Friday
Friday 2nd August 2024.
August 1, 2024
“I am not familiar with this amnesty law. Yesterday, the draft came into my hands for the first time, and I will study it. This does not have my consent, nor my acceptance or anything like that. I will study it accordingly, as a lawyer that I am, reiterating something that is very important: I will act according to the law (…). This law does not have my approval.” This is how President José Raúl Mulino referred to the bill promoted by Deputy Luis Eduardo Camacho , which seeks to facilitate the mechanisms for amnesty, pardon, reduction of sentence and granting of conditional freedom.
The president added that he has not spoken “about anything” with any congressman. “I respect each person’s legislative initiative…but that is my opinion,” he stressed.
The president answered a question on the subject at Thursday’s press conference. This August 1st marks one month since he assumed the presidency of the Republic.
Camacho describes himself as the “faithful friend” of former President Ricardo Martinelli , who is seeking asylum in the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama to avoid a sentence of more than 10 years in prison for the New Business case.
When presenting the document, he asked his colleagues to analyze it away from “media pressure” and “economic interests that have their own agenda.”
The deputy from San Miguelito was chosen as president of the Government Commission of the Assembly, the body that would have to debate his legislative proposal.
Shortly after the President of the Republic’s words, Camacho responded to the issue in the corridors of the National Assembly: “There are two of us now, I am not aware of any amnesty bill either,” he added.
He said that his draft law develops two constitutional norms: one refers to the power of the Executive branch to grant pardons for political crimes and the other refers to the power of the Assembly to grant amnesties for political crimes. He added that it contains other reforms to the Penal Code regarding the granting of other precautionary measures and the reduction of sentences.
“It is a regulatory project (…)”, he added.
—Isn’t this draft bill intended to benefit former President Ricardo Martinelli? —he was asked.
“This project cannot benefit anyone with amnesty or pardon because that is not a pardon that cannot be granted by the Assembly, nor is it an amnesty law because amnesty is not being granted there. I do want to tell you something and I want to tell you with all frankness… the laws are of a general nature, they benefit all citizens (…)”, he said.
The draft law consists of 19 articles and would reform the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. According to lawyers consulted, it would conflict with a “multiplicity of constitutional norms.”
According to lawyer Rodrigo Noriega , it broadens the definition of political crime to favor the former president and radically increases the power of the National Assembly to declare an amnesty without the need for the President of the Republic to participate in its approval.” The jurist adds that he promotes a reform of the criminal review appeal, to explicitly favor the asylum seeker in the Nicaraguan embassy.
Former public prosecutor Guido Rodríguez says that Camacho’s draft bill “intends to throw overboard centuries of doctrinal elaboration on the differences between amnesty and pardon.”
Amnesty , he recalled, is a general measure that extinguishes the criminal liability of a group of people for certain crimes, usually politically motivated. “It can be retroactive and erase the crime as if it had never occurred,” he explained .
President José Raúl Mulino ruled out the possibility of the National Assembly handling a bloated budget for 2025. He made this clear on August 1 during the usual Thursday press conference.
“In contrast to the power that people have to ask, there is also the power not to give. There will not be money, I can tell you that right now. And even less for the waste and the carnival of irresponsibility with which this Assembly was managed in the past five years,” the president responded after La Prensa asked him about the subject.
He continued: “There is no parallel, nor is there an excess budget, of anything,” referring to the controversial parallel decentralization, one of the biggest scandals of Laurentino Cortizo’s government (2019-2024).
“The Assembly will have the operating budget that corresponds to it in order to function. And the deputies will have full access, through the different ministries, to present the projects for the construction of roads, schools, whatever they wish to present in order to channel them through the Executive budget to the different state institutions. Nothing more. And there are no commitments with anyone, for nothing more,” explained Mulino, who on other occasions has said that he will not pay for “all the idleness” of that power of the State “with public funds.”
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice will have the final say on whether to uphold the sentences of 4 and 6 years in prison imposed on 10 former officials of the Second Court of Justice who were part of a network that altered sentences, granted precautionary measures and influenced the juries of conscience in trials.
Through Edict No. 195, the High Court for the Liquidation of Criminal Cases sent to the Criminal Chamber of the Court the appeal brief submitted by 10 of the 18 persons convicted in this case, who request that the prison sentence imposed by the First Court for the Liquidation of Criminal Cases be revoked.
