Time is as hazy
As a dreamless afternoon
Stretched out on the sand.
Thursday, May 5, 2016
In a few weeks Kimme and I will travel to Panama City to transform our Pensionado into an E-Cedula. Good bye Pensionado, we hardly knew ye.
We received our Pensionados in March. If all goes according to plan we’ll receive our E-Cedulas in June. Obtaining the Pensionado was a long and relatively drawn out process compared to the E-Cedula.
To go from the Pensionado to the E-Cedula we need to go to the Tribunal Electoral in Panama City. Meet our lawyer there. Stand in the line he tells us to. Sign what he asks us to sign. Get our pictures taken, then wait 5-15 days for our E-Cedula to be processed and mailed to us.
We’ll need to have our Immigration cards, copies of those cards, our passports, copies of the information pages of our passports, and a Panamanian address and phone number.
Thankfully, the copies don’t need to be notarized. That’s a hassle here since the nearest notary is in David, an hour and a half away. Our address is also a bit vague. No one has house numbers here and the road we live on is only known as the farm road to Ojo de Agua #2. But that’s always proven to be acceptable.
We’ll pay our lawyers an additional $75 over the $75 retainer we gave them in March, and pay the Tribunal $65.
That’s it; over and done with.
One of the advantages of the E-Cedula is that it would allow us to apply for Panamanian citizenship in 5 years, but that’s not our motive; becoming citizens doesn’t concern us.
However, it will also supposedly ease the paperwork process of further legal transactions we do in this country which will no doubt include opening another bank account, buying property, building a home and possibly applying for a business license. And if having an E-Cedula will create a simpler maze for us to navigate in those endeavors, it may well be worth while.
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