Hernán De Leoó, the interim presiding magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice.
All is “interim” as the courts are swept up in a systemic impasse
by Eric Jackson
Anti-corruption activist Magaly Castillo, who heads the Catholic Church backed Alianza Pro Justicia, opines that it was appropriate under the circumstances. Anti-corruption activist and law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal notes that the circumstances, which include the legislature’s 52-18 rejection of anti-corruption prosecutor Zuleyka Moore as a high court nominee, have to be taken as terrible disgrace by the thousands of people who work at the Public Ministry. (President Varela did not consult with the public or the Colegio Nacional de Abogados about his two rejected Supreme Court nominations, but he did vet Moore with all of the senior prosecutors at the Ministerio Publico.) From the judiciary we get assurances that all is functioning normally.
Normally, though, the president and legislature had until December 31 to agree on nominees to replace two magistrates whose terms were expiring, the penal bench’s Oydén Ortega and the civil bench’s Jerónimo Mejía, then the first thing in January the high court was supposed to meet with the new members and choose a presiding magistrate and the chiefs of the penal, civil and administrative benches. But those process did not happen, Mejía and Ortega remain on the bench until replacements are duly nominated and approved and meanwhile the corruption firestorm that has been sweeping over the entire Panamanian body politic centers over the courts at the moment with not only high court controversies but a lower court judge facing trial for corruption in one of the highest profile of all the Martinelli corruption cases, the one that could lead to a murder charge against the former president.
President Juan Carlos Varela is also talking in calm tones as he indicates that he’s in no hurry to fill the Supreme Court vacancies. “Let’s let people enjoy the dry season and Carnival in peace,” he said at a January 31 ribbon cutting for a newly paved section of the Pan-American Highway in Darien.
A cynical argument might be made for the proposition that Panamanian politics has always operated on the principles of bribery and betrayal and will continue to do so. There is plenty of historical evidence for that, albeit that outlying personalities or events like coups, invasions and assassinations have from time to time disrupted the order. But what then? A president with only a 16-seat party caucus in the 70-member National Assembly would be expected to buy the rest of the votes he needs, a procedure with precedent in this country’s history. But Varela’s erstwhile chief of staff and two other witnesses say that he took millions of dollars from Odebrecht and the process of purchasing another 20 votes for ratification could probably not pass undetected and undenounced. If executive, legislative, judicial and prosecutorial branches of government may all pale before the institution of bribery, the politics of corruption are also broken down at the moment. At least they probably are insofar as a president’s ability to bribe the legislature to approve Supreme Court nominees.
So José Ayú Prado resigned as Supreme Court presiding magistrate and as head of the penal bench. He’s not leaving the court altogether. The remaining nine magistrates, Ortega and Mejía among them, chose Harnán De León as the interim presiding magistrate and Harry Díaz as the interim head of the penal bench. Courts, prosecutors and police give their assurances that everything is proceeding as normal. Perhaps the subtext is that any maleantes who have ideas of an extra gangster Christmas should get those notions out of their heads. We are not seeing more than the usual disorder on the streets.
Meanwhile another case with far-reaching political implications has erupted in judicial scandal. On January 16 a citizen came forward to prosecutors with several folders of files said to have been found alongside the highway in front of the hardscrabble Arraijan neighborhood of Loma Cova. These were the missing parts of the High Spirit financial fraud case, which had been delayed by the files’ absence.
High Spirit was the name of a special account that former president Ricardo Martinelli maintained at the now closed by authorities Financial Pacific brokerage. After eventual intervention by the Securities Markets Superintendency (SMV), Financial Pacific hired criminals to erase its more sensitive electronic files. But the High Spirit account was about international transactions that would register in several countries. Bottom line, Martinelli was running a pump and dump insider trading in gold mine stock shares swindle. The shares were of Petaquilla Minerals, the parent company of Petaquilla Gold, which had a mine, now a toxic hole in the ground, in northern Cocle province. Originally owned and hyped by convicted drug dealer and ousted at the behest of his own Liberal Party governor of Cocle Richard Fifer, the entire premise of that mine was that it might show a profit if environmental and labor laws were disregarded, but on the financial side the word “gold” attracts a steady stream of sucker investors. In addition to the uncleaned mess Fifer, controlling owner prior to and after Martinelli’s insider trading scheme, is facing criminal charges related to the miners’ contributions to the Social Security Fund having been deducted from their paychecks and appropriated by management.
The insider trading was revealed in 2012, and SMV senior analyst Vernon Ramos was investigating the case. He was disappeared that November. Shortly afterwards now imprisoned then high court magistrate Alejandro Moncada Luna quashed the investigation, maintaining that insider trading on stock shares traded on foreign exchanges is not a crime in Panama. Financial Pacific, like Pipo Virzi’s associated Banco Universal — also since closed by authorities here — has something of a clearing house for many sorts of financial crimes and after Martinelli left office that brokerage was shut down and investigations started or were restarted. As to the former president, of course, only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to investigate. However, there would have been accomplices in the High Spririt scheme and the case against them would be via the ordinary courts and prosecutors. People convicted or about to be convicted might make deals with prosecutors in exchange for their testimony, and at the top of the list of High Spirit things that prosecutors should like to know are the details of the disappearance and probable murder of Vernon Ramos.
