‘Justice is not a condemned house’

"The fight for transparency continues as well as the fight against corruption and that is the reason why the house of justice should stop been viewed as an old condemned building because of to the kind of justice that it dispenses and for the behavior of certain civil servants,” said Mitchell.

"To carry out our functions properly all the members of the Judicial Organ should act fairly, because where impartiality does not exist, there is no justice, because the foundation of justice is impartiality. Panamanian society need a healthy, robust, efficient and dignified Judicial Organ,” he added.

Mitchell was in Chiriqui opening municipal courthouses in the districts of Baru, Bugaba and Tole, which were built as part of the Judicial Organ Modernization Project sponsored by the European Community.

The courthouses built thanks to the financial support of the European Community have a total cost of $300,000.

The new buildings will offer better services to customers and have chambers, interview rooms and other facilities.

The Supreme Court judge was accompanied by the ambassadors of France, Henri Guignard and Italy Placido Vigo as well as the National Assembly president, Raul Rodriguez.

During the inauguration of the court house of Bugaba, Mitchell said that Panamanian society does not trust the judicial system because, the Judicial Organ has been in the public eye not because of its efficiency, but for the behavior of a few individuals who are giving the institution a bad name."Justice must assure the development of the people, because nobody is going to invest in a place where there is no rule of law,” concluded Mitchell.

Over the last few months the Supreme Court president has tried to clean the justice system in Panama, ordering internal investigations to find out evidence of corruption indifferent courts of the country. Recently Mitchell announced that he will fire those judges who are corrupt.