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Back in 2000 the legislature took notice of the population growth in San Miguelito and created four new corregimientos. A city that started out as a late 50s squatter invasion that set up a little shantytown near the intersection of the Transistmica and road to Tocumen Airport, San Miguelito was formally recognized as a city in the 60s, and census takers counted 373,703 inhabitants there earlier this year. The four new municipal subdivisions --- Rufina Alfaro, Omar Torrijos, Arnulfo Arias and Belisario Frias --- today account for most of the city's population. But according to Mayor Héctor Valdés Carrasquilla, the creation of these corregimientos --- each with their representante on the city council, each with a corregidor to handle the minor legal matters, each with a junta comunal to carry out some of the city's neighborhood functions --- destroyed the city's finances.

Earlier this year, a special team of auditors found a different reason for the city's financial woes. It reported a scheme by which companies and individuals would pay their taxes and fees by check at City Hall, the City Treasurer would fail to record these checks and exchange  them for the currency from taxpayers who made their payments in cash, hand the money to other city officials --- said to be bagmen for the mayor --- and then deposit the checks into the city's Banco Nacional accounts. Acting on the auditors' findings, prosecutors opened a case against the mayor, claiming that at least $250,000 was siphoned off from the city in this way.

Standing back and looking at Panama's municipal finances in general, and taking notice that the majority of San Miguelito's population is poor, it becomes readily apparent that the city, like most municipalities, lacks its own sufficient resources to do the tasks assigned to it by the constitution and by the national government's laws. Traditionally what happens is that city governments get a certain amount of subsidy from the national government, the amount of which depends in large part upon whether the party or alliance of parties that controls City Hall aligns with the nationally ruling party or its opposition.

Valdés Carrasquilla, a former prizefighter who would have been a world champion but for a title bout without the three-knockdown rule, was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2009 on the PRD ticket. (What about that rule? In 1977 Valdés Carrasquilla fought Korea's Soo Hwan Hong for the WBA's world championship in the 122-pound classification. He knocked his opponent down four times in the second round, but in the third the Korean came back and knocked the Panamanian out.) Figure that, being an opposition mayor with a president apparently eager to create a one-party state by way of selective corruption prosecutions, and being caught in a pretty crude scheme, it would be a second-term political knockout for Héctor.

Ah, but the wily mayor switched sides, in a process that took months. PRD leaders allege that in order to be allowed to switch parties, and thus wipe away his legal problems, Valdés Carrasquilla was obliged to sign up 15,000 new Cambio Democratico members from San Miguelito. That done --- whether as a quid pro quo or not --- on October 25 President Martinelli came to San Miguelito for a ceremony in which the mayor switched to the president's party.

There ensued a number of firings of discretionary employees who remained loyal to the PRD, and many of those who had accrued civil servant status in the usual PRD stronghold found out on paydays that they weren't being paid. There were protests, lawsuits, and finally on November 17 city workers who hadn't been paid took to the streets, blocking traffic and beating on pots and pans in front of City Hall. Among those out in the street was Vice Mayor Larissa Montano, who has remained loyal to the PRD. The mayor dismissed the protest as politically motivated.

Valdés Carrasquilla also claimed that due to the holidays the tax collectors fell about $40,000 short of the $221,000 semi-monthly payroll for some 1,500 city workers. The public employees' union representatives countered that the problem could have been solved by getting rid of some of the mayor's expensive and unproductive aides. The mayor said that he was sending out his tax collectors to the city's richest neighborhoods, Brisas del Golf and Cerro Viento, to raise the money.

The tax collectors didn't raise all the money San Miguelito needed to meet the payroll, but the national government kicked in a special $1 million subsidy that should get the mayor through the holiday season at least.

So does the party switch eliminate, or just delay the mayor's problems? He was called for an indagatoria --- a formal questioning by prosecutors for use in a criminal trial --- in June. Other city workers, now mostly former public servants, gave damning testimony about the mayor. However, there has been no motion by prosecutors to bring Valdés Carrasquilla to trial.

On the other hand, the mayor was only re-elected by 582 votes and longer-standing members of the parties in Martinelli's alliance view him as an obstacle to their own ambitions. Their problem is that he wouldn't be the only person in their way. If the mayor is convicted of embezzlement and removed from office, then the PRD's Larissa Montano takes charge at City Hall.

And what if the national government embraces the mayor's suggestion and abolishes four corregimientos? That means that a couple of hundred thousand or more of the metro area's poorest people would get fewer city services and have less access to the legal system. That's not something that would offend the current right-wing government in principle, and as a matter of practical politics if national politicians stepped into the functions that local politicians abandoned, there could even be some future electoral advantage in that. Two of the four corregimientos that the mayor would eliminate have PRD representantes, while two elected Cambio Democratico people to the city council. However, a substantial majority of the people who would lose their jobs with neighborhood governments are PRD members.