Durán, Split in the Panamanian left

You have to recognize that the Panamanian bourgeoisie has had a great capacity to mend itself and resolve differences that at some moments have looked irreconcilable. With full agreement on the neo-liberal economic model that evidently means greater enrichment for them, they have set aside political and ideological differences that may have existed during the dictatorship or the episode of the US invasion and occupation. The most palpable example of the unity of the Panamanian right is the fact that President-elect Martín Torrijos of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD, bourgeois reformists), the party created by the military during the populist and counter-insurgent regime of his father Omar Torrijos, is supported by the party that in the past was one of its most bitter enemies, the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), today called the Popular Party (PP, rightists).

We can't say the same about the Panamanian left's capacity to mend itself and resolve differences. The left called on people to cast blank or spoiled ballots, or to abstaining from voting, in the May 2 elections, because they believe that the four presidential candidates would defend (and do defend) the same economic interests as national and international big business. This position gave the impression of apparent unity.

However, the reality is very different. For example, one wing of the left held that much of the inactivity of the Front for the Defense of the Social Security Fund was due to the intolerant, non-pluralist and non-consensual attitude of the SUNTRACS construction workers' union. For its part, the November 29 National Liberation Movement (MLN-29) criticized the CARITAS social ministry, the MPU (United Popular Movement) and the PAT (Transformative Action Party) of adopting stances that tend to legitimize the system, by supporting "supposedly" independent candidates.

The MLN-29 also questioned PAT and the MPU for supporting the PRD in some circuits and corregimientos, and CONATO (the National Council of Organized Workers) of trying to counteract the proposal to cast "Victoriano Lorenzo, Presidente!!!" protest votes, blank votes, spoiled ballots or abstention. According to the MLN-29, the CONATO folks dedicated themselves to going to the polls to vote "for the best," proposing election observers and supporting union pseudo-leaders, in a top-down manner and with public educational insurance funds, thus defending the institutions and system of oligarchic domination.

On the other hand, the organizations friendly to the positions of the CARITAS social ministry maintain that the MLN-29, SUNTRACS and the APP (Popular Patriotic Alternative, a leftist coalition dominated by the MLN-29) believe in an absolute vanguard, that what they don't control they try to destroy.

The Partido del Pueblo (Panama's "Communist" Party), is another case. The MLN-29 questions them because they first supported Endara (a rightist) as a way to confront bipartisanship, and later hitched their wagon to the PRD, and they have at other times. They also questioned the Movimiento Siglo XXI (Silvio Guerra's Twenty-First Century Movement) on similar grounds.

Only when the leftist groups set aside their sectarianism and fight as one for the interests of the popular sectors --- without anxiety about being the leadership --- will the left become a true alternative for popular power.

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Gutman, The timid Honduran press
Cryan, Mainstream reporting about Colombia
Carpio, The Latin America and Caribbean - European Union summit
Bond, Brown's broken promise
Durán, Split in the Panamanian left
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opinion

Split in the Panamanian left