Bernal, Same old same old

The presentation, defense and imposition of the tax reforms have been no more than a prolongation of the imposition that was made of the constitutional reforms in the company of Arnulfismo and the turncoats of Vision 2020's Dynamizing Group. At the same time, it's only a preamble of what we can expect with the Social Security reforms and of that which they're getting ready to do with the widening of the Panama Canal.

As a beloved friend wrote to me: "Those who look on from the bleachers with informed disenchantment at the old chess game that the bureaucrats and politicians have been playing for so many years on the big board of the nation can't let them leave us boxed into the dichotomy that they time and again expound to us: that those in power have the monopoly on truth and those who oppose only pursue a political interest. The positions found in the one band and the other serve to illustrate the benighted discourse of our political class in general."

You can't deny that there's a bitter taste in many a mouth. There's the scent of something rotten in the air. And because of the actions of "the same with the same," it's part of a deeper and continuous problem afflicting many sectors of our atomized society: the constant inclination to want to give a blank check to whoever comes to occupy a position with power.

The absence of historical memory, the lack of collective memory, the alliances between those who pretend to forget and the forgetful, on top of the special interests that go hand-in-hand with corruption, lead almost the entire leaderships of the political parties, of the unions, of the business and professional groups, of the communications media, of the associations --- civic or otherwise --- and even the NGOs themselves, turning them into accomplices by omission or action of the current group of promoters, godfathers and actors who say they wan to "reform" the state; while in reality they seek to imitate their predecessors and find a better way to assault and rob the true owners of the state: we, the citizens, regardless of whether we are employees or employers, businesspeople or workers, youngsters, adults or the aged, unemployed or occupied.

Let us not forget that we are all Panamanians and our principal task is to save Panama and not to save our wallets, our privileges and perquisites, let alone to now wish for a country for the canal and not a canal for the country.

In the past few weeks we have again had to stand the personal tantrums of the deputies and ministers, including the insults against the Panamanian people and against our liberties and rights. In some the obfuscation that goes with the fanaticism and intolerance that touched our lