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Bernal, Constitutional change

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void in Panama
“The constituent power can do everything and is not subject beforehand to any constitution.”

For a new constitution

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

I have always advocated a constituent process as a civic and academic commitment, always seeking an open, informed, pluralistic debate that will lead us to a constitutional change.

Forty-seven years after it was imposed, the 1972 militarist constitution is no longer amenable to more patches or band-aids and, much less, for what some people who are clueless in civic matters have wanted to call “timely reforms.”

I recently wrote of a distinction. Constitutional Law teaches us that “reforming the constitution means altering something in its articles without changing its essence or substance. Today, more than ever before, the citizens’ power should guide any constitutional change. This will not happen if we do not accept — all of us – that the only subject of power is the political community, that the people are the only subject.

From 1978 to the present, most Latin American countries have replaced their constitutions, often in radical ways. Nations have introduced changes to electoral regulations, presidential powers, decentralization schemes, forms of organization, functions and powers of the parties. judicial and legislative bodies, as well as control bodies and mechanisms. So, we see how constitutional change is a particularly important case of the broader phenomenon of institutional change.

The persistent and growing criticism of various sectors of the citizenry, the exclusionary nature of the political regime, the inexhaustible corruption of parties and legislators, the inability to guarantee public safety – these as well as the marked inequality promoted by the measures of the different governments, leave no doubt about the urgent need for true constitutional change.

The imperious oligarchic establishment, fallen into the clutches of kleptocrats, insists on proposing and imposing “reforms” that will contribute nothing to improve the effectiveness or legitimacy of the imposed constitutional regime. The 1972 militarist constitution has already exhausted its role and greatly exceeded the capacity for survival. We have to prepare ourselves to enter into a constitutional change. We have to be decisive, with a will to live and a determination to live with dignity

 

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Gandásegui, Baru farmers dispossessed

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Baru
Farm destruction in Baru. This story was broken by another small online medium, Bayano.

Varela bashes Baru farmers on his way out

by Marco A. Gandásgui, hijo

President Juan Carlos Varela says goodbye to the presidency without fulfilling many of his promises. Perhaps his only legacy will be having established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. He was very cautious — his opponents accused him of moving at a turtle’s speed. At the last minute, with only a few weeks left to finish his term, he unsuccessfully tried to pass a set of political measures in the National Assembly without support from the other caucuses or even from his own party.

The worst decision was to wait until he had a few days left in the Palacio de las Garzas and send militarized police to Barú to evict hundreds of farm families from their lands. What kind of advisers does President Varela have? The eviction of farmers from their lands is a practice that dates back to the first half of the 20th century in Panama. In those days the Guardia Nacional was used to suppress — sometimes taking lives – those campesinos who obstructed the landowners’ plans.

The president decided to send in troops from the National Frontiers Service (SENAFRONT) to fulfill functions that don’t really belong to that organization and evict the farm families. Will that leave us with another officer like Torrijos, who got tired of receiving orders that didn’t meet the country’s needs and rebelled? A Panamanian president giving orders to militarized police to repress farmers who resist being expelled from their lands to accommodate Del Monte, an US multinational company. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries companies like this deceived everyone by saying that giving up lands to foreigners was the way to progress. We learned that these stories were wrong.

If President Varela and his team want to do business, they should sit down and talk with those affected. If the proposals of the American corporation are no good, they must be rejected without harming the farmers and much less pitting their brothers and children in uniform against them.

According to the online news medium Bayano, “Despite the continual complaints made by farmers to all media, the authorities of the district of Baru and the province of Chiriqui have never submitted any document that says where the eviction order comes from. They only arrive with their machinery at their farms, accompanied by police and the SENAFRONT, for the purpose of destroying the farms with full force, fury and impunity.”

Yet more incredible is that the corporation joined the government’s destructive mission. “The tractors of BANAPIÑA, a subsidiary of the transnational Del Monte, fitted with mechanical shovels, entered the Rodolfo Aguilar Delgado Cooperative’s palm oil farm, which is in full production,” Bayano reported. “There they destroyed the crops and the South Burica farmers’ meeting hall.”

When those affected asking the justice of the peace, Ulzana Valzdez, to show them the legal order for this action, she told them them that they had to go later to her office to ask for it, but meanwhile the destruction of the crops continued.

Acording to Bayano, afterward they went to the La Ceiba farm, where they destroyed the Persian lime trees and coconut palms belonging to farmer Alexander López. On this same farm they destroyed farmer Felícito González’s plantains and other crops.

