letters

Good, bad and ugly situations,
and some that are hard to tell

Some clarification and rebuttal to your editorial

I forwarded your email "Preview of the next issue's editorials, and a warning" to many I know to alert them to the possible danger of travel at this time. I received this response from one of the members of RA.

"......As Warden of the American Embassy Doc Snyder has done his duty and informed the American community in Panama of its new consular fees. RA Washington (Chris Fussner) also advanced the information and it was duly sent to all registered RA members with the advice to get paperwork taken care of before July 13, and with none of the comments or insinuations attributed to us by Eric. Have the Democrats done as much?"

As one who desires to be "Fair and Balanced" I would suggest there was some editorial largess in you article as I also received the email "From RA National office: Consular Fees Set to Soar on 13 July" and in my reading of the email I did not see anything that would support your editorial statement:

Ah, but the Republicans would have the American people blame Barack Obama for the problems he inherited as well as for things that he has done and for a series of fantasies that originated in the minds of Tea Party fanatics but don't exist in the real world. So Republicans Abroad sent out an email to Americans living overseas, complaining across the board about the consular fee increases. As an illustration of what they're complaining about, they appended a list of the fee changes.

Among those is a $450 charge for renouncing one's US citizenship before an American consul.

Oh, boo hoo --- all you patriotic American voters should be shocked and outraged, and vote Republican, because people who want to invoke the legal procedures to renounce their US citizenship will have to pay for that service.

I sincerely appreciate your continued great work and depth of knowledge of the history of Panama and the USA. I trust you to believe that my response is given in open and honest heartfelt respect.

You were the only news source to cover with depth the shooting of my son in 2008. I will be forever grateful to your coverage.

The email I received did seem to me to be complaining unless you took the line "To RA members: Makes you wonder what people in the embassy do all day...." as more then a statement of frustration with bureaucrats in general. I also have my reservations to the increased cost of these services as I do not see what the cost is based on.

Tom Norcross

Editor's note: The editorial speaks for itself. Is it fair, when the Republicans complain, and append a list of all the service fee increases to their complaint? Actually, I think it goes right to the heart of the decision which US voters, including American citizens abroad, will be presented in November. It's unfortunate that few politicians of any party want to openly admit the depth of the economic crisis facing the United States, but it's very real and very hard decisions have to be made. There are various ways for opposition parties to behave, and unfortunately the way the GOP is behaving is to well nigh unanimously oppose all of the hard measures that are taken by the Democratic White House and Congress, while offering no coherent alternative of their own. When Republicans Abroad appends the new fee to renounce US citizenship to their litany of complaints, they really are asking for ridicule.

By the way, the local chapter of Democrats Abroad has conducted informational meetings about US government services available to Americans in Panama, and local Democrats are, like most other US citizens living here, concerned about the decline of consular services and the increases in their costs, a situation that has been ongoing for many years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

 
MIDES  awards acquisition contracts in a
way that violates the contracting law

Tuesday 27 of July, Panama America published this article: MIDES adjudica compras violando ley de contratación. 

It's about a widely used corruption scheme in the MIDES (and probably in other ministries, too).

MIDES is the Ministry for Social Developement, headed by Guillermo Ferrufino, a former TV showman (the "Qué tal si te digo" show) and former PRD member, who then converted to Cambio Democratico and was made a minister by Martinelli. Like several other top notches in Martinelli's cabinet, he has no particular qualification for his job, except having been quite popular for his TV show. Until a few weeks ago, he was even said to be a serious candidate for presidency in the elections of 2014.

This has changed profoundly now.

Not even two weeks ago, a functionary of the ministry, Gustavo Barahona, had claimed publicly that the ministry had awarded overpriced acquisition contracts to ERMIS SA, a company headed by Vassilios and Fotis Papadikis.

Instead of investigating the alleged corruption, Ferrufino fired the functionary, claiming that he had blackmailed him, and threatened that he would publish the case if he did not get certain favors. At this point Barahona gave the information to the press.

