PANAMA

Since the Midyear Meeting of the Inter-American Press Association in Los Cabos, Mexico, the most significant developments for freedom of speech and free access to public information are the following: In fulfillment of an election promise, the current administration repealed the regulations for the Free Access to Information Public Act, which for all intents and purposes annulled the law. This represents very important progress benefiting all media and journalists who prevail themselves of the rights set forth under the law; among them, Habeas Data or freedom of information requests for those cases where government officials deny requests for information without any legal or constitutional grounds. In other respects, the current administration has promised, just as all those since 1989, to eliminate all restraining legal statutes that continue to seriously diminish freedom of the press, restrict the right to public information, as we have reported in previous meetings of the IAPA. This persistence of restrictive legislation is due to the fact that there has been a lack of political will to fulfill promises made. Recently a number of bills were introduced in the Legislature explicitly aimed at repealing statutes which might be considered as abridging freedom of the press and speech. One of these bills, without addressing its stated purpose, seeks on the whole to establish a labor code governing print journalists, and radio and television personalities. Other, more significant bill, seek to repeal libel laws covering defamation and insults, which is to say decriminalize and move them to civil jurisdiction, regulate government advertising to prevent its use in favor or to the detriment of the media, regulate the right of reply and repeal the so-called “crime of insulting public officials.” It must be clarified that in Panama, applying a strictly legal interpretation, the crime of insulting public officials is the repeated contempt of court orders to perform or refrain from performing certain acts. However, the wording of the relevant section of the bill actually seeks to eliminate those statutory provisions enabling certain government officials to levy fines without a prior trial. In closing, there have been repeated unsuccessful attempts to introduce a bill that would impose qualifications for journalists and persons working in the media. This bill has failed in past legislative sessions, and it is our hope that it falls short again.