Political asylum in Panama

The fourth article of the Political Constitution of Panama states the following: “The Republic of Panama respects the norms of international law.”

Most Latin American countries have signed and ratified international treaties which created international jurisprudence on asylum, namely the Montevideo Treaty on International Criminal Law (1899), the Havana Convention on Asylum (1928), the Montevideo Convention on Political Asylum (1933), the Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum (1954) . Eye the basis of the legal principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda, international public law the signatory countries of the mentioned American conventions respected and continue to respect the rules and regulations of applying the granting of diplomatic and political asylum, as an indisputable right of the country of asylum.

Thus, in the immediate past, in 1977, the Republic of Panama granted territorial asylum to the Shah of Iran, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, on the island of Contadora, to the Haitian dictator Raúl Cedras, to Jorge Serrano Elías, the former president of Guatemala, the former president of Ecuador Abdalá Bucaram, Venezuelan judges Gustavo Sosa Izaquirre and Manuel Antonio Espinosa Mallet, José Sabino Mora , former consul Gabriel Hernán Pérez Osorio. All of them were accused of ordinary crimes by the regime in power to avoid or simply bypass the obvious real public causes of political persecution. Panamanian jurisprudence was based on casuistry carried out in accordance with international treaties on diplomatic and diplomatic asylum.

On the other hand, let us recall with obvious differences and inevitable implications the significant case of Belisario Porras, who temporarily lost his political rights due to the accusation that he opposed separation of Colombia.

Porras, it is true, opposed, like all liberals, the Herrán-Hay agreement they signed Colombia’s conservative government and the United Statesrepresenting in the article “Selling the Canal” the liberal principles that characterized his political career in defense of freedom of expression and territorial sovereignty. Judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice turned him into a political corpse, crippling his political rights to prevent his own presidential candidacy. Fortunately, later the National Assembly of Panama He fully restored his political rights.

President Porras did not forget petty complaints his inalienable patriotism. Taking office as the third president of the republic, he recalled that sad episode: “When I was first elected, I was actually elected after a fierce and cruel struggle, during which my opponents, possessing power, made use of it to prevent my election, all political intrigues and cunning and all violence, from slander and insults…” As they say in the movies, any resemblance to the present is coincidental.