The rabiblanco media haven’t reported on the destruction wrought by the government and Banalpiña. The company’s arrogance brings back memories of the old banana company, in another era. They made sure that the destruction of the agricultural crops of the farmers of Barú continued until the last plant disappeared and all the farmers were arrested and expelled.

Bayano reported that “the spokesman for the Association of Pro-Land Farmers of Barú, Marvin Wilcox, said that dozens of families have been affected by the total destruction of their farms.”

According to Bayano, “what the peasants of Barú are living through can be described as dehumanizing, subject to actions that violate the basic rights of the human beings like food and the right of every citizen to work the land in a dignified, peaceful and continuous manner.”

In January 2019, President Varela received Pope Francis, who celebrated World Youth Day in Panama along with 300,000 pilgrims. He closes his mandate by repressing humble Panamanians to favor the Del Monte corporation, one of the richest multinationals in the world. With one hand, he destroys what he does with the other.

 

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Lame duck? Or a sleeping one?

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bemedaled
President Varela passing out medals to senior law enforcement and security officer. Photo by the Presidencia.

A few days of political drama after the election, but June’s a month-long sleepwalk

by Eric Jackson

On May 5 the big surprise was that Martinelli’s party got 30 percent, but once things were counted — a few challenges are still outstanding — it was clear that President Varela’s Panameñista Party had been cast into the wilderness and Nito Cortizo’s Democratic Revolutionary Party would have the votes to control the legislature and pretty much do as it pleases.

Not entirely, though. The PRD wanted constitutional changes on a special session agenda so that they could be jammed through without a referendum, but Varela wouldn’t go along. Varela had a few bits of legislation and a bunch of appointments that he wanted to push though a special session on his way out, but none of that happened and it appears that none of it will. Even if Roberto Roy claims that it’s some sort of constitutional violation for him not to get a seat on the Panama Canal Authority board of directors. The PRD and Cambio Democratico, probably each with their own specific set of calculations, concur about Varelat getting nothing on his way out. That doesn’t mean any sort of alliance — Cortizo doesn’t need CD’s votes in the next National Assembly and promises not to intervene in ongoing court cases against Ricardo Martinelli et al.

So until Inauguration Day on July 1, we have a mainly ceremonial administration and a president-elect making all the proper rounds and holding transition meetings, but other than nominating a non-surprising cabinet not having a lot to say. That makes Panama’s news cycles more about improperly built houses sliding down San Miguelito hillsides and terrible car crashes than anything going on in the halls of government. For politics junkies it’s boring.

With the winds of trade wars blowing from the north, few countries in the region that are all that stable and the prospect of not having the money to do everything he’d like to do, Cortizo is talking about reviewing things and paying down the government debt. He says he wants a constitutional proposal to put to the Panamanian people this fall.

This month, though, there’s just not a lot to cover on the Panamanian government front. Watching the time run out on gridlock will put even the healthiest, most active duck to sleep.

 

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¿Wappin? Hoodoo and other insidious forces

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the night tripper
The late great Dr. John in Germany in 2011. Wikimedia photo by Schorle.
El fallecido Dr. John en Alemania en 2011. Foto de Wikimedia por Schorle.

Categorize Dr. John? Why?
Categorizar a Dr. John? ¿Por qué?

Dr. John – Such a Night
https://youtu.bZe/QO53Xu6TBg

Odette Versailles – Harlem Nocturne
https://youtu.be/ZOzsDSG1Erw

Diego El Cigala – El Ratón
https://youtu.be/dgy1f1l0EBA

María José – Me Equivoqué
https://youtu.be/SF8xMKZ8knM

Carla Morrison – Hasta la piel
https://youtu.be/4vw0MRcn1rY

Willie Nelson – Come On Time
https://youtu.be/GQOd_oQeH1w

The Lumineers – Ain’t Nobody’s Problem
https://youtu.be/PALIPetaLrE

Enya – Echoes In Rain
https://youtu.be/8DDHulO485k

Queen – Under Pressure
https://youtu.be/a01QQZyl-_I

Of Monsters and Men – Alligator
https://youtu.be/NunAl4BRVx8

REM – Losing My Religion
https://youtu.be/VNL5rrsz8MY

Burning Spear – Throw Down Your Arms
https://yu.be/aoutZ14bOV4jhE

Kafu Banton & Raices y Cultura – Sin Ti
https://youtu.be/8UOtVO8D4Rc

Eek a Mouse Live @ Bibelot Dordrecht 2019 Holland
https://youtu.be/xu-QWBjkeRU

 
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La huella regional del Dr. Richard Cooke

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Dr. Cooke
La trayectoria del renombrado arqueólogo del Instituto Smithsonian en Panamá abarca medio siglo y ha tenido un impacto importante en el campo de la arqueología centroamericana y en las carreras de decenas de investigadores. Una revista de la Universidad de Costa Rica le hace honor. Richard Cooke e Ilean Isaza en la excavación de Cerro Juan Díaz, Península de Azuero. Foto por A. Ranere.

Una vida arqueológica

por Sonia Tejada — STRI

En días pasados, la revista Cuadernos de Antropología de la Universidad de Costa Rica, publicó un volumen en honor al renombrado arqueólogo del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI), el Dr. Richard Cooke. El número se basó en las ponencias presentadas durante el XI Congreso de la Red Centroamericana de Antropología en Costa Rica en 2017: “Tras una herencia cultural milenaria: contribuciones de Richard Cooke a la arqueología del Área Istmo Colombiana”.

Dedicar un congreso – ahora convertido en revista– a resaltar los aportes del investigador a lo largo de medio siglo de carrera, es un reflejo del impacto que han tenido sus contribuciones en el campo de la arqueología centroamericana, para entender las poblaciones precolombinas de la región, así como de la diversidad de facetas que ha abarcado su trabajo.

“Richard ha tenido una trayectoria profesional tan destacable que es imposible referirse a la arqueología panameña e inclusive del Área Istmo Colombiana sin nombrarlo”, destaca un texto introductorio a la más reciente edición de esta revista.

Los nueve artículos, por ponentes de Panamá, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estados Unidos y Canadá, rescatan varias cualidades sobre el arqueólogo inglés radicado en Panamá, que el año pasado recibió la Excelentísima Orden del Imperio Británico. Entre ellas, que se trata de un científico con infinitas ganas de aprender y una aguda sensibilidad social, muy comprometido con el pueblo panameño.

Varios textos resaltan cómo Richard Cooke se ha esforzado por llevar los resultados de sus investigaciones a los profesionales en formación y al público en general, o las profundas influencias que sus metodologías, su enfoque interdisciplinario, sus descubrimientos y teorías han tenido sobre las carreras de sus pupilos.

Finalmente, se evidencia la generosidad del veterano investigador. Por ejemplo, al abrir sus colecciones al mundo, como en el caso del proyecto La Mula-Sarigua, una de las primeras y más grandes aldeas en el Pacífico Central panameño, y cuyos recursos líticos y cerámicas ahora alimentan un archivo digital público para el uso de futuros investigadores.

Algunas ponencias del simposio, que no llegaron a formar parte de esta edición de los Cuadernos de Antropología, sustentan otros legados de Richard Cooke que marcarán a las nuevas generaciones de arqueólogos. Esto comprende su colección de referencia de la fauna de la América Tropical, una de las mejores en el mundo, o los restos humanos extraídos por él hace décadas de Cerro Juan Díaz, que hoy revelan datos innovadores sobre la demografía, dieta, salud y prácticas culturales de aquellos pobladores.

“En Octubre cumpliré los cincuenta años de haber llegado a Panamá a iniciar mi carrera en arqueología. Le agradezco a todos su edición esmerada y los simpáticos artículos encomiásticos que a veces me ruborizan y a veces sueltan carcajadas”, expresó un Cooke sonriente, en un video de agradecimiento por la iniciativa en conmemoración suya.

 

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Mexican environment minister blames climate crisis on neoliberal policies

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Toledo
Mexico’s Environment Secretary Víctor Manuel Toledo Manzur speaking on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. “Human beings are not responsible for global warming, as a superficial environmentalism and uncritical science would like to tell us,” said Toledo. “The responsible are a parasitic and predatory minority, and that minority has a name: neoliberalism.” Photo: Screenshot/Youtube).

‘Parasitic and predatory neoliberalism’ blamed for climate crisis

by John Queally — Common Dreams

In a scathing rebuke to the elite capitalists and politicians who largely control the global economic and energy systems, Mexico’s newly-appointed environment secretary on Wednesday pointed a stern finger at the “parasitic and predatory neoliberals” for being the key culprits behind the planetary climate crisis.

