Land law robs Panamanians

PANAMA. The Minister of Economy and Finance (MEF), Alberto Vallarino, said that the law that regulates the adjudication of coastal land and islands is an attack on the State’s patrimony.

The approval of this law by the Martin Torrijos Administration is a disgrace, said Vallarino. “I cannot believe that the legislators and President Torrijos signed a law that gives Panamanian land away for little money.”

Vallarino said to La Estrella that he recently supported a lawsuit interposed by the lawyer Samuel Velasquez Diaz before the Supreme Court seeking to declare unconstitutional the law that regulates the sale of islands and coastal land.

The minister said that the main problem with the legislation is the way in which the land’s value is determined by a commission in which the buyers have two representatives and the government just one. “This is equivalent to the mice deciding the price of the cheese,” said Vallarino.

The Land and Assets Minister of MEF, Publio Cortes, said that the islands and coastal land adjudication violates the constitution which prohibits the adjudication of the coast.

Vallarino said that the law lacks the necessary norms to be implemented because his predecessor did not manage to write them before the end of the Torrijos government.

Vallarino said that the intention of the law was for land reform. However, the new director of the Community Development Program (PRODEC), Ivan Castillo, said that he has found many irregularities in the department, especially when it was created to give possessory rights to the inhabitants of untitled lands.

The minister said that for now he will wait for the verdict of the Supreme Court regarding the validity of the law.