Panama’s main Evangelical organization, the Alianza Evangelica de Panama, which has marched against gay marriage in the past and puts out messages like this, promises vigils and protests over this court case. The Evangelicals are a minority in this mostly Catholic country. The Catholic Church also opposes same-sex marriages but is also a bit more wary about being seen as grossly intolerant than the Evangelicals who published this graphic are.
Supreme Court to hear constitutional challenge to same-sex marriage ban
by Eric Jackson
Polls would suggest that most Panamanians don’t want to hear it, but the Supreme Court has agreed that it will. In October Panamanian lawyer Enrique Jelenszky and British businessman John Winstanley, represented by the expensive law firm Morgan & Morgan, challenged the constitutionality of Article 26 of Panama’s Family Code, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Panama’s constitution states some lofty principles that tend to get defined into meaninglessness. Arguably the challenged part of our family law violates Article 19 of the Constitution because it entails prohibited privileges, immunities and discrimination on grounds of sex and social class; or violates Article 26 guarantees of the inviolability of the home. But Article 35 of the Constitution, while providing for religious freedom, also demands “respect for Christian morals” and acknowledges Catholicism as the majority religion.
Jelenszky and Winstanly have lived together for 17 years and about eight years ago they registered a civil union under British law at the UK Embassy here. Since then the United Kingdom has provided that such unions are or can be marriages. In September they tried to record their marriage in the Panamanian Registro Civil, were turned away, and then filed their legal challenge.
The Alianza Evangelica de Panama accuses the couple of intending to destroy Panamanian families and says that they will be holding protests. The Asociacion de Hombres y Mujeres Nuevos de Panama (AMNP), the nation’s main organization that advocates for the civil rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons, is rallying behind Jelenszky and Winstanley. “We will fight until everyone is equal before the law,” AHMNP leader Ricardo Beteta Bond declared on his Facebook page.
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Panama and the United States have had a difficult relationship for more than a century and a half. To an increasing extent the Isthmus of Panama was turned into a fundamental piece in the expansion plans of North American capitalists. The construction of the trans-isthmian railroad (1850-1855) and the Panama Canal (1904-1914) were strategic in the consolidation of an empire that extended over a continent and into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Later Panama was turned into an enormous military base for the US wars against Japan (1941-1945) and later, Korea and Vietnam (1951-1975). The bases of the old Canal Zone also served to intervene in and invade all of the countries of Latin America, turning it into the US “back yard.”
Over the course of more than 175 years Panama has done battle with dozens of governments and their executives. The cousins Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, the Bushes (father and son), Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan are some of the best remembered, for good and bad. Presidents of the United States have masterminded invasions, coups d’etat, assassination conspiracies and mockeries of the Panamanian people.
The US president-elect, Donald Trump, appears on the horizon as a novel and unpredictable political phenomenon. For the financial world the businessman is a question mark — his rhetoric against the misnamed “free trade” has shaken stock markets on all continents. President Juan Carlos Varela, answering a question about Trump’s election, failed to come up with a coherent answer. The Panamanian government still has no policy to deal with the next White House tenant.
Washington has had a very clear policy about Panama since the 1989 invasion. How to collate this US position on Panama with Trump’s ideas? It is a question whose answer we will come to know, as they begin to square (if they fit) the foreign policy objectives of the new administration.
US foreign policy has had three objectives in Panama since the 1989 invasion. First, to assure that traffic through the canal is not interrupted. Second, for Panama to serve as a launching pad for its militaristic policy on the regional level. At the same time this is useful in its “War on Drugs” policy. Finally, for Panama to develop along the neo-liberal guidelines of “the Washington Consensus” that were specified in the free trade treaty that was signed by both countries. Politically, the United States has delegated the responsibility to govern the country to a small Panamanian elite. That elite has done very poorly, speculating with the extraordinary income that running the Panama Canal generates, running up a growing debt and destabilizing the political regime with a growing corruption that’s a product of militarization. In 20 years they have ruined agriculture and industry, destroyed the health and education systems and allowed the system of representative government to fall into the hands of an insatiable mafia.
