Law changed to allow naming of hospital Martinelli
FOUR MONTHS after the board of the Social Security Service decided to name a hospital after President Ricardo Martinelli, the ruling party and its allies in the National l Assembly, overturned the law that forbids it.
A former comptroller likens the move to a return to the days of dictators personality cults.
The provision that prevented naming civic buildings after living persons had been in in force for 72 years .
The ruling Democratic Change party (founded and led by Martinelli) and its allies. the Nationalist Republican Liberal Movement (Molirena) repealed Article 1 of Act 33 of 1941 ,through a bill whose original purpose was to change the jurisdiction of accounts and became Law 81 on October 22 2013 after being enacted and promulgated in the Official Gazette by Martinelli.
Law 33 , passed in 1941 during the presidential administration of Arnulfo Arias Madrid, forbade public employees and builders of national works of any kind, to baptize them with names of people still alive.
The removal of this restriction legitimizes the move of the Social Security Fund directors to call the City Hospital Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal .
Former Comptroller Alvin Weeden , says that under Martinelli the country has regressed to the 40s , when it the personalities of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were worshipped.