(Panamanian authorities would not be the only ones with jurisdiction over or knowledge of key aspects of the High Spirit scheme. Petaquilla Minerals shares were registered on Vancouver’s stock exchange, which would make insider trading a matter for British Columbia provincial authorities and perhaps associated financial crimes Canadian federal offenses. Martinelli’s insider trades were routed through a Danish firm, which conducted the trades largely on Germany’s DAX exchange, sending the proceeds to a South Korean “mirror company” that looked like but wasn’t the industrial giant Samsung. How good is encryption? That’s the most guarded of secrets for all of the major powers’ spy agencies, but even if the US National Security Agency can’t read the contents of Martinelli’s High Spirit transactions, it would have records of their electronic trails. Probably the US allies in the NSA’s universal spying project, the British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander counterparts, would also know. Very likely the Chinese and the Russians, and probably some other powers, would have the record as well. Revealing what they have and are capable of getting in a Panamanian corruption case is something that none of these powers are likely to do.)
In any case, with pending motions for bail and to throw out the entire High Spirit case on a statute of limitations theory, the file went missing. But it was found by a motorist and taken to prosecutors. Judge Felipe Fuentes López said that it was an error by an assistant who was getting ready for a February office move by transporting files on the back of a motorcycle. Prosecutors and the Supreme Court — which has superintending control over lower court judges — don’t buy it. The initial charge was that those documents were under seal and that by putting them in the hands of someone else to be taken out of the courthouse for whatever purpose was a violation of the law regarding the handling of sealed court documents. In preliminary moves Fuentes has been suspended from the bench. Decisions on whether the case goes to trial, and whether Fuentes will be out on bail or behind bars if that case progresses, are pending before Judge América Vergara. By accepting the imputation of Fuentes as a suspect in that narrow case, Vergara opened a full investigation that could lead to far more serious charges and other defendants.
Thus, not even taking into account the many pending or done and controversial rulings in dozens of political corruption cases, the Supreme Court is irregular these days and it will be weeks or months before any move is made to change that. The rest of the court system and the prosecutors of the Public Ministry have been under clouds of suspicion for some time. Now Ricardo Martinelli’s probable extradition from Miami may bring him to trial before a high court with temporary magistrates and short-handed in with respect to suplentes (alternate magistrates).
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Zuleyka Moore, the lady in red, and Ana Lucrecia Tovar, to her immediate right, fraced different sorts of questions about their qualifications but those were minor considerations in what ended up as a partisan showdown. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.
CONSTITUTIONAL CRASH!
by Eric Jackson
After a several times delayed vote, the National Assembly finally got down to voting on Presiden Juan Carlos Varela’s two high court nominees on the afternoon of January 30. It was a terrible rout, with civil bench nominee Ana Lucrecia Tovar de Zarak and penal bench nominee Zuleyka rejected by identical 52-18 margins. Voting for the nominees were 16 Panameñista deputies, their lone ally from the Partido Popular Juan Carlos Arango and José Muñoz, the party hopping deputy who was elected on the Cambio Democratico slate but has started his own franchise, the Alianza party. The PRD and all factions of CD — Martinelli and Roux supporters and those likely to splinter off into a new Evangelical party or jump to Muños’s formation if the price is right — voted against Varela’s nominees.
To be sure, Tovar was a singularly unqualified nominee. A few minutes of questions from former judge, anti-foreigner demagogue and potential presidential candidate Zulay Rodríquez amply demonstrated to the nation that although Panama has no bar exam, if we did Tovar would flunk it. A career in partisan policy making posts at regulatory agencies left her as a nominee for the civil bench who had never litigated a civil case.
Moore knows the law and has been in the criminal law trenches as a prosecutor for many years. Cambio Democratico folks objected to their party comrades being charged by her in her role as anti-corruption prosecutor, and many who would like to see Martinelli and many of his associates jailed and disgraced thought her ineffectual against corruption. From back in her days as prosecutor in Guna Yala, there were objections to her insistence that indigenous languages are not to be used in the legal system regardless of laws recognizing their status.
But none of that mattered. What mattered were two things: a power struggle in which the opposition parties have united to render Varel ineffectual between now and the 2019 elections, and the fact that three well placed witnesses and a paper trail say that Varela took millions of dollars from Odebrecht. Varela says that he will now have to restart the process and find some new nominees. Perhaps he can offer a deal that the PRD or the CD caucus would accept to break the impasse.
However, things look bad for a president with well short of a majority of supporters in the legislature and whose own former chief of staff and minister without portfolio — Ramón Fonseca Mora, of Mossack Fonseca notoriety — is among his now several accusers. Varela ran for office promising a constitutional convention, then broke that promise with the explanation that he could not control the outcome of such a constituent assembly. He may have to reverse course again, this time fairly certain that things will never again come under his control but with the knowledge that dramatic measures may be needed just to run the country from day to day.
Unless and until some new high court nominees are appointed to replace the outgoing magistrates Jerónimo Mejía and Oydén Ortega, those two remain on the high court. But the country is beset by scandals and lower court rulings that nothing can be done about any of it. The Supreme Court has been treading water while waiting for new magistrates. The judicial branch is thus also caught in a crisis.