President-elect Donald Trump has no personal interests in Panama, only his name on one of the hotel towers that adorn’s the capital’s skyline. Five years ago Trump did opine about the Panama Canal and the way that the 1977 negotiations that allowed its turnover to the Panamanian government turned out.
In a 2011 business visit to Panama City, Trump said that “Panama is doing very well with the canal, there are so many workers, there is so much employment — to think that the United States stupidly gave up the canal in exchange for nothing.” Trump does no more than to insistently repeat what President Reagan said after the Torrijos-Carter treaties were signed in 1977 until the day he died. A Panamanian government minister predicted (with great skill) in 2011 that what Trump intended with his statements was to launch his candidacy for the presidency of his country. Incidentally, the city council declared him persona non grata for those remarks.
Following the logic of his campaign, Trump could ask Panama to contribute part of its income, based on canal tolls, to the “War on Drugs” (increasing arms purchases from the United States, building more air and naval bases with US materials and training more repressive forces at the still-existing School of the Americas. He could also demand that Panama eliminate its few remaining tariffs so as to inundate its market with imported farm products, definitively destroying Panamanian agriculture.
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Varela’s damage control collapses before an international outcry
by Eric Jackson
The complaint that leaks from the Mossack Fonseca law firm are unfairly called “The Panama Papers” by a president whose right-hand man was Ramón Fonseca has failed to change international rhetoric. The Public Ministry’s vow to get the bottom of it that turned out to be a bungled investigation of who leaked the documents with no inquiry at all into the criminal activities indicated in the papers themselves made the attorney general a global laughingstock. The appointment of a high profile commission and then the imposition of restrictions that drove its two most prominent members to quit made it worse.
Now come the secondary scandals — 85 tax fraud investigations in Canada, 415 tax fraud investigations in India, 22 tax fraud investigations in the UK and the arrests of three British bankers who laundered their insider trading proceeds through a Mossack Fonseca shell game. The president of Argentina under investigation for undeclared holdings discovered through the Panama Papers. The Russian economy minister under arrest. The Pakistani prime minister on trial for his political life before his country’s supreme court.
Most likely Panama Papers revelations about the family fortune of the British prime minister at the time contributed to the narrow “Leave” victory in the Brexit referendum. Two Icelandic prime ministers were run out of public life in disgrace due to the revelations. Spain’s minister of industry fell, and a subsequent attempt to kick him upstairs to the World Bank was withdrawn in amidst a chorus of great indignation. In other places like Malta, the former Soviet Georgia and China, governments have survived the embarrassment of high-ranking officials or former leaders, but there are likely to be consequences down the road in their much different political systems. Were the Americans barely mentioned? Mossack Fonseca files may have mentioned few US political leaders, but among the handful of oligarchs were friends of Bill and Hillary and friends of The Donald.
It’s not just the Panama Papers now, either. In late September there was a lead of 1.3 million confidential files from the Bahamian corporate registry and these documents are just beginning to have an effect similar to that of the Mossack Fonseca documents. Two officers of Odebrecht Panama have just turned states evidence in Brazil’s massive corruption scandal and the company’s jailed former CEO tells of bribes paid and evidence concealed in Panama. Even if politicians here have passed a law to officially ignore the findings of courts in other countries, it’s likely that Panamanian votes won’t be so understanding.
The OECD has branded Panama’s moves in the wake of the Panama Papers release as unsatisfactory. The European Parliament is talking about a public beneficial ownership registry for all corporations and measures against jurisdictions that don’t have such a thing.
This is the context in which the two experts who resigned from Varela’s Panama Papers commission — Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and anti-corruption scholar Mark Pieth — have released their “minority report” ahead of Varela’s official one, the latter which may or may not be put on the public record. Stiglitz and Pieth are calling for stern measures against tax havens and money laundering centers, akin to those used against countries and institutions that handle the financial transactions of those terrorists whom the United States and the European Union don’t like.
