news

Ricardo Martinelli installs Giuseppe Bonissi in a job that does not exist under Panama's constitution, "Procurador Suplente." It has taken about 11 months for this power grab to start falling apart in scandal. Photo by the Presidencia

The sleaze factor
by Eric Jackson

Politics is like chicken soup --- if you don't stir things up every now and then, a greasy scum rises to the top.

Abbie Hoffman

The final weeks of 2010 got underway with a coalition of civic groups' Human Rights Day declaration and 24-point litany of alleged abuses by the current administration, and, after a week of natural disasters, continued into a double-barreled set of political scandals that have people in the Martinelli administration pointing fingers at one another. On the domestic front the president probably has everything under control, but relations with the United States, which play crucial bit roles in each affair, have probably suffered long-term damage.

The Human Rights Day declaration

The Asamblea Ciudadana (Citizens Assembly) is in many ways an expanded version of the Alianza Ciudadana Pro Justicia. The Alianza is itself a coalition, two of whose major components are the Catholic Church's Justice and Peace Commission and the country's main bar association, the Colegio de Abogados. The Martinelli administration routinely blows it off as pompous, unelected and envious of his popular mandate. But for Human Rights Day (the December 10 anniversary of the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) we had in the Asamblea a coalition ranging from the Rastafarians and gay liberation (Asociacion de Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panama), to the Panamanian Business Executives Association and the National Union of Women Lawyers, issuing a stern and detailed blast. In its litany the Asamblea alleged:

• That civic groups were excluded from the National Transparency Council;

• That the civil service system has been scrapped in favor of political patronage;

• That the government has listened in on telephone calls without judicial warrants;

• That prison terms for juveniles have been unduly raised, and that 12-year-olds may now be tried as adults;

• That Executive Decree 263 of 2010 sets up a Security Council which has greater police state powers than those which Martinelli criticized the Torrijos administration for adopting;

• That the president's choices of Supreme Court magistrates were based on personal loyalty rather than qualifications;

• That vague laws about blocking the street have given the government the power to criminalize any protest with prison terms of up to two years;

• That Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez was improperly removed;

• That acting attorney general Giuseppe Bonissi was put into place in violation of the constitution;

• That prison guards and police were pardoned for violent criminal acts;

• That Law 30, the late "Chorizo Law," was abusive and improperly passed;

• That Executive Decree 537 of 2010 stripped the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca of the power to run its own elections and ultimately its own affairs;

• That the improper used of excessive force to suppress the Changuinola protests against Law 30 resulted in deaths and widespread injuries;

• That the round-up of 300 labor activists during the protests against Law 30 had no legal or constitutional basis;

• That journalists and civic leaders have been harassed by threats, warnings from "friends" and unjustified investigations;

• That the independence of news organizations has been attacked by uncalled-for tax audits of their parent companies;

• That asylum was improperly granted to a former Colombian spymistress who organized espionage against her country's Supreme Court and oversaw criminal activities directed against journalists, labor activists and civic leaders;

• That proposed changes to the Mining Code amount to a giveaway of Panama's natural resources to foreign companies;

• That mining projects that the government has approved and promoted would break up the Meso-American Biological Corridor;

• That the government has ignored the judgments of the Inter-American Human Rights Court with respect to the rights of indigenous people who are being dispossessed of their lands and water rights in favor of hydroelectric dams;

• That the government is neglecting to care for Panama's protected wild areas;

• That the government is violating historic preservation rules in the Casco Viejo, which UNESCO has declared a World Heritage Site;

• That the government botched this year's national census; and

• That the government has failed to provide the resources to implement equal opportunity laws.