The legislature? Perhaps they can muddle through with a stalemated executive and a dysfunctional judiciary, but the deputies are well aware of public mood that’s likely to spell defeat for almost all who try for re-election.
Were all this happening with an obvious alternative out there, then the entire governmental system could hobble along until the May 2019 elections resolve matters. But Panama is not that stable. We are into a time of crisis and uncertainty, perhaps with the police maintaining some street-level order but most higher governmental functions failing.
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High levels of antibiotic resistance
found worldwide, new data show
by the World Health Organization (WHO)
WHO’s first release of surveillance data on antibiotic resistance reveals high levels of resistance to a number of serious bacterial infections in both high- and low-income countries.
WHO’s new Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System (GLASS) reveals widespread occurrence of antibiotic resistance among 500 000 people with suspected bacterial infections across 22 countries.
The most commonly reported resistant bacteria were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae, followed by Salmonella spp. The system does not include data on resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis (TB), as WHO has been tracking it since 1994 and providing annual updates in the Global tuberculosis report.
Among patients with suspected bloodstream infection, the proportion that had bacteria resistant to at least one of the most commonly used antibiotics ranged tremendously between different countries — from zero to 82%. Resistance to penicillin — the medicine used for decades worldwide to treat pneumonia — ranged from zero to 51% among reporting countries. And between 8% to 65% of E. coli associated with urinary tract infections presented resistance to ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat this condition.
“The report confirms the serious situation of antibiotic resistance worldwide,” says Dr. Marc Sprenger, director of WHO’s Antimicrobial Resistance Secretariat.
“Some of the world’s most common — and potentially most dangerous — infections are proving drug-resistant,” adds Sprenger. “And most worrying of all, pathogens don’t respect national borders. That’s why WHO is encouraging all countries to set up good surveillance systems for detecting drug resistance that can provide data to this global system.”
To date, 52 countries (25 high-income, 20 middle-income and seven low-income countries) are enrolled in WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Surveillance System. For the first report, 40 countries provided information about their national surveillance systems and 22 countries also provided data on levels of antibiotic resistance.
“The report is a vital first step towards improving our understanding of the extent of antimicrobial resistance. Surveillance is in its infancy, but it is vital to develop it if we are to anticipate and tackle one of the biggest threats to global public health,” says Dr. Carmem Pessoa-Silva, who coordinates the new surveillance system at WHO.
Data presented in this first GLASS report vary widely in quality and completeness. Some countries face major challenges in building their national surveillance systems, including a lack of personnel, funds and infrastructure.
However, WHO is supporting more countries to set up national antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems that can produce reliable, meaningful data. GLASS is helping to standardize the way that countries collect data and enable a more complete picture about antimicrobial resistance patterns and trends.
Solid drug resistance surveillance programs in TB, HIV and malaria have been functioning for many years and have helped estimate disease burden, plan diagnostic and treatment services, monitor the effectiveness of control interventions, and design effective treatment regimens to address and prevent future resistance. GLASS is expected to perform a similar function for common bacterial pathogens.
The rollout of GLASS is already making a difference in many countries. For example, Kenya has enhanced the development of its national antimicrobial resistance system; Tunisia started to aggregate data on antimicrobial resistance at national level; the Republic of Korea completely revised its national surveillance system to align with the GLASS methodology, providing data of very high quality and completeness; and countries such as Afghanistan or Cambodia that face major structural challenges have enrolled in the system and are using the GLASS framework as an opportunity for strengthening their AMR surveillance capacities. In general, national participation in GLASS is seen as a sign of growing political commitment to support global efforts to control antimicrobial resistance.
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Pastor, Balboa Union Church, 1964-1969 and 1986-1990
photo and interview from the Balboa Union Church archives
The following is an edited transcript of the memories of Balboa Union Church minister Clarence C. Payne as interviewed by Sharon Parris-Chambers on August 18, 2010.
Sharon conducted the interview via Skype from Jamaica while Rev. Payne was visiting in Panama at Sue Robbins’s house. The transcript is a compilation of Sharon’s notes and Sue Robbins’ notes.
Clarence began by giving a short history of the Union Churches of the Canal Zone.
REV. PAYNE: The Canal was built by the US from 1904 to 1914. During that early period, many of the American workers came from the American South. They were mostly white and mostly Protestant. There was a desire, a need to continue spiritual life; so here in the Canal Zone, they ran Sunday schools in the YMCAs and other informal recreational buildings such as the clubhouses. In the early years, the Panama Canal Company provided chaplains to conduct services in these places for the workforce.
As time went on, as more workers began to bring in their families and permanent communities were created, they perceived the need to have their own churches.
Towards that end, they did some intelligent thinking: Let’s not replicate what we have in the US with various denominations of churches at four corners of an intersection. Let’s combine the denominations into a union church. The Episcopal church couldn’t support that, and they established their own churches. The Baptists did the same. But among other denominations, there was an effort to establish interdenominational churches, union churches. The National Council of Churches took this on, and inside their offices at 475 Riverside Drive in New York City they opened an office of Union Churches in the National Council of Churches. The National Council of Churches had no authority over the Union Churches, but they offered support, in any case.
So the Union Churches of the Canal Zone came to be, prior to the opening of the Canal. There is a tremendous history book on the Union Churches, called Christian Cooperation at the Crossroads of the World by Rolofson that goes up through the 1940s. We called it “The Red Book.” It was an excellent book, and I have an extra copy that I would be glad to donate to the church. Rev. Clarence McConkey wrote a sequel that brought the history up to the 1980’s.
In any case, the union church movement caught fire. There were between seven and nine union churches in the Canal, each with its own building. Balboa Union Church, Gamboa, Pedro Miguel, Gatun, Margarita, Cristobal (a beautiful stone building) and one on the West Bank, whose name I don’t remember. Every one of them brought pastors down from the States. They chose a joint mission statement, and they called themselves the overarching title, “Union Church of the Canal Zone.” As far as I know, this is still the legal entity with Gamboa and Balboa still yoked. I believe there were only two churches in the world incorporated by an Act of the US Congress; I don’t remember what the other was, but one of them is the Balboa Union Church.
SHARON: Why did the US Congress do that? Do you have the sense that they were trying to push a certain doctrinal theology into the Canal Zone and Panama?
REV. PAYNE: I don’t know. Except, of course, that the Canal Zone was a territory by treaty of the United States Government. Certainly, in the early 1900s the US was a Protestant, Christian country. Protestantism ruled. There were Catholic immigrants, but the dominant religious movement was Protestant.
SHARON: Were the Union churches inter-dependent, or were they operated separately?
REV PAYNE: Yes, they were interdependent, and then later they became completely independent from one another.
Meanwhile, during this period, the Canal Zone, churches thrived. They were very active centers of religious and community life. I might add that in those early days, community life was centered around the churches and the Masonic movement. Most parishioners were also Masons. The Masonic lodges held dances with gloves and hats.
People were making good money, and the working conditions were pleasant; so they had time and money on their hands. Masonry thrived because it is essentially a Protestant organization. This is an aside, but in those early days, I am told the Masons and the Protestants would look after one another. If there were two people that were equally qualified, they hired the Protestant or the Mason. I, of course, arrived in Panama and became a Mason.
SHARON: What brought you to Panama?
REV. PAYNE: I graduated from Princeton in 1962 with two masters. I married a beautiful Colombian woman (Rosita). After graduation, I looked for a church overseas, somewhere we had not been before. Since Rosita was born and schooled in Colombia, the Latin American region was a favorable area to look. I had also hoped to learn a little Spanish.
We were called to Gatun, where we helped to renovate the church. We had a baby, Anita; and it was a small community of 300 people. I think we brought in air-conditioning. We had a great experience there. It was a radical shock to me, as I had always been in big churches in the inner city. This was small-town living with all its intimacies and issues.
I came in ’62, and on this side in ‘63 the Balboa Union Church called Dr. Frank Tobey, Jr. He had been chief of chaplains for the Army. He was probably a two-star general. And he liked being overseas, so he accepted the job — and that did not work at all. He was The General and used to giving orders. Ministers are supposed to accept orders. He was a real shock for the congregation, and they were a shock for him.
I might interject another thought: as we all know the, Canal Zone was not democratic. The Governor and staff made all the rules and called the plays. People did feel inhibited and repressed, because they always had to accept the dictates from “on high.” But in the churches and the Masonic lodges, they could take the opportunity to express themselves. As officers of the church council, they could voice their views and express their votes in ways they could not in their workaday world. So as a minister, you had to be very nimble on your feet. The officers of the church were often very strong, as church work was the one place where they could exercise authority.
Frank Tobey did not get along well with this group; he lasted one year. I was 28, and I had served the Gatun Church for two years, and they said well, that young guy over in Gatun, he’s got promise. They came over and Margaret Murphy Hughes had a very significant role in hiring me. She lost a daughter — her only child — in an early age, and the Balboa Union Church library is dedicated to her daughter.
Speaking of monuments, at the bottom of the hill here on the church lawn, right down by the corner, there is a monument to a milkman, who was driving down that hill one day and the brakes failed on his truck. He purposely pulled the truck over and was killed to avoid missing children; and they put up that monument in his memory.
So when the time came to construct the building of this church they initially built one floor, because they couldn’t afford the second floor. The initial one-storey building was open all the way from the front door to the kitchen. None of the present rooms were there. It was open from the front to the back, and they would just form circles for Sunday school. For the building of the second floor, the Rockefellers gave a large sum of money through the National Council of Churches.
So I was called to the Balboa Union Church in 1964, David was born in the first year I served. This truly was the “Hay Day” of the church. We had two ministers. We bought the building across the street. We had Sunday School classes in all four apartments and in the basement, a thriving Sunday school program. The basement was lined with classrooms. It was all air-conditioned; very comfortable spaces. The first thing I did when I arrived, because the people were eager for it, was we renovated the church. It had been very stark and bare.
To give you some idea, the church was built in the era before public address systems. The pastor would stand at the front of the church, far away from the people, at a huge podium made of dark, heavy wood. This pulpit was a massive piece of furniture that was on four rollers and sat quite high. When it came time for the minister to give his sermon, four ushers would come forward in suits and ties with great decorum, and they would push the pulpit towards the pews to get the minister close enough to the people to be heard (like Caesar on a bark.) There may still be pictures of that.
Anyway, that was the first thing to go when I got there. That red curtain at the front, I worked with Mr. Weed to put up that red tapestry that is in the front, and I personally designed and ordered the baptismal font and the communion table and the several stands and the two podiums. I also brought in air-conditioning. These changes were all greeted with a lot of enthusiasm, and attendance doubled in those years — probably because of the air-conditioning!
Those were exciting days. We had a very active scouting program, mission program, and youth program. We had a big choir, and two services. It was a wonderful time in the life of the church. Membership was 600 and attendance was 300 in the two services.
I never liked the name because “union” can make it so many things, but we were successful in drawing a number of people from Panama. The Fords, the Canavaggios, a number of bankers, people from the embassy. During those years, it was the Civil Rights Movement in the US, and Martin Luther King said that “11 o’clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour in America.” Of interest to you, of course, during my tenure of five or five and a half years we welcomed a fine couple with two children with the Embassy, and they joined the church, and he sang in the choir. It was 1968, and this was the first black family at BUC.
We were bringing in new members every month. As I recall, I didn’t take new members through the Council; I just presented them. There was no question about bringing people in. Another new member was Ambassador Huang, who was a very prominent person in Panama. He was among the group that freed Generalissimo Shang Hai Shek from captors. He was the senior member of the Taiwan ambassador corps, and I helped him write his memoirs. He opened his house to the church, and we enjoyed a wonderful friendship.
Other people that stood out: Bob Worsley came down during the construction era. Indeed when President Jimmy Carter came to see the Canal after the signing of the Treaty, several people were presented to him, including Bob Worsley. He always told stories from the Construction Era. Bob Worsley came as a paymaster for the Canal and would talk about walking from Chorrera for the dances at the Tivoli Hotel.
We served the church during an exciting period of time. I joined the Navy League and the American Society; these were the pillars in the Canal Zone community — a closed community. There were religious people, too: Rabbi Witkin lived in the JWB. The planes used to come down and take off from the Albrook airport, and one crashed into his house and killed his wife.
There was Rev. Bill Bibi, pastor of the First Baptist Church, and there was Bishop Goodin of the Episcopal Cathedral. The Episcopal hierarchy was pretty much kept in white hands, especially in the Canal Zone. The Episcopal churches of Panama and the Canal Zone were all integrated under one umbrella, and Bishop Goodin presided over the Episcopal churches of Panama and the Canal Zone.
When he left, the position went to a Panamanian of color, and that was quite a big move which caused great rejoicing by people in Panama. I might add that Tom Ford’s cousin was an Episcopalian priest who wanted to be bishop, and he was white, and when it was given to a Panamanian, he quit the church and went into business.
There were Americans who had established businesses in Panama but who had started with the Canal. Mary Carter’s husband was one. Mary was the mother of Lalu Carter and Mary Giraldez. I have a hunch that her father worked on the locks but saw business opportunities too good to pass up.
We served the church from ’64 to ’69, when I had the desire to get a PhD. I wanted a new challenge. It was very hard to say good-bye. The church was very good to us. The reception for our leaving happened to be the night the first American walked on the moon. July 20, 1969.
Clarence McConkey came with four children, and the church thrived, until the Americans began to leave.
SHARON: How did you find the integration into Panamanian Society?
REV. PAYNE: You didn’t have to integrate into Panama Society because the Canal Zone was a society unto itself. There was that portion of society who actually would brag about not going into Panama and who didn’t learn Spanish, and so that is kind of the stereotype of the society. There were two faces to the Canal Zone society. They were a minority, and some built businesses. There were people who were eager to learn Spanish. We didn’t integrate into Panama Society. We integrated into Canal Zone society, through the American Society in Panama and the Navy League. And Rosita and I actually regret that we didn’t live in Panama. Rosita was very active with the Soroptomists.
In Missions, the church supported Glen Fronte and his work in the Darien. We also supported the missionary pilots and the Salvation Army in Panama. Bob Morrison was in charge of the YMCA, and we had significant involvement with that organization, too. the Morrisons.
One of the interesting stories: for the Atlantic Side Union Churches, they had a special interest in the Kuna Indians from the San Blas Islands. As a group of churches, we sent the chieftain to a Bible school in the States. He eventually became Mavel Iglesia’s husband. She wrote books about the culture. We supported them. The Union churches built them a home, and the home is where you turn off the Transisthmian on the road to Porto Bello. There’s a beautiful stone and brick house on the left side of the road that was built especially for the Iglesia family.
The Union churches were mission-oriented. We were very close with and supportive of Missionaries who came to Panama. There were two Methodist groups: the American group was led by Millie and Walter Reitz, and they were prosthelytizing as Methodist missionaries building schools in Panama. IPA, IFARU, others. The British group was led by Charles Butler. One church was right down on the water near the old Union Club. We would also go to worship services in Panama. We had an association of pastors for the Atlantic Side and Pacific Side on both sides of the Isthmus. I was the president of that. A British Methodist, Rev. Vick Watson came in the ‘60s to Colon, which was a difficult place. He built a school, and we supported that and were part of that.
So there was an integration, and one cannot say that the Union churches turned their backs on the mission opportunities in Panama. David and Joyce Woolsey came, too, and served churches in Panama and adopted a Kuna Indian into their family.
Panamanians were most welcome at the Balboa Union Church. But it was an English-speaking church. Rosita was a great help on this. That was a new move for this church, to have a pastor with a Latina wife. Until us, the pastor’s wife and family were lily white.