These sorts of sanctions have already begun on a small scale — Panamanian banks now have a hard time finding US banks that are willing to have corresponding bank relationships and it’s making check clearance more difficult and might make ATM machine transactions problematic. The Varela administration is considering the placement of a branch of the Banco Nacional de Panama in New York to be the US corresponding bank for this country’s private banks — if the Americans allow that to be done.
Figure that Donald Trump has business interests in Panama and that the Republicans have been talking about repealing FATCA and other measures against money laundering. But also figure that within both major US political parties there are conflicts over this, and that whatever the politicians might say, the financial system may not be willing to assume the growing risks of doing business with Panama.
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warning: there is some off-color language in the video
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The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the corporate-friendly trade deal between the US and 11 Pacific Rim nations that sparked progressive outcry over its threats to everything from democracy to digital rights to climate goals — now appears to be “in full-blown cardiac arrest.”
Not only is there the fact that President-elect Donald Trumpcampaigned against the deal that President Barack Obama vigorously pushed, multiple news sources reported Friday that the White House has now given up on its efforts to get approval during the “lame-duck” session of Congress.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported that the deal “effectively died Friday, as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress told the White House they won’t advance it in the election’s aftermath, and Obama administration officials acknowledged it has no way forward now.” Reuters reported that the administration said “Friday that the fate of the free trade pact was up to Trump and Republican lawmakers.”
“We have worked closely with Congress to resolve outstanding issues and are ready to move forward, but this is a legislative process and it’s up to congressional leaders as to whether and when this moves forward,” said Matt McAlvanah, a spokesman for the Office of the US trade representative, in an email to The Hill.
A White House official acknowledged on Friday the difficultly of pressing Congress to pass the TPP because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said this week that “it’s something that he’s going to work with the president-elect to figure out where they go in terms of trade agreements in the future,” according to reports.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had already signaled in August that the US Senate would not vote on TPP this year.
The political newspaper added a statement issued Friday by TPP foe Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who said that “a strong coalition of members of Congress and labor, environmental, faith, and human rights organizations and activists worked diligently to stop this agreement.”
That’s exactly what some advocacy groups are saying — that the deal’s apparent death should not be chalked up to Trump’s victory this week but to the grassroots’ effort.
“Let’s make one thing clear,” said Evan Greer, campaign director for digital rights group Fight for the Future. “Donald Trump didn’t kill the TPP. We did.”
The deal, she continued, would have “globalized Internet censorship, undermined civil liberties, and devastated our economy and our planet.”
Instead, “[a]n unprecedented grassroots movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together to spark an uprising that stopped what would have been nothing less than an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process. Together we sounded the alarm, and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it.”
“As we enter a new stage in history, let the movement that stopped the TPP serve as a reminder to the powerful: we are many, and you are few,” she continued.
Offering a similar observation on Saturday, Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, said in statement: “The TPP is in full-blown cardiac arrest, thanks to years of international campaigning against this toxic deal, including turning Senate and House elections into contests over rejecting the TPP.”
But, according to Barlow, as well as Arthur Stamoulis, executive director at Citizens Trade Campaign, continued vigilance is necessary.
Barlow said that her experience “from watching trade agreements is that free trade proponents always try to resuscitate these deals under different names — CETA, TiSA, and others. We need to put a ‘do not resuscitate’ order on these corporate deals once and for all.”
Stamoulis also acknowledged the “the cross-border, cross-sector, progressive ‘movement of movements'” that brought the deal to what could be its very end.
And with the Trump administration — with its “cabinet of horrors” — approaching, Stamoulis writes that “people need to be reminded of their power.”
“This victory,” he writes, “will be one of the biggest wins against concentrated corporate power in our lifetimes, and it holds lessons we should internalize as we steel ourselves for the many challenges we face heading into the Trump years.”
