Page 92 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

very careful with this kind of reporting. U.S. laws are very strict when it comes to
undue use of the media. We have no doubt, therefore, that the hooded informer was
legitimate and that numerous tally sheets were tampered with at the Electoral Tribunal.
This would not have been the first case of a public official, revolted by the systematic
violations of the law going on around him, leveling charges at his colleagues while
protecting his identity.

As regards the fraudulent lead fabricated for Barletta’s benefit, we know for a
fact that the tally sheet for Circuit 4-4 was tampered with at the Electoral Tribunal on
the evening of May 9. This fraud, however, only contributed some 2,713 votes to
Barletta. What other circuit tally sheets were also tampered with at the Electoral
Tribunal? It should be remembered that the National Returns Board reviewed only five
tally sheets. Any of the remaining 34 could have been altered to give Barletta more
votes than he had actually received.

Finally, there is the exception that proves the rule. Not all members of the
Electoral Tribunal were dishonest or pliable, arbitrary, or weak. Engineer Roberto
Reyna Rodríguez, Justice Quintero’s alternate, resigned his office on May 23. His letter
of resignation was published in La Prensa’s front page the following day. “I have made
this decision”, Reyna explained, “because I do not wish to be associated in any way
with a body such as the Electoral Tribunal, whose inept and partial performance at the
May 6 elections and in the events before and since then, have dashed the hopes that an
entire nation had naively stored in its institutional integrity…”. The full text of Reyna’s
resignation is reproduced in exhibit 36.

The regime’s fraudulent activities that we have seen so far did not include
physical violence. But there was physical violence. There were two deaths and
numerous injuries. And the deaths were not the result of inevitable accidents which
traditionally tend to happen during the heated political campaigns of countries such as
Panama. Quite the opposite. These victims were the result of a plan conceived by the
government as a complement to its numerous and well documented electoral frauds.
For the first time in Panama’s modern political history, paramilitary groups were seen
to act under the direct orders and supervision of the Defense Forces and with the
blessings of UNADE leaders.

The next section of this work is devoted to a description of these groups’
activities, particularly the infamous “PRD Special Commando” and their sequel of
death and suffering, the brutal police repression of hundreds of ADO sympathizers and
the destruction of the ADO campaign headquarters by the Defense Forces.