A few days ago, Ferrufino formalized the accusation of extortion, adding two other charges.

While it may or may not be true that Barahona tried to extort something from him, the fact remains that the company had been awarded overpriced orders for foodstuff in various cases, and that Ferrufino is deeply involved by advocating personally in letters to the Ministry of Economy and Finance (Vallarino) the direct contracting of the company in various cases and by authorizing heavily overpriced orders with his signature.

One example of such awards had been given by Barahona to the press and for some time this example had been handled as a single case where Ferrufino might have been responsible in his general responsibility as the Minister, but not personally. The amount of the order, of something less than $20,000 was depicted as being "a drop in the ocean" compared to the millions of dollars spent by the ministry.

This proved to be wrong quite soon. There are many orders of the same kind for the same provider and all have the same characteristics: systematic exclusion of any competition, either by direct contracting or by fake auctions. In the latter either only ERMIS made an offer or where there were only two offers, one by ERMIS SA and the other by ASTERAS SA, both owned by the same persons. One presented a slightly lower offer than the other and got the award.

One such order has recently been published here: Government overpays for groceries bought from the president's company, but this is by far not the biggest case.

Another order for about 3,500 Christmas bags containing food preserves valued between $55 and $80 each (1100 of the cheaper ones for the public and the others for the ministry's employees) for a total amount of little more than $200,000 was awarded to ERMIS in a direct contract justified personally by Ferrufino.

The problem is that neither the direct orders nor the fake auctions were legal.

Direct contracts can be awarded only if there is only one provider for a certain product, but the foodstuff that ERMIS offered was available in any supermarket at lower prices.

The law says also that an auction has to be considered failed if there are only offers from the same economic group.

Besides this, the fake auctions were characterized by extremely short timings (4 to 15 minutes from the publication to the presentation of the orders and two hours until the end of the auction) which made it impossible for anybody to compile and present a serious quotation, unless they had been informed previously and had all papers ready before the publication. The same scheme had been used by Bosco Vallarino for offers for the garbage trucks in PC.

Not all orders were signed personally by Ferrufino, only the bigger ones like the Xmas bags, so he cannot claim that he signed them all routinely without checking and thus did not know what he signed. And even if he should claim that he was not aware that these awards were illegal, they were obviously unethical, he knew about them, he advocated them and he is the head of the Ministry. It is obvious that a minister who does not know what he is doing has to go. 

But it looks like Martinelli and his cousin Fernando Núñez Fábrega (the "anti-corruption czar") want to downplay the scandal and whitewash Ferrufino.

Fábrega explained that there is nothing bad with overpriced offers because the providers cannot make lower prices due to the complicated bureaucratic steps they had to follow and the long time until they get paid. This is obvious nonsense and just shows that Fábrega is not in his office to fight corruption within the group of political friends.

Martinelli himself, very uncautiously, gave highest support to Ferrufino only a few days ago. (Martinelli brinda apoyo a Ferrufino.)

He said it is just a case of extortion, but Ferrufino should clarify the scandal.

The not so strange thing in this case is that until now the press reported only that the anti-corruption prosecutor accepted Ferrufino's extortion complaint, but nothing about investigations of the Public Ministry into the illegal awards. Bonissi appears to be more interested in punishing the whistleblower than to investigate the criminal activities in the ministry.

The good thing is that Panama has a publicly accessible Internet registry (Panama Compra) where all the offers and awards are published and can be looked up by anybody. The same thing is true for the public registry of companies, so independent from any investigative action or non action of the prosecutors, everybody can investigate and find out the bad and the ugly of what is happening to the tax money.

So Bonissi cannot sweep this affair under the carpet.

Something less public is the involvement of other persons and institutions.

Some of the awards for ERMIS were signed directly by Ferrufino, others were signed by leading employees of the ministry who can easily be identified.

