editorial

Our compromised institutions

Social Investment Fund (FIS) director Giacaomo Tamburelli didn't use one of Panama's public institutions to conduct an audit of the governmental entity put into his hands. He hired a private CPA firm, and they found a vast history of abuses --- including many involving people aligned with President Martinelli's ruling coalition. So the word went out that the private audit was "unauthorized," the matter was referred to the in-house CPA for Martinelli's private companies --- update that, the new Comptroller General of the Nation --- and now Tamburelli has imposed a gag order on FIS employees.

Supreme Court magistrate Alberto Cigarruista boasted on a morning TV talk show that bribery was involved in the constellation of legislative scandals revolving around the approval of the CEMIS contract and the ratification of his own and colleague Winston Spadafora's nominations to the high court. Cigarruista claimed that he has known all along "who had given the money, whom had received it and who was passing it out," and that he had told the corrupt Attorney General of that time, José Antonio Sossa, and the soon-to-retire Archbishop of Panama Dimas Cedeño all about it. Sossa had no comment, while Cedeño acknowledged that there was a conversation but invoked priest and penitent confidentiality and declined to disclose its contents. Last year the high court revived the stalled investigation into the scandals, but once Martinelli's new appointees got on the bench and the political balance of the court shifted, Sossa's arguably ineffective but not obviously corrupt successor was removed in a constitution-busting process and the legislative bribery cases were split up, with those against PRD members being sent to Martinelli's acting attorney general and those against Cigarruista and Spadafora being sent to the Natonal Assembly, whose leadership announced in advance that they would not investigate the case.

Meanwhile questions are raised about National Police Chief Gustavo Pérez's activities during the dictatorship. He was second-in-command of one of General Noriega's elite goon squads, the UESAT "anti-terrorism" unit that was organized by Mossad agent Mike Harari and quickly became infamous for the bloody torture and execution purge it carried out among the ranks of the Panama Defense Forces. During the 1989 US invasion UESAT planned a number of abductions of US citizens, some of which were carried out. Two innocent American civilians were murdered in those UESAT kidnapping operations. But President Martinelli, who has brought the Mossad back to Panama. Martinelli has proclaimed his full support for the police chief and although his puppet acting attorney general says he will investigate it's not expected that it will be more than a thin pro forma exercise leading to an "exoneration."

A previous National Police chief, Daniel Delgado Diamante, had to step down about a murder charge dating from the days when he was a military officer during the dictatorship. Unlike your garden variety murder suspect, however, the former chief is not in custody. And about the time that former President Martín Torrijos made Delgado the police chief, he abolished the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) and absorbed it into the National Police, so that there could be no independent agency investigating abuses by the police.

In that law enforcement reorganization, the National Maritime Service (SMN) --- Panama's coast guard --- was reorganized out of existence after the US DEA caught its commander, Ricky Traad, in a drug sting. But in a long series of legal proceedings, which may yet be lengthened by a prosecution appeal, Traad has beaten the rap. The merger of the SMN with the former police air patrol, the National Air Service (SAN), also changed chairs on the deck in the wake of a scandal about the bad maintenance of a helicopter that crashed onto Avenida Central, killing high-ranking officers of Chilean and Panamanian law enforcement agencies. (They blamed the dead pilot, most unconvincingly, and paid off the Chileans.)

Our public schools are a mess as usual, and although Education Minister Lucy Molinar would have to outdo herself to be nearly as bad as the thugs who ran the ministry in the Torrijos and Moscoso administrations, she is neither an educator nor an administrator by profession. She's a television personality and Opus Dei religious right ideologue, stepping into a very difficult situation.

Do we even want to start the litany about the goings-on in city halls across this country?

So where does this ramble through the scandals lead?

It leads to the inescapable conclusion that the most important institutions in Panamanian society --- all branches of government, plus the church to which people have looked for moral guidance --- are discredited and in crisis.

The church will have to sort out its own problems --- any suggestion otherwise would be an obnoxiously totalitarian idea. The pope and the president have their legitimate concerns to express to one another, but they shouldn't be telling each other what to do, even in an overwhelmingly Catholic country like ours.

The state's problems need to be sorted out by the people --- not in another set of general elections at the end of another secretly funded campaign of idiotic slogans, but structurally in a process of convening a constituent assembly and writing a new constitution and culturally by way of public revulsion with all the old games.

Ground Control to Foggy Bottom...

Ah, yes. Hillary Clinton has released the 2010 version of the US State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. The massive document says, among other things, that:

When considering the movement of narcotics from South America to the US, Panama is the "mouth of the funnel." Drug loads are found in large quantities, providing US investment in counternarcotics efforts an immense "bang for the buck" effect against drug traffickers. Panama has a long tradition of close cooperation with the United States, as illustrated by Panama routinely reporting the highest cocaine seizure rates in Central America, but increased narcotics trafficking and associated violence is eroding public confidence in government institutions. Rising insecurity, increased narcotics related crime, and the increased presence of Mexican and Colombian trafficking organizations threaten to undermine Panama's democratic institutions. The new Panamanian administration has allocated more resources to its security organizations, and has made some needed changes, such as increasing police salaries, but Panama's justice and security organs remain weak and susceptible to the corrupting influences of drug trafficking organizations.

Gee --- they had to put out a special report to tell us that?

The above paragraph was from volume 1 of the report. Going on to volume 2, which covers the money laundering front, the State Department finds that:

The very factors that have contributed to Panama's economic growth and sophistication in the banking and commercial sectors --- the large number of offshore banks and shell companies, the presence of the world's second-largest free trade zone, the spectacular growth in ports and maritime industries, and the use of the US dollar as the official currency --- also provide an effective infrastructure for significant money laundering activity. The funds generated from illegal activity may be laundered through a wide variety of methods, including trade in merchandise, the Panamanian banking system, casinos, pre-paid telephone cards, debit cards, insurance companies, and real estate and construction projects. Substantial bulk cash smuggling facilitates the money laundering.

That the president of Panama's cousin, the former treasurer of the ruling Cambio Democratico party, formerly provided with a diplomatic passport as a member of the delegation that Ricardo Martinelli selected to represent his party in the Central American Parliament between 1999 and 2994, is now in a Mexican jail facing charges that he was a money launderer for one of the most vicious of all the international drug cartels was not considered worthy of mention.

And what about that "long tradition of close cooperation with the United States?" How many times has the US Embassy put on some dog and pony show with some Panamanian official, showing off donations of equipment, funding for this or that program or training for law enforcement people, and then some time later we learn that the official, or the institution she or he headed, has been corrupted by the drug cartels?

(Oh, that's right --- the guy in the highest profile case beat the rap. He told the judge that all that money that came into his life after he went on the front lines against the cartels came from gambling and the judge bought it. Or should we say that the judge was bought?)

But let us not be gringo hypocrites about this. Are we really to say that all those drugs get into the United States without the massive corruption of US law enforcement? Nobody who seriously considers that question believes that, but the State Department report doesn't have a section on the situation in the United States.

No, The Panama News does not call for a new set of "get tough on drugs" policies, either here in Panama or in the United States. We have heard that stuff for decades and seen it in action, and it is and has been a grand failure. No, it's not time to "get tough on drugs" but to get smart about drugs, and that entails ending the "War on Drugs" as we know it, enacting a new set of laws and policies aimed at preventing and treating addiction as a medical problem, and spending the money that goes into these pointless reports on something more productive.

Bear in mind...