As an aside, when the Gatun Union Church wanted to call me, I was 25 years old and still at Princeton, and I sent my resume, which stated that my wife’s name was “Rosita.”
They wrote back to ask if they could have a picture of my wife. To confuse them, we sent them a picture taken of both Rosita and her sister, who is much whiter than Rosita. We figured, “Let ‘em guess.”
In terms of missions, like the British empire around the world, there was probably a sense, “We are the well-to-do and we want to help the needy,” with maybe some elitism and superiority. I know we were sensitive to helping Panama, and we did not turn our backs on the Missionaries.
SHARON: You had raised an interesting point that the Methodist missionaries, Walter and Millie Reitz, built schools as a means of proselytizing. Could you expand on that?
REV. PAYNE: It is my understanding that at some point all the missions societies in the various denominations in the US — the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists — divided up the world so they would not compete with each other.
“Presbyterians, you take your missionary work to Colombia and Costa Rica. Methodists, you take your mission work to Panama.” The effect was that there were no Presbyterian missionaries in Panama, and there were no Methodist missionaries in Colombia. It was a “comity” arrangement by the mission boards. And other countries, as well.
When you think about it, there is not a word about Presbyterian mission work in Panama — and vice versa in Colombia. (Obviously, there are some that never cooperated because the Baptists are everywhere.) But decisions were made in these Catholic countries — especially in Colombia — that the way to “get in” was to build schools. I can speak more about Colombia because I know it well. The Presbyterians built the finest schools there. They were private school, they weren’t missionary schools for the poor. They wanted to reach the middle class and the upper middle class, and Rosita went to these schools all her life. They’re all over Colombia, in all the cities, and they thrived; and Chapel was required every day.
Back in that day, Jewish people –- Rosita and her class, I’m an adopted member of her class — there were the public schools with poor education, private Catholic schools, Colegio Americano de Barranquilla. Jewish people didn’t want to send their kids to public schools, and they didn’t yet have schools of their own that they could attend. They wouldn’t send their kids to the Catholic schools –- “You killed Jesus” –- so they attended the Presbyterian schools. They attended Chapel every morning, but I would not say that they were proselytized. These schools were not built on the notion of “Accept Jesus and be saved.” Instead, they taught the golden rule and “Jesus loves you.” They taught Christians morals and values. And everybody had to go to that chapel.
Catholic families would send them for the English, and the Jewish students were there because there weren’t any Jewish schools –- with the result that Protestants were the minority in Rosita’s class; Jews and Catholics were the most. There were Bible classes every day. As an aside, we still get together for annual reunions, and we go down to the same chapel where they would go, and these are elderly Jews and Catholics sing with great enthusiasm “Onward Christian Soldiers.” I tried, but I couldn’t get them to give up those old songs. They insist; they are the songs of their youth.
And that’s about all I can tell you.
SHARON: Thank you, Rev. Payne, for your time and insight.
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A 2013 New York City protest against private prisons. The crime rate has gone down since then, but the private prison business is booming, in part because of the white supremacist Trump regime’s ICE roundups sending many more people to private immigration slammers. The private prison business buys politicians on both sides of the US partisan divide. Photo by VOCAL-NY.
Prison privatization: Varela copies one
of the ugliest features of the US system
It’s not just a lack of imagination. It’s not just a fawning attitude. It’s not just the absence of patriotism. President Varela’s decision to put out the maintenance of a new prison in Chiriquí for bids by private contractors is, to be sure all of those things. But most importantly, and coming from a guy who took millions from Odebrecht and then lied to us about it, it’s a structural incentive for corruption.
Oh, sure. It might be said that what is intended here is not like in Jim Crow, where after slaves were formally freed a Southern police state railroaded blacks through the criminal justice system and into a system of “convict leasing” in which plantation owners used convict labor instead of slave labor, with little practical difference between the two things. It might be said that this is not like the US system of manufacturing that undercuts both union labor and minimum wage by paying prisoners pennies an hour to do assembly work. It might be said that this is not quite like the completely privatized immigration prisons that Donald Trump is stuffing past capacity with roundups not only of people in the United States illegally, but also of citizens and legal immigrants who come under suspicion for having brown skin or being heard speaking Spanish. ‘White supremacist? Who, ME?’ the president and members of his brain trust may protest.
But at the end of the day, any private company performing any task in Panama’s prison system sees its profits go up when more people get sent to prison. It’s a powerful incentive to prevail upon police, prosecutors and judges to send more people to prison, whether or not there is any justice or wisdom in that.
In the United States there are judges serving long prison sentences for selling youths who did little or nothing to private juvenile detention centers. Those are the arrogant ones who were caught taking millions in bribes to do this. It would be naive to think that the practice isn’t far more widespread.
President Varela proposes to copy something truly awful from the US system.
Panamanians ought to question his wisdom, his ethics and his patriotism for doing this.
Bear in mind…
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Pablo Picasso
Why do born-again people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time?
Katharine Whitehorn
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US District Judge Marcia G. Cooke, a George W. Bush appointee, wasn’t accepting Martinelli’s frivolous challenge to the extradition order. Her official portrait.