But where was the control of the Contraloria, headed by Gioconda Torres de Bianchini, a former employee of Martinelli's Importadora Ricamar food importing company? Every award was signed by auditors of the comptroller. Are they blind, incompetent, part of the corruption, or had they been ordered to sign without questioning?

And if Ferrufino justified the illegal direct contracting of ERMIS in a personally signed letter to the Minister of Economy and Finance Vallarino, and if this minister had no legal objections, isn't he or his ministry then involved and responsible, too?

And if Fábrega, instead of investigating the malpractice, justifies it, isn't he also part of the corrupt system?

There will be some personal consequences that go beyond the political and criminal aspect of the story.

In an interview with Panama America's magazine "Siete" on June 11, 2006, the then TV star and father of three claimed to be an example for his son JR:

".... me imita en cada intento," he is imitating me in anything. And he confirmed that parents must be an example for their children. "If you are a bad father ... your son will think that this behavior is normal."

What will JR learn from his father now?

Thank you for news on Mr. Dunn

I was not aware of the fact that Errol was painting and so very well. I showed your article to my children and they are very proud of their uncle. Thank you from Columbia, SC.

 
Letter from US tourists on the situation in Panama

We are North Americans who visited Panama as tourists in June. We loved the amazing beauty of your country and the warm hospitality of its people. We would so much want to return for another visit in the future. But we are disturbed by the direction of the current government, and what it means for the future of tourism.

The new "Chorizo Law" makes Panama much less inviting for tourism.

Tourists will not want to visit a country that has weakened regulations to protect its rivers from mining wastes and hydro dams.

We will not want to stay at a hotel where construction workers have died in an avoidable accident, because their labor unions and safety protections have been diminished. And we do not wish to visit a country where we may see the police arrest pro-democracy activists --- or shoot down striking workers and indigenous people --- with little fear of punishment.

We were drawn to Panama because it seemed cleaner, more developed, and less repressive than much of the rest of Latin America. Now, we are beginning to see Panama as once again a place of fear and uncertainty. Until the recent trend is reversed, we will be advising our friends to visit other nations. We hope this trend will not last, and we will be able to return soon to your beautiful country.

What a great article by Raúl Leis

Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed the story on Father Héctor Gallego by Raúl Leis R.

I look forward to reading more of his articles in the future.

To wage an effective boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others, as listed below. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the drivers of the boycott were also the bulk of the system's ridership. The ensuing struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Wikipedia

Obviously copied, but the words were germane and I did not see the need to summarize. Hopefully some of the leaders will read about this boycott and do some serious research. The success of this led to others and culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The tools are all there. What alternatives did they offer? Some shared rides, most walked to work. For a little over a year! They knew that they were in this for the long haul. Blocking access only alienates those that you wish that would sympathize with you. Sitting at the lunch counter of F.W. Woolworth does just that. Beatings or death may very well be a by product of the boycott-is it worth it? In 1955 Alabama the boycott could have led to beatings and lynchings. Still the boycott endured. That's a question the protesters AND organizers need to answer. Running up and down the street yelling and inconveniencing others doesn't get it. Non-violence does.

Against ordaining women as priests

I commend the Vatican for reaffirming the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime."

At first sight it may seem that the demands of radical feminism in favor of a total equality between man and woman are extremely noble and, at any rate, perfectly reasonable. However, this kind of emancipation of women signifies that sexuality is no longer rooted in anthropology; it means that sex is viewed as a simple role, interchangeable at one’s pleasure. Logically this means that the whole being and the whole activity of the human person are reduced to pure functionality. Women, who are creative in the truest sense of the word by giving life, do not "produce," however, in that technical sense valued by a society that worships at the foot of efficiency. Ultimately, the emancipation proffered by radical feminists results only in women conforming themselves to a culture of production that seeks nothing but profit and power.

The Catholic Church holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church.

In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time.

There are countless other ways that women might serve the Church which are no less faithful to the Gospel.  In fact, Pope John Paul II has stated in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis  that "The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints."