolishness ("zoquetadas") and get the garbage picked up.

Vallarino surely hopes to snap out of his losing streak with a successful series of Christmas village events on the Cinta Costera. But there, too, as this story was written, just a couple of days before the celebrations were to begin, the Comptroller General had not approved the city's expenditures for them. That could theoretically be another court case, but on January 1 there will be a change of comptrollers and even if there are grinch types and others who see the whole project as a waste of money, unless there's some serious corruption involved it would be a political non-starter to prosecute Vallarino over this issue.

But this is Panama, and one never knows.