As the Mexico News Daily reports, the public comments by Secretary Víctor Manuel Toledo Manzur were his first since his appointment by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador earlier this week and seen as a direct challenge to previous Mexican governments which sacrificed the nation’s environment to the interests of industry.

“Human beings are not responsible for global warming, as a superficial environmentalism and uncritical science would like to tell us,” said Toledo. “The responsible are a parasitic and predatory minority, and that minority has a name: neoliberalism.”

According to the News Daily, Toledo vowed “to ‘take back’ the Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat), which he said had been controlled by ‘merchants from the automotive sector,’ and involve citizens in policy making.

He also vowed to put ecological and human concerns above the demands of capitalism and industrial powerbrokers.

“We can defend life, or we can continue destroying it in the name of the market, technology, progress, development, economic growth, etc.,” he said.

In addition to a ban on fracking, Toledo said there was an urgent need to find replacement sources for all fossil fuels and also issued warnings about the use of genetically-modified crops.

Not a new concept, proponents of bold climate action and experts on the geopolitics of global warming have long noted that the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant political force in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere correlates in troubling ways with the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2015, as Common Dreams reported at the time, the model of neoliberal capitalism was blamed for the looming destruction of the world’s natural systems in a pair of groundbreaking studies.

“It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change,” said Professor Will Steffen, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre who was involved with both studies. “In a single lifetime humanity has become a geological force at the planetary-scale.”

And as journalist Naomi Klein wrote in her 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, humanity over the last 30 years has “not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.”

“We are stuck,” Klein writes in the book, “because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

 

Watch the full speech (in Spanish):


 
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Editorial: What goes around comes around — he doesn’t care but we should

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take them away
Below, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Will Bunch reflected on and linked to a story he did a little more than one year ago. Above, Trump openly played the foreign interference game in an interview with a disreputable British publication, The Sun. Two clippings off of Twitter, set in a montage by Eric Jackson.

Foreign meddling can’t be allowed in US elections, but that must be a two-way street

A few days before flying off to a state visit to his ancestral island — Donald Trump’s mother was born a British subject, from the Scottish part of the United Kingdom — Donald Trump boasted that the Russians had helped him get elected. Given all the surrounding circumstances it was a pretty damning admission, which he clumsily tried to walk back.

Heading out across the pond, he insulted the mayor of London and got into a crude exchange about a prince’s American-born wife. Then, with the UK in political crisis, he gave his endorsement in an upcoming race to be the next Prime Minister.

There is a systemic problem, which is not just the Russians and not just the Republicans. 

Joe Biden said some years ago that it was a mistake to allow the Palestinians to hold parliamentary elections in 2006.  He never accepted the result, instead opining that “I would also support alternatives to Hamas. I would urge Palestinian leaders to reform Fatah….” ((Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2007.) The aftermath of that election, in which the heavy hand of Israeli manipulation aimed at undermining Fatah was ever-present, has been unfortunate. Hamas won and was not allowed to assume its mandate. Instead Fatah is allowed bantustan-style nominal authority on the West Bank while Hamas is besieged in Gaza. Palestine has not meaningfully gone to the polls since the 2006 vote. So it might be said that Biden had a point — except, what business is it of the United States when or for whom Palestinians vote?

We can go around the world, under Republican and Democratic administrations, and find plenty of examples of US meddling in other countries’ elections over the years.

Russia clearly did interfere in the 2016 US election, to what effect it’s hard to judge. But let us also recall that the Obama administration, via then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, condemned the 2011 Russian Duma elections. It was not an unfair statement for an international human rights group or an independent news organization to make, but improper meddling when one government made it about its counterpart in another country. By treaty and customary international law, nations’ rights to self-determination preclude such comments.

What goes around comes around. It may not just be via a candidate’s campaign, a political party or a public official. Foundations and industry associations are also used as conduits of foreign political access and influence. A lot of perfectly legal things that go on look just awful. US laws about this really should be tightened. Even the appearance of foreign influence ought to be suppressed, whatever the other country, whatever party is the intended beneficiary.

But it all flies over the incredibly self-centered Donald Trump’s head. That’s a problem for the republic.