The members of the Asamblea Ciudadana include the Asociacion Ecologista Panameña, the Asociacion de Derecho Ambiental, the Asociacion Panameña de Derechos Constitucional, the Asociacion Conciencia Ciudadana, the Alianza Ciudadana Pro Justicia (whose members in turn include the Colegio de Abogados, the Catholic Church's Comision de Justicia y Paz, the Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Libertad Ciudadana, the Union Nacional de Abogadas, the Consejo Nacional de la Empresa Privada, the Centro de Asistencia Legal Popular, the Asociacion Panameña de Derecho Constitucional, the Asociacion Panameña de Ejecutivos de Empresa and the Centro de Estudios y Accion Social Panameño), the  Alianza Rastafari, the  Asociacion Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panama, the Central Nacional de Trabajadores de Panama (CNTP), the Centro de Estudios, Promocion y Asistencia Social (CEPAS), the Centro de Estudios y Capacitacion Familiar, the Centro de Trabajo sobre Seguridad Social, Consumo Etico, the Coordinadora Nacional de Pastoral Indigena, Human Rights Everywhere, the Federacion de Asociaciones de Profesionales de Panama, the Federacion Independiente de Trabajadores Publicos de Panama (FITRAPP), Manos & Cerebros, the Movimiento de Abogados Gremialistas, the Movimiento de Ecologia Politica, Hombres y Mujeres Verdes de Panama, the Movimiento de la Juventud Kuna, Unidad de Lucha Integral del Pueblo (ULIP),  the Observatorio Panama Afro, the Sindicato de Periodistas de Panama, and Voces libres de Panama.

While public opinion polls indicate that most Panamanians are at the moment more concerned about the possibility of becoming a crime victim than about the principles of the rule of law, a wide spectrum of critics such as this will hinder President Martinelli's ability to mobilize public opinion over the longer term.

"I am sure that the ACP will know how to evaluate which is the best proposal and the most convenient for the country" --- Ricardo Martinelli at the July 8, 2009 third locks bidding award ceremony. Photo by the Presidencia

WikiLeaks bares US concerns about corrupt canal expansion bidding

It has been apparent for the past year that notwithstanding all declarations to the contrary coming out of both the US Embassy and the Martinelli administration, there are strains in relations between the United States and Panama. In this time there has been much speculation published about the problem, and a few salient facts from which things might reasonably be inferred have come to light. Then, on December 18, came the second batch of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables about Panama to be published. (The first was a diplomatic report nearly on the eve of the 1989 US invasion, and there are a total of 904 more cables from the US Embassy in Panama to be released.)

A demarche order from Hillary Clinton and eight US Embassy cables describe US concerns about the contest for the main canal expansion contract, the one for the new locks. The Obama administration had a favorite that it was actively promoting, the US-based Bechtel Corporation. But the Panama Canal Authority gave a huge margin on the "technical ability" side of the bid process to the consortium led by the almost-bankrupt Spanish Sacyr Vallehermoso. As former US Ambassador Barbara J. Stephenson put it in her cable to Washington:

The pre-announcement conventional wisdom on the technical plans was so prevalent that the audience collectively gasped when the Sacyr high technical score was announced. ...

After the award ceremony started, ACP and consortia officials retrieved the price envelopes from a nearby bank vault. The audience watched via streaming video projected onto giant screens, the OJ Simpson-esque drive to/from the bank and the "signing out" of the deposit box with the envelopes.

The base price proposals were $3.1 billion for Sacyr, $4.2 billion for Bechtel, and $6.0 for ACS, which led to financial point scores of 4000, 2980, and 2586, respectively. (The provisional prices were $103 million, $94 million, and $0, respectively.) The Sacyr base price elicited a cheer from the audience; many Panamanians are pleased that the locks may be built for less money than expected. Sacyr supporters cheered, because their victory was almost assured with the best technical score and lowest price. ...

Sacyr was expected to be the low ball bid.... It is widely expected that during construction, Sacyr will attempt to renegotiate the price with the ACP.

At a December 29 lunch with the Ambassador, Vice President/Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Varela expressed serious concerns about GUPC, raising the topic by saying dramatically, "The Canal expansion project is a disaster." He described the companies that are leading the consortium as being in deep financial trouble.... "In two or three years," he continued, "it will be obvious this was all a failure."

President Martinelli expressed similar doubts in a conversation with Ambassador on the margins of a [Government of Panama] presentation to [a US congressional delegation]. When the Ambassador asked how he thought the Canal expansion project was going, Martinelli grimaced and indicated he was a bit worried. He said that he feared that Canal Administrator Aleman might have tipped the bid toward the consortium that included CUSA, which is run by his cousin Rogelio Aleman.

