TODAY PANAMA (Prensa Latina) The crisis in the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) of Panama, whose president Jose Ayu Prado requested a review in parliament, is ongoing today as a result of a lack of consensus for a pronouncing by the plenum.
Yesterday they tried again to reach an agreement on what the institution should do, after heavy complaints of irregularities in the Supreme Court, made by Judge Harry Diaz, who gave examples of the involvement of former president Ricardo Martinelli in internal affairs of justice.
He also questioned the way in which Ayu Prado was recently reelected, suggesting intervention from the current government in the Organ, which is independent due to the separation of powers established by the Constitution.
In a first reaction, the President of the Court sent the National Assembly a copy of Diaz’s statements to the press, and requested its analysis by the relevant committee to open a case against the judge.
On Monday, he also requested to the prosecutor of the nation, Kenya Porcell, Comptroller Federico Humbert, and Angelica Maytín, Director of the Authority of Transparency and Access to Information, so as to examine the assertions of his colleague.
He also requested that Humbert and Maytín audit travel and tours conducted by officials of the judiciary, from January 2014 to December 2015, ‘to determine whether embezzlement by judicial tourism has been committed.’
‘It is my firm conviction that, in the best of interests of this institution, this is not the time to mend fences or turn the page, as some colleagues have suggested,’ wrote on Monday Judge Luis Ramon Fabrega, another indicated by Diaz, by attributing him alleged criminal behavior.
‘Is the time to clean it (the Supreme Court) up, and that those who have denigrated its image take responsibility as other colleagues have done in the recent past’, says in a note addressed to the President of the Court, as reported by the newspaper La Prensa.
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