 


Bear in mind…

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.”
Barbara W. Tuchman

 

I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
Dorothy Parker

 

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
John Muir
 
 

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The Panama News blog links, June 3, 2019

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The Panama News blog links

a Panama-centric selection of other people’s work
una selección Panamá-céntrica de las obras de otras personas

Canal, Maritime & Transportation / Canal, Marítima & Transporte

La Estrella, ACP tiene un “plan hídrica” de B/1.4 mil millones

Seatrade, Insuring a ship’s hull against a cyber incident

Reuters, USS McCain flap: Pentagon says military will not be politicized

Sports / Deportes

Bienvenido Brown, Hay que auditar las planillas de Pandeportes 

FIFA.com, Panama edges Saudi Arabia for historic win

FIFA.com, Panama bows out of U-20 World Cup with loss to Ukraine

Economy / Economía

Basu, Why the trade arithmetic favors China

AFP, Entran en vigor los aranceles chinos sobre productos ‘made in USA’ 

Inman, Donald Trump lashes out at Mexico but his real fight is at home

ZeroHedge, Trump declares trade war on India

Bloomberg, Top Trump economic adviser is leaving

Baker, Hoagland and the Post play straight man in globalization debate

Los Tiempos, La OIT confirma quiebra de pensiones por privatización

Applebaum, Recession or not there will be pain

La Estrella, Valor total de las construcciones se contrae en 28.2%

Stiglitz, After neoliberalism

Science & Technology / Ciencia & Tecnología

STRI, Pheromone talk

Mongabay, La estrategia indígena para proteger los bosques del Darién

Belkhir, Big Pharma emits more greenhouse gases than the auto industry 

Gizmodo, Las grandes ciudades están creando sus propias nubes

Ezrahi & Mizrachi, Israel uses archaeology to erase non-Jewish history

News / Noticias

La Prensa, Nombramientos y el equilibrio de poder en el gobierno de Cortizo 

TVN, La ausencia de diputados a Comisión de Credenciales

Newsroom Panama, 14 injured in apartment gas explosion

El Nuevo Diario, Panamá revoca deportación de manifestante nicaragüense

NACLA, Washington doubles down on its military intervention script in Venezuela

AFP, Guatemala acepta que militares de EEUU lleguen a su territorio

BBC, EEUU ya pide datos de redes sociales para el trámite de visas

DW, German Greens lead national poll for the first time

Opinion / Opiniones

Maduro and Ramos, The Univision interview

Human Rights Groups: For a peaceful and democratic solution in Venezuela

Merkel, Commencement address to the Harvard Alumni Association

Bai, Forcing “America First” on others will lead to “America Alone”

International Federation of Journalists, Assange indictment threatens media freedom

Boff, Brasil: ¿Carácter suicida del gobierno actual?

Ruíz Díaz, Concertación o sastrería nacional 

Gandásegui, Almagro busca reeleccióm en la OEA

Sagel, La privatización de las telecomunicaciones 

Culture / Cultura

AP, Famed New Orleans chef who fed civil rights leaders dies

Ani Cordero, Pan Pan (sin mantequilla)

Guacamoley, Duterte claims he cured himself of being gay

Padilla Rosas, From colonized thought to decolonial aesthetics in Puerto Rico

 
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Editorial, Not even in the ballpark about which questions to ask

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Them
President-elect Cortizo meets with the “Consejo de la Concertación Nacional para el Desarrollo” to discuss what as yet undisclosed constitutional changes they have in store for the dark-skinned masses. MIDES photo.

An embarrassment headed toward a political defeat

There are some flagrant chokepoints at which Panamanian society is being strangled. You’d think that some of these would rise to the level of constitutional issues.

Issues? What issues? Check out the spiffy headline that went with the above picture in the Ministry of Social Development’s website:

Councilors of the National Development Agreement meet in plenary session to seek consensus on proposals presented by the Commissions on Modernization of the State, Justice and Public Security; Public Health and Social Security, and Sustainable Economic Growth and Competitiveness

Say what? Certainly if you go down into the story you’d find more specifics? Nothing about any details of a constitutional reform, or of any issue that matters. We have heard a few descriptions of details in second-hand new reports, and references to a 57-page document that the public has never been allowed to see. None of it is impressive. Most of it isn’t remotely relevant to the country’s pressing problems.

But there ARE important issues that have added up to give Panama a crisis:

Monopolistic practices are the norm, and are enshrined by the state in laws and regulations. It costs Panamanians a lot of money, makes us uncompetitive in the world, and whenever by international agreement or coercion international players are allowed into this country those Panamanian businesses that had basked in the luxuries of rigged markets and nepotism tend to collapse in short order.