So do people wonder why President Martinelli can't get a meeting with President Obama, and why the US president seems unwilling to submit the 2007 US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement to the US Congress for approval? There are other reasons, to be sure, a big one being Martinelli's alignment with right-wing Republicans. (His Minister of the Presidency, Jimmy Papadimitriu, is after all a former aide to incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner.) But this tale of bid rigging and US concerns about it is now out in the open courtesy of Julian Assange and it has taken on a life of its own. In Washington the Martinelli administration looks exactly as mobbed up as its critics here allege. In Panama, Martinelli and Varela look like two wimpish juvenile delinquents who were caught in the act and are now pointing fingers at others to escape blame.

Martinelli embellished the whiny finger-pointing image on the eve of the WikiLeaks release. On a December 16 trip to Washington, Martinelli met with right-wing business leaders, but was unable to get a meeting with Barack Obama. Just before setting out for Washington he demanded and received the resignation of the Panamanian ambassador to the United States, Jaime Alemán, the designated scapegoat for the cooling of US-Panamanian relations.

(Another factor cited by some observers of Alemán's dismissal was the early release of a Spanish-language version of the proposed US-Panamanian Tax Information Exchange Agreement to right-wing political circles in the United States. Obama was said to be annoyed by the leak, and Alemán may also be taking the fall for this, whether or not it was his doing.)

The year began with Martinelli's servile new Supreme Court majority removing Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez and then reinventing a position that had been eliminated by constitutional amendment in order for Martinelli to put an obsequious replacement in her post.

It wasn't long before that replacement, Giuseppe Bonissi, was shown to be extra-constitutionally dependent on the president by running a fool's mission to Costa Rica on Martinelli's orders to bring dubious criminal charges in the Costa Rican courts against a Costa Rican journalist. Under the Panamanian constitution the Attorney General (Procurador General de la Nacion) has a 10-year term, does not serve at the pleasure of the president and is in charge of overseeing the acts of all public officials, including the president. That case has dropped out of sight. Were it ever to come to trial, the Martinelli administration would be obliged to talk about the Panama Canal's defenses and this country's relations with Israel in a foreign court. That's because although the journalist's celebrated stories linked Martinelli to Mexican and Colombian mobsters, it's not a defamation case but instead based upon an allegation that by reporting on Israel's alleged role in Panama's security the journalist raised the risk of an al-Qaeda attack on the canal.

Upon taking office last February, Bonissi embarked on a vast purge of the Public Ministry, bringing in people loyal to himself, including some disgraced fellow veterans of the ministry's notoriously soft on corruption José Antonio Sossa years (1994-2004). The Public Ministry's guiding thoughts and thus its actions became quite predictable. The compass was set not on the basis of the laws and constitution but on the alignments of partisan politics.

As part of the ministry's purge and repopulation, one of the first people whom Bonissi brought in was Eva Lorentz as personnel director. Lorentz's qualifications are not known to the public and press. Under the Gómez administration every Public Ministry employee's academic credentials and employment history was posted on the institution's website, but Bonissi did away with that. He also ignored the legal requirment for a civil service hiring procedure for the personnel director post.

Lorentz was loyal to her boss. Through her, Bonissi gave his ex-brother-in-law, Carlos González González, a job as a Public Ministry driver --- despite González having been caught on three separate occasions for driving under the influence of alcohol. Early in December, Bonissi and Lorentz were seen amicably partying together at the ministry's Mother's Day celebration at the Marriott, where comedian Andrés Poveda and a couple of bands entertained.

However, other machinations were in the works.

On August 21, a two-seat, single-engine Cessna aircraft with United Nations and Red Cross markings landed on a private farm in the El Aromo neighborhood of the corregimiento of Santa Ana, Los Santos. It parked next to some mangroves, near a shrimp farm. Neighbors reported to police that two people got out of the plane, got into a waiting car, and sped away. Police confiscated the plane and presented it to the press as a trophy in the War on Drugs.

There was a problem. No drugs were found on the plane. No witness said that he or she saw any cargo being taken from the plane. In the plane's storage compartment were tanks of liquid, which left not much room for drugs or any other cargo. But police did an ion scan, which they claim showed that there were traces of drugs somewhere in the plane.