“Trump’s vision of internationalism is not one of human rights, worker rights, sustainability, and improving standards of living. The President-elect is a man who, among other things, thinks that workers are overpaid, is hostile to unions, denies climate science, and embraces authoritarian regimes.”
“We’ve all got a lot of work to do,” he concludes.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
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Marcelo Odebrecht, before his arrest. Photo by Worldsteel.
Brazil’s Lava Jato scandal deepens with “Operation Panama” admission and more
by Eric Jackson
[Editor’s note: Before getting into this, and without getting into loaded jargon like “lawfare” or “technicalities,” let’s remember some basic principles. One is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Somebody who is guilty of one thing is not necessarily guilty of another thing. Police, prosecutors and judges will often enough lie or distort the truth, just like someone who is accused of wrongdoing might.]
A series of court and police files, most of them leaked in violation of various laws or ethical rules, has expanded, deepened and fed new fire to a series of scandals known collectively as Lava Jato — “Car Wash,” from the Portuguese name of a police investigation aimed at bribery and kickbacks in contracts with the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras oil company. The legal fallout has spread to other economic sectors and several other countries. Evidence suggests that Panama ought to be one of them but authorities here have invented various purportedly nationalist principles to avoid that. One of the latest revelations is that Marcelo Odebrecht, former CEO and major shareholder of the giant multinational Norberto Odebrecht construction firm, has admitted that when he was arrested in June of 2015 “Operation Panama” rather automatically went into effect. This plan was to scan all company computers for incriminating files and to transfer those computers and those files to Panama, beyond the reach of Brazilian authorities.
Word of this confession comes from a leaked court file — a Brazilian Federal Police report — that made its way into the hands of the Brazilian magazine Istoe. Police, prosecution, defense and judicial participants in the case would all have access to that information. Testimony by other people about Operation Panama had leaked months ago. Brazilian prosecutors have complained that they have sought Panamanian authorities’ assistance in the case but received very little of it. Panama’s prosecutors say that they have cooperated but asserted barriers like banking and corporate secrecy here, only being able to investigate or assist if crimes against Panamanian law have been committed and so on. Were there to be full cooperation with Brazilian authorities, one would expect that there would have been raids in Panama in search of Odebrecht computers and files. If there have been such things, they have not been reported to the public.
Istoe reports that among the things hidden in Panama were payments of about $8 million in cash to former Brazilian President Lula da Silva. These payments, it is alleged, were made after he left the presidency and were purportedly for work helping to secure contracts for Odebrecht in Brazil and abroad. His political adversaries are calling it a simple bribery case, but Lula denies it: “I did not commit any crime before, during or after serving as the President of the Republic,” he said.
Judge Sergio Moro, who is handling the Lava Jato cases, has leaked files on a selective basis to media organizations, including data from illegal wiretaps of Lula. Lula and his supporters also complain that police planted bugs in the offices of the former president’s lawyers, also quite illegal in Brazil.
Following on the removal of leftist President Dilma Rousseff for the non-criminal offense of manipulating the release of official economic data ahead of the 2014 election, supporters of Lula’s and Rousseff’s Workers Party claim a right-wing legislative coup and continuing persecution. Rousseff’s removal did bring her erstwhile right-wing running mate, Michel Temer, to the presidency and with him an all-male, all-white far to the right cabinet. But Temer has been convicted of election law violations that happened before he was vice president and the sentence precludes him from running for office in the next elections. A number of right-wing politicians have also fallen in the series of scandals. Now Brazil’s Electoral Court is investigating whether the Rousseff – Temer ticket received illegal campaign contributions, which could lead to a decision nullifying the 2014 election and calling for a new vote. In that election law case, it was alleged that Otavio Azevedo, former CEO of the Andrade Gutierrez construction company, gave Rousseff a $295,000 donation. She denies it and her lawyers have come up with documents showing that a contribution to Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) was made in exactly that amount through Temer. If the Rousseff defense version of that is found to be true, that could also annul the 2014 election and remove Temer from office.