A three-ring but inconclusive Justice Day for Panama
by Eric Jackson
While President Juan Carlos Varela was away attending the business and government summit in Davos, Switzerland, a justice crisis that’s increasingly dogging his administration manifested itself in three places in Panama and the United States. But in each case final resolution will have to await another day.
In a Miami federal courtroom, US District Judge Marcia Cooke summarily rejected former President Ricardo Martinelli’s appeal of a magistrate’s extradition order. Any competent observer of the US legal system would have expected this. The ex-president’s lawyers were arguing about whether a recent treaty was retroactive, but among the charges against Martinelli is the theft of the computer and software used for the warrantless surveillance of citizens — including, at least indirectly, this reporter who communicates from time to time with one of the 150 individuals who was on Martinelli’s infamous surveillance target list. Argue all he wants about whether electronic crimes are covered for purposes of extradition, but theft clearly is, by terms of a 1904 US-Panamanian extradition treaty.
Martinelli might appeal the ruling to the US Circuit Court of Appeals, but his lawyers told Panamanian media that he won’t. Still, the US State Department and perhaps the White House iteslf have to give final approval to the extradition. Would they have allowed Martinelli’s arrest in the first place had they not intended for the process to run its course? Perhaps Washington has arrived at such a stage of incoherence, but most probably within a month Martinelli will be on his way back here to stand trial. But wait — Judge Cooke said that she might grant Martinelli’s request for bail but she wants to hear any objections from the prosecution before she decides that. She has given the Justice Department lawyers until February 6 to register any objections. So might Martinelli get out on bail before being put on a plane back to Panama, and use that window of freedom to make a break for a third country? That sort of thing is the reason why bail is ordinarily not granted in US extradition cases. A person fighting extradition is inherently a flight risk.
Leave it to the deputies in the National Assembly to accept such a thing, but Ana Lucrecia Tovar de Zarak made one of the stupidest and most obnoxious claims of qualification for a seat on the high court ever. Asamblea Nacional photo by Martín Castillo.
Meanwhile in the legislature, the National Assembly’s Credentials Committee was hearing from Varela’s nominees for posts as Supreme Court magistrates or alternate magistrates, having previously heard from a number of witnesses for and against. The two top nominees, Ana Lucrecia Tovar de Zarak for a spot on the civil bench and Zuleika Moore to be a penal bench magistrate, had been generally opposed by non-governmental witnesses and supported by spokespeople from the Varela administration.
The nominees for three spots as alternate magistrates are all ciphers but by the odd rules of the current constitution all have arguably better qualifications than Tovar or Moore. That’s because to become a suplente one must have been a career judge, while to be a magistrate no experience on the bench is required.
Moore was given a hard time by committee members, while Tovar was not. Moore’s problems mostly came from Cambio Democratico deputies, who said or implied that she had used improper tactics and unfairly treated former members of the Martinelli administration whose cases she is or has been handling as anti-corruption prosecutor. Moore did not apologize or concede very much, but argued that of course criminal defendants are going to complain about being prosecuted.
And Tovar! She said that her biggest qualification was having been born and raised Catholic. It is a feature of Panamanian political culture that folks with purportedly illustrious surnames will sometimes run for elective offices by talking about their families. Citing that as a qualification for the bench is unusual, and perhaps anachronistic at a moment when the predations of the very rich and of the political caste have the country sliding toward a constitutional crisis. It might have been worse. She could have talked about how her husband was one of Varela’s vice ministers who quit just before she was nominated — but then that is one of the circumstances cited by those who argue that she lacks the independence to be a good judge.
Miguel Antonio Bernal strikes up the anti-corruption tamborito band across from the Attorney General’s office. Photo from Bernal’s Twitter feed.
Also on January 23, a small band of protesters, including most of the main organizers of the large January 9th rally on the Cinta Costera, showed up in Parque Porras across from the Procuraduria. The demand was that Attorney General Kenia Porcell release the list of public officials who took bribes from Odebrecht, something that she first promised Panamanians that she would make known then announced that because things are under investigation can’t be made public. This comes against a background of court decisions — under appeal — that a plea bargain by one party to a corrupt transaction bars prosecution of any of his, her or its accomplices and that a plea bargain by Odebrecht in one set of cases bars the government from excluding the Brazilian company from future public works contracts. Three witnesses who have gone public and a paper trail say that President Varela took millions in laundered payments from Odebrecht starting in 2009. (Porcell, of course, has under the constitution no jurisdiction to investigate a president.) Most recently it was announced that the company is seeking the contract for renovation work on Parque Omar and the national library.
But after a huge show of force two weeks earlier on a holiday, the crowd at noon on a work day was the usual small gathering of veteran activists who are mostly retired or self-employed. No masses of workers and peasants storming the citadels of power on this day, and those individuals and media most brazenly committed to the status quo of corruption with impunity taunted the protesters about the size of the crowd. Ricardo Martinelli’s media outlets, which may yet be confiscated from him as stolen property tried to spin the protest as larger than it was and not aimed at Martinelli but only at Varela.
So is the anti-corruption movement a “failure” that can now be forgotten as the usual corrupt politicians, construction company people, lawyers and financial operators go back to their customary games? That the Electoral Tribunal has banned the publication of opinion polls tales away one traditional measure of the voters’ exasperation, but it would be a mistake to presume that it has gone away.