Lawyers take too damned much out of this society and are hardly ever called to account for what they do. Some 40 percent of our work force is in the informal sector. Their micro-businesses can’t have bank accounts or mailboxes. Nor can they deal with the government. Nor will the snottiest of rabiblanco companies have anything to do with them except to steal from them if possible. In most other countries, for a small fee a person or partnership can file to go into business under an assumed name or under his or her own name, lacking the legal armor — which here includes anonymity for criminal acts — of a corporation but able to formally do business. Here, a corporation must pay lawyers and CPAs to maintain status, costs that are prohibitive for most small businesses. If a lawyer takes a business’s or person’s money and renders no service, there is no recourse. Disbarment doesn’t ever happen, even for a notorious criminal judge like Alejandro Moncada Luna, who got out of prison and went right into the practice of law the next week.

We have no general conflict of interest law. There are a few anti-nepotism clauses here and there, but how many relatives did the current batch of legislators put on the government payroll? That’s just the start of it. Panama is under international pressure over its lack of conflict of interest laws. The word is out that to do business in Panama is to be ripped off, but our business elites want to ignore that and offer more tax breaks for the rich instead of creating a fair system for both rich and poor.

Panamanian democracy is only hypothetical. It’s not really because someone can and usually does get elected president with a plurality rather than a majority. It’s that legislators are elected not according to any true proportional vote, nor according to the person with more votes wins against the person with fewer votes. It’s that the purchase of votes is allowed and anyone who would complain has to prove that the money for the gifts came from the public till but the records of state finances to do this are opaque. If a president with a little more than one-third of the vote is acceptable, exaggerated presidential powers for such a person are unjustified. Can the Supreme Court remove crooked legislators, and the National Assembly oust crooked magistrates? That’s generally a formula for non-aggression pacts to uphold corruption in both the legislative and judicial branches of government.

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The litany could go on and on, but that’s not what’s being discussed on high. We get hints of constitutional reforms ranging from the cosmetic to the banal, but no case altering any of this country’s political, social or economic inequalities. We are told that a “civil society” body of rich white people will give presidents lists of magistrates whom they might appoint, and that will solve Panama’s problems.

Varela didn’t go along, so now the white business lobbies are going to give the next president a draft, which he might tweak and then send to the voters within a year.

The likely outcome, something that we saw in the Pérez Balladares administration, is that the president who comes in with a third of the vote who then holds a referendum on some constitutional reform that’s inane, self-serving or both unites everyone who did not vote for that president to vote against the proposal. After that the president is a lame duck.

Does Nito Cortizo really want to do that? Why?

Bear in mind…

 

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.
R. A. Dickson

 

A stale mind is the devil’s breadbox.
Mary Bly

 

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Soren Kierkegaard

 

 

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¿Wappin? Music for a rainy last day of May

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father and son
Father and daughter, in the congo dancing fashion.
Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

Sonidos para el 31 de mayo

May 31 sounds

Yomira John – Mama Congo
https://youtu.be/C48fi2qtKn8

Bob Marley – Redemption Song
https://youtu.be/15_fvQr1pWQ

Ronald Reggae – Jamaican Rhapsody
https://youtu.be/WHho3_ZRKZ0

Kafu Banton & El Almirante – Ella
https://youtu.be/U2ULizf1Meg

Sabrina Claudio – Messages From Her
https://youtu.be/7fitwnziTfA

Juanes & Alessia Cara – Querer Mejor
https://youtu.be/mQ4o4Wcda_s

Jefferson Airplane – Eskimo Blue Day
https://youtu.be/AcqBLlZvkBE

Bunbury – El rescate
https://youtu.be/5ItCxKd3cy4

Samantha Fish – Either Way I Lose / Somebody’s Always Trying
https://youtu.be/kr_iMKjHaqo

Aterciopelados – Bolero Falaz
https://youtu.be/sUlsTs2ljaE

Bob Dylan – Changing of the Guards
https://youtu.be/qZhMvLuoMaM

Eurythmics – Here Comes The Rain Again
https://youtu.be/TzFnYcIqj6I

Luci & The Soul Brokers – Dear Baby
https://youtu.be/kbOUG9SFkig

Pointer Sisters – Slow Hand
https://youtu.be/dbk29JZdl5A

Shawn Mendes live Primera Fila YouTube concert
https://youtu.be/5YuKiJBWeJk

 
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