The appeals were filed by a group of defense attorneys, who claim that their clients have no direct connection with the corruption cases that were investigated and that led to the conviction, which was ratified in the second instance by the Higher Court of Criminal Cases.
In May 2023, the second deputy liquidator judge, Fernando Bazurto , sentenced eight former officials of the Second Court of Justice to a 6-year prison sentence for the crime of corruption of public servants, after it was proven that they received money in exchange for granting precautionary measures, advancing trial dates and influencing juries of conscience that participated in trials for the crime of homicide.
Judge Bazurto also sentenced 10 people to four years in prison who had participated in trials in which it was proven that they received money to benefit a certain defendant.
In that case, five other suspects accepted a 40-month prison sentence and another was sentenced to 60 months in prison.
The investigation began in 2015, following a complaint filed by the then presiding judge of the Court, José Ayú Prado , who received information that in the criminal circuit courts, in the Second Superior Criminal Court and in the Office of Judicial Decongestion, bribes were allegedly collected to release people linked to criminal proceedings and bribes were paid to juries of conscience.
Deputy Betserai Richards , a member of the independent Vamos coalition, presented a legislative proposal to strengthen Law 6 of 2022 , which regulates Transparency in Public Management, establishes the right to Habeas Data and dictates other provisions.
The proposal seeks to expand mechanisms for access to information and ensure greater accountability in the management of public resources, since reports from the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Information (ANTAI) indicate that public entities, municipalities and communal councils are not complying with these requirements.
For example, statistical data from June 2024, available on the ANTAI Transparency Monitoring Platform, indicate that 30.4% of institutions and 64.3% of municipalities are failing to comply with the obligation to provide information. There is no data available on communal councils. Given this scenario, Richards raised the need to “strengthen” the Transparency Law to ensure compliance by local entities and governments.
One of the first inclusions in the bill is to “expand” the scope of the definition of institution to include public companies in accountability.
The Panama Canal announced that starting in January 2025 it will implement a long-term slot allocation method, known as LoTSA (Long-term Slot Allocation), for neopanamax vessels.
Under the new system, various transit reservation packages will be offered for different market segments.
Each package will include a specific number of seats, on a weekly or monthly basis per year, available for both northbound and southbound transits.
Details of these packages will be announced through the Projected Availability of Reservation Slots, published on the pancanal.com website , and will be assigned to the highest bidder through an auction.
The auction will be held using the sealed envelope method. The client will indicate the maximum amount he is willing to pay for each spot included in the package , with an initial base of 200 thousand dollars. The reservation periods are divided into:
- Period 1: Reservations 90 days prior to transit.
- Period 1A: reservations from 30 to 15 days.
- Period 2: Reservations between 14 and 8 days.
- Period 3: Reservations from 7 to 2 days.
Auctions will begin on September 2, 2024, for reservation dates beginning January 5, 2025, and will run through January 3, 2026.
This method will allow customers to obtain multiple reservations in a single transaction and provide greater transit certainty and flexibility.
Until now, the offer of seats in the Transit Reservation System is made daily with a period of anticipation to the required transit date.
Starting next Monday, August 5, the Canal’s traffic is expected to increase to 35 vessels per day (25 Panamax and 10 Neopamax). Under normal conditions, the interoceanic waterway traffic is between 36 and 38 vessels per day.
Currently, only two telecommunications service companies operate in Panama: TIGO and Más Móvil from Cable & Wireless Panama .
President José Raúl Mulino said that they will analyze whether or not the Panamanian market requires a third telecommunications operator, following the departure of Digicel from the country and two failed attempts by the previous administration to award that concession to another company.
The topic came up during the weekly discussion when a social media user asked President Mulino: Can the contracts with telephone and internet companies be reviewed to eliminate the monopoly held by the two companies that provide that service locally?
The president first clarified that the operations of the two companies are not a monopoly.
“There were three companies, one left, meaning they were not a monopoly, there are two left in the market [TIGO and Más Móvil of Cable & Wireless Panama] that operate according to contracts won in a fair fight and that must be respected. That segment that the third company leaves will have to be reviewed by the governing entities of these issues,” he said.
The National Authority for Public Services (ASEP) is responsible for calling for tenders if so decided.