politics

Candidates’s assets kept secret

Many candidates for public office reject the electoral law requiring disclosure of their assets.

A 2002 Supreme Court ruling made it difficult for the public to access their financial statements.

Should candidates for public office have to disclose their assets? A survey conducted last February by Dichter & Neira found that 92.3% of Panamanians think so. But unlike some countries where such a financial declaration is required, current interpretations of an electoral law in Panama leave it up to the candidate’s own discretion.

According to the Constitution, information concerning the assets of all senior officials, including the president and vice president, must be submitted to the Contraloría General de la República before a notary public. In fact, an amendment to the law, made in 1999, stipulates that the notary present must keep a copy of the declaration on file. However, this does not guarantee public access to the information.

“The notary claims that one has to present the number of the public record where the declaration is kept, and the only person who has that information is obviously the person who put it there,” said Angela Maytín, executive director of the Panamanian chapter of Transparencia Internacional (TI).

In September 2005, Elías Castillo, who was president of the Asamblea Nacional at the time, said that it was “dangerous” for officials to disclose their assets. His and other officials’ refusal to allow access to their financial statements seems to have had precedent in a 2002 ruling by Panama’s Supreme Court in a case involving legislator Enrique Garrido. Judges turned down a Habeas Data request to allow public access to some of Garrido’s financial information, claiming that it was “confidential” and could be requested only by someone with a personal interest in the matter.

Supreme Court Magistrate Adán Arnulfo Arjona was the only justice to oppose the ruling. He argued that the law did not expressly define the information requested as confidential. In 2004, Public Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher echoed his minority opinion, arguing that finances of public officials should be public knowledge, but that the earlier ruling prevented notaries from providing free access to that information.

Since the 2002 ruling, however, other citizen and media requests for Habeas Data regarding the solvency of public officials, including the President, have been systematically denied.

Rubén Castrejo, a lawyer and journalist, opined that the courts “have no right” to deny access to these reports, especially following the repeal of a 2002 decree that restricted transparency laws.

In 2004, TI-Panamá handed out 180 questionnaires to various candidates for public office so that they could voluntarily publish their résumés and financial statements. Only 80 responded, and of those, 20 failed to provide information about their assets.