The ownership of the plane has not been ascertained. However, the proprietor of the farm where the plane was found and his son, plus their employee and a fourth man, were charged with drug trafficking and the three who were in police custody were ordered held without bail.

On October 26, a young lawyer named Milagros del Carmen Valdés started working as secretary general of the anti-drug prosecutor's office for Los Santos and Herrera provinces. The resolution by which she was hired was signed by Bonissi, allegedly upon Lorentz's recommendation. Less than one month later, after another personnel move, Valdés was made acting anti-drug prosecutor. Three days later, on November 25, she let the drug suspects out of jail. On December 3, she filed a motion with the court to dismiss the charges.

Then on December 6, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) complained to the Panamanian government about what Valdés had done. Bonissi sent in a team of prosecutors to investigate and they recommended that Valdés be fired and prosecuted for corruption.

The stories started to diverge. According to Bonissi and his loyalists, a $400,000 bribe was paid for the suspects' freedom. However, none of this money has been recovered or recorded, and the allegations are imprecise as to who purportedly received this bribe.

It is reported that in her indagatoria (questioning under oath for the trial dossier), Valdés denied taking money for what she did but alleged that the job she had was itself the payoff for her action. She allegedly claimed that the attorney for three of the four accused came to her in September and offered to get her a job as drug prosecutor, if in turn she would agree to liberate his clients. She allegedly claimed that Lorentz and the Public Ministry's secretary general, Nedelka Díaz, knew all about the deal. She reportedly added that Díaz personally knew the suspects.

Bonissi's right-hand man and fellow Sossa-era veteran Neftalí Jaén took day-to-day charge of the case and its associated publicity campaign. Prosecutors took selected reporters along for raids of Lorentz's office and home. Allegedly a Public Ministry stamp was found in her home.

Lorentz was in Austria attending a seminar when this scandal broke, and from there she vowed over the telephone to El Panama America that she would return to Panama and "tell all." Notwithstanding what Valdés reportedly said, according to Lorentz the decision to free the Los Santos drug suspects was proper because no drugs were found that could be reasonably linked to them. She vaguely alluded to rampant corruption in Bonissi's bailiwick:

In the institution there is a judicial terrorism sponsored by Giuseppe Bonissi and the drug prosecutors, and nobody dares to denounce the corruption.

Bonissi, too, talks of drug traffickers who have infiltrated the Public Ministry and built "a web of corruption" within it. But he says that he's not part of it, Valdés, Lorentz and Díaz are, and he's trying to get to the bottom of the situation. It's a hard sell, because these are all people whom he brought in.

The calls have been mounting for Bonissi's resignation --- from the opposition PRD, from the press, and most of all from leading figures in the Alianza Ciudadana Pro Justicia. Typical, but a bit more eloquent, among the published opinions was a column by Ebrahim Asvat, publisher of La Estrella and former chief of the National Police:

There is no doubt that Attorney General Guisseppe Bonissi should resign. His inability to create sufficient internal controls has led to the penetration of drug trafficking in the institution he runs. But that is not enough. The president is obliged to appoint decent, honest people with a deep love of the country. So long as he is looking for subjects, subordinates and friends that will not change.

The principal spokeswoman for the civil society alliance that's denouncing the Martinelli administration's corruption, Magaly Castillo, merely pointed out that it would be a conflict of interest for Bonissi to head an investigation now that there are people pointing the finger at him and that there are questioned personnel moves in which he was clearly involved. Add to the pressures on Bonissi allegations by some of the lawyers for the accused former ministry employees that evidence is being disappeared or manipulated. On top of that, recall that this is not a scandal that arose in the press, but a crisis sparked by the US government's complaint.

And so it was that on December 21 a committee of notables, including Felipe Rodríguez, Luis H. Moreno, Rubén Dario Carles, Rolando De León and Roberto Motta, paid a visit to Bonissi to ask for both probity and its appearance. After that meeting Bonissi said that he wouldn't resign, but that he would no longer participate in the investigations. He appointed Ángel Calderón to investigate Nedelka Díaz and Mercedes de León to investigate Milagros Valdés. Who would investigate Eva Lorentz, and who would investigate Giuseppe Bonissi, he didn't say.