ECUADOR: Outcry over Panamanian Political Asylum for Bucaram

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mario Gonzalez

QUITO, Apr 29 1997 (IPS) - The Panamanian government’s decision to grant impeached Ecuadorean president Abdala Bucaram political asylum caused widespread indignation here.

Foreign Minister Jose Ayala said “Bucaram is facing six lawsuits in Ecuador, and four arrest warrants,” and “there is convincing evidence in all of the cases against the former president, who should thus be considered a fugitive from justice rather than a political exile.”

Attorney-General Milton Alava said the Panamanian government’s decision “should surprise no one,” because “Bucaram has long- standing commercial ties with that country, and friendships with prominent political figures there.”

Bucaram flew to Panama on Feb. 11, five days after being removed from office by Ecuador’s single-chamber Congress, which ruled him “mentally unfit” to govern.

Panama already took Bucaram in once before, when as governor of the province of Guayas he was suspended in 1984 on charges of common crimes.

The decision was officially announced in Quito this week by Panamanian Embassy spokesman Erick Rodriguez.

The decree signed by Panamanian President Ernesto Perez Balladares and Foreign Minister Ricardo Arias states that the government grants “territorial asylum to ousted president Abdala Bucaram, his wife Maria Rosa, and his children Linda, Michel, Jacobo and Abdala.”

According to Foreign Minister Ayala, the lawsuits against the former president will continue their course, “and when the authorities issue an extradition request, the foreign ministry will act immediately, using all diplomatic channels.”

Interior Minister Cesar Verduga said that “in spite of the fact that we don’t have an extradition treaty with Panama, there are international treaties for this kind of procedure, like those that came out of the 1994 Miami Summit of the Americas, which put special emphasis on the fight against corruption.”

Supreme Court president Carlos Solorzano called the Panamanian government’s decision “a grave error that offends the Ecuadorean sense of justice.”

The Coordinator of Social Movements, an umbrella group of some 120 civil organisations, announced a series of protest marches to demand Bucaram’s extradition.

Rosa Echeverria, leader of Women for Democracy, said “Ecuador’s prestige is at stake.”

“Bucaram wants to make other countries believe that his destitution was the result of a conspiracy, while what really happened was that the Ecuadorean people threw him out of office,” she added.

Bucaram told the U.S. TV network CNN last week that he would continue fighting the “coup-leaders” who overthrew him. “No one can attack my legitimate right to tell the truth,” he stressed.

But Ayala said the former president’s condition as a political exile meant he should “keep silent, and Panama should fulfill its obligations as a country that granted asylum.”

“We are not prepared to allow a repeat of what happened with former vice-president Alberto Dahik,” Luis Munoz, president of the Association of Ecuadorean Judicial Workers, said in Panama.

In November 1995, Dahik, a member of the conservative government of Sixto Duran Ballen (1992-96), fled to Costa Rica in a private airplane just a few minutes after the courts issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of misuse of public funds, and he handed in his resignation.

Five months later, the Costa Rican government granted him political asylum.