Perhaps the better gauge of the situation was in an interview that Vice Minister of the Presidency Salvador Sánchez gave to La Estrella’s Adelita Coriat. Sánchez acknowledged a long-standing consensus among experts that the constitution needs to be changed and hinted that Varela, who ran for the presidency on a promise to convene a constituent assembly and then rejected that idea with an argument that he could not control the outcome of a new constitutional convention, is again thinking in constitutional reform terms.
Might we be offered yet another small patch, approved by the current National Assembly and ratified by the one elected in 2019? It’s first of all no foregone conclusion that he could get the current legislature to go along — the PRD and CD caucuses are in opposition mode, the extent of which will be seen by whether the president can get his high court nominations ratified. By itself his Panameñista Party caucus is way short of the needed votes. Assuming that Varela can get the votes, the presumption that there will be much continuity between this legislature and the next one is also a doubtful proposition.
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Danilo Pérez and those who won scholarships at the festival.
Much cooler to be a student than a
spectator at the Panama Jazz Festival
by Eric Jackson, with additional data and graphics by the Panama Jazz Festival
Probably to more Panamanians than those with other perceptions, the Panama Jazz Festival is this annual open-air free concert and traffic jam in surrounding areas. That it was on Satuday, January 20 when a large crowd in the old Fort Clayton parade ground was entertained by Lefty Pérez and Wichy Camacho, La Kshamba, the Colectivo Calipso, the Panamonk Trio, jazz ensembles from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, the Thelonious Monk Institute and the New England Conservatory, the Pan-African Jazz Project and the Yogev Shetrit Trio.
But for a bunch of young people and a few adults who teach or perform for a living, the highlight of the day’s festivities was the scholarship awards ceremony — and some of those who didn’t get scholarships nevertheless during auditions over the days of the festival did get admitted to some internationally respected schools of musical education.
(Missing but not forgotten on the scholarships, admissions and educational workshops scene, and people in the know hope and pray for their quick return, was the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, a usual past participant. The school mostly withstood the winds but was largely put out of action by last September’s hurricane and accompanying power outages. For parts of San Juan, the lights came back on just as night fell on the Panama Jazz Festival finale. Thank you, US Army Corps of Engineers.)
Know ye that the Panama Jazz Festival has long gone beyond jazz, with a classical component all along and incorporating a number of other genres all along, and in recent years expanding to include an annual Latin American music therapy summit. So all seminars, and all scholarships, were not necessarily for jazz.
Winning the full scholarship to the New England Conservatory Jazz Lab this year was a Costa Rican, guitarist Natalia San Lee Salazar. Chilean violist Brian Urra got the Patricia Zárate scholarship for academic excellence and social work. Berklee College of Music summer school scholarships went to Óscar Cruz (percussion), Gilberto Campos (drums), Susana Arcia (cello), Sophia Fernández (vocals), Juanita Acosta (piano), Samuel Barrios (piano) and Erick García (violin). The musically advanced Crossroads High School in Santa Monica, California gave scholarships to guitarist Victoria Rosas, saxophonist Oliver Mall (saxofón) and percussionist Lucas Maylín.
Gotta get that Gringo pronunciation of “water” down! Kevin Harris, a pianist and Berklee piano teacher, who in Panama has developed a following as an apostle and instructor of gospel music. Photo by Eric Jackson.
Due to conflicting commitments and a low bus fare budget, The Panama News coverage of this year’s Panama Jazz Festival was relatively abbreviated. This reporter, however, did catch a part of one of Kevin Harris’s three black gospel music workshops.
There was a crowd of newcomers and regulars, mostly youngsters from Panama but with a senior European visitor next to me and a bunch of teachers of various descriptions mixed in. The young translator — the jazz festivals also educate these — could stand an English immersion, for this line of sessions better yet a Black English immersion, but she could make Harris’s English-language instruction understood well enough.
It was not only a lesson in African-American music, but also in black American history. As in, the old spiritual:
Wade in the water Wade in the water, children Wade in the water God’s gonna trouble the water
You may correctly associate that with the black churches of the USA, and with the civil rights movement of some decades back. But this is not a song about being baptized so as to pay tithe to the reverend and so on. Its author is unknown because in slavery days it was downright dangerous to be known as the author of such a thing. It was a coded escape message, advising slaves to wade through streams to get the slave catchers’ tracking dogs off of their scent if and when they ran away toward freedom.
(We could do a comparative history seminary about runaway slaves, with the slaves who ran away from their Spanish masters to Cimarron communities in Panama as one example. The US history of runaway slaves is most commonly associated with the Underground Railroad that flourished in the years between the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act and the Civil War. The prior history of slave escapes, including to those North American indigenous nations that would take such fugitives in, is less well known. Also infrequently taught in US schools was the enormous importance of runaway slaves in the Civil War itself. The Confederacy thought that they would send their white men to the front to fight the Yankees while the slaves stayed back on the plantations to feed the rebel army. Black people had other ideas, and tended to run to Union lines at first opportunity. The Emancipation Proclamation was designed to enhance this trend.)
There were some interesting logos and uniforms in the audience. Was the Banda León de Judah of a Rastafarian denomination? If haled before Mutabaruka’s court, would they be found irie? In any case, figure that one of the main things going on in the room was the improvement of a number of Panama’s church choirs.
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