Marcelo Odebrecht is getting his 19-year prison sentence reduced to about two and one-half years for giving his testimony to police and prosecutors. The man is a convicted criminal who gave lots of many to lots of politicians in Brazil and elsewhere, and might have reason to feel betrayed by some of them. One of the reported subjects of Mr. Odebrecht’s interrogation in Brazil is suspected payoffs to former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli. Panama’s Public Ministry is reportedly looking at bribes paid in Panama to Panamanians by Odebrecht, but if word comes from a Brazilian source that there is testimony implicating Martinelli the ordinary prosecutors lose jurisdiction and must turn the matter over to the Supreme Court as to Martinelli only. The Varela administration, which has given new contracts to the Norberto Odebrecht company, takes the position that the company’s criminal convictions in other countries don’t count against it for public contracting here.
But Odebrecht’s criminal activities in other countries do get taken seriously in other jurisdictions. In the works is a plea bargain by some 70 Odebrecht executives with prosecutors in the United States, Switzerland and Brazil for a plethora of financial crimes including money laundering. As part of that plea bargain it is reported that the company will pay a record $1.9 billion fine to the three jurisdictions.
There may be a continuing US angle, as Odebrecht was a long-time backer of Jeb Bush, through a private foundation that Bush used to promote his political ambitions, and of Miami Democratic politician Xavier Suarez. Neither of these two men are particularly favored by Donald Trump so there may be some Odebrecht fallout to come in the USA. If actual crimes are discovered in Odebrecht’s relationship to Florida politics there may be statute of limitations bars to prosecutions.
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So you’re going to buy a speck of paradise and save on lawyer bills by sharing the same attorney as the seller? Don’t be an idiot!
Don’t be an idiot
So, you are distraught about what has happened to your country, and you’re thinking about moving to Panama?
If it’s about Brexit or Trump, probably those ads showing Panama as this country of blondes is not what would impress you. Neither should all that ridiculous real estate hype disguised as news in International Living or publications like that. Don’t be an idiot.
Do you want to be a mirror image of the influx of the Rick Wiles zombies, not sharing their weird right politics but thinking about coming to a country that doesn’t have immigration or labor laws that apply to you, just picking up and moving as if from another state to Oregon or another neighborhood in London? Don’t be an idiot.
Do you think that it’s viable to live in an English-only bubble here, eating only the foods you know from back there, expecting services to be the same, learning nothing other than possibly contempt about other cultures and going about your life as if nothing is different? Don’t be an idiot.
Panama is an independent country, maybe not as independent as it ought to be but a distinct place nevertheless. It takes getting used to. It takes some acclimation. You need to understand that if where you are now there are ugly people who are vicious to foreigners, there is a small element here that would take similar stuff out on you, and one of them just became the leader of the women’s branch of Panama’s biggest political party.
So you have enough money to surmount all of that in Panama? It ought to be enough to insulate yourself where you are.
We are a tropical paradise and a Third World hellhole. We are what the people here, citizens and foreigners, make of us. If you are a disheartened citizen of where you are who is thinking about fleeing to Panama, do so with your eyes wide open and your nonsense alarms turned on. If you are a criminal thinking about fleeing to Panama, just don’t because you are not wanted by the people here and you won’t be able to keep it secret for very long.
Welcome to Panama. Don’t be an idiot.
A list of lame duck chores for Barack Obama
1. Clean up the political prisoner messes. Free Leonard Peltier. Commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence. Drop all charges against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Don’t just close down the prison at Guantanamo, abandon that military base to Cuba to which it really belongs.
2. Put the TPP, TTIP and TiSA “free trade” negotiations out of their misery.
3. Oversee a dignified transition, and prepare to be a dignified senior statesman as you get on with the rest of your life
4. Relax. You have earned it, Mr. President.
Bear in mind…
Without equality all freedoms and all rights perish.
Simón Bolívar
Our government is conducting a war against drugs, is it? Let them go after petroleum. Talk about a destructive high!
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.
Margaret Sanger
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