The Challenges of Replacing an Attorney General

The  designation of the replacement of  Attorney General Kenia Porcell rests with President Laurentino Cortizo . However, an inappropriate appointment would cost all Panamanians writes attorney  Rodrigo Noriega  in La Prensa

Dozens of high-profile corruption cases, the extradition of the children of former President Ricardo Martinelli and the processing of an exception to the principle of specialty that protects the ex-president would be affected by the appointment of an attorney who radically modifies the institution.

The prosecution of crime in Panama is a task assigned to the Public Ministry by mandate of the Political Constitution.

Unlike other entities of the judicial branch, the Public Ministry does not have a collegiate government, as does the Supreme Court of Justice or the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is headed by the Attorney General. That is his strength and his greatest weakness.

An attorney solicitor like  Ana Matilde Gómez was able to lead important transformations in the institution and prepare her for the accusatory criminal system. He abrupt departure caused an exodus of officials and cracked the institutional scheme within the entity.

Prosecutors, despite their years of dedication to the service of the State, do not have the stability that a teacher, a police officer or a doctor can have. A prosecutor, by rotation, can be transferred to a distant province or assigned to manage different issues.

Prosecutors, like doctors, are highly specialized. The preparation required by an official of the Public Ministry takes years of formal, national and international training and many years of practice to correctly handle the relationship with security agencies, exchanges with other countries and the interrelation with key institutions of the Panamanian State, such as the Comptroller General of the Republic, the Unit of Financial Analysis, the General Directorate of Revenue or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to name a few.

Since Panama lacks police specialized in judicial investigation, as Chile and Costa Rica do, and Panama hadt until 2008 with the Judicial Technical Police, National Police investigators must rotate and assume other roles. This means that the institutional memory of the criminal investigation is only in the Public Ministry.

How long does an investigation take? The investigations of the Public Prosecutor’s Office can take years, as has been the case with the Alas aircraft that suffered an attack in 1994, the disappearance of Vernon Ramos or the great majority of high-profile corruption cases.

With the departure of the solicitor Kenya Porcell and the possible turnover of personnel generated by a new prosecutor, proceedings are interrupted and the multi-case strategy is affected, since a prosecutor can approach a criminal case seeking penalty agreements to hunt the big fish , and another might find that it is better for him to concentrate his efforts on a few small fish to build his reputation.

Prosecutor Porcell is on the extradition of  Ricardo Alberto and Luis Enrique Martinelli Linares. As if this were not enough, it carries out a request for consent to the government of the United States to validate an exception to the principle of specialty that protects the former president of the Republic  Ricardo Martinelli.

In addition, the Public Ministry is waiting for information exchanges with Spain and Andorra, and remains on hold until the Judicial Branch decides whether to continue investigating the Odebrecht case .

All this bases the need for the next attorney to respect institutionality and understand, first hand, the work done by the Public Ministry. The opposite would be to lose five years of efforts and leave the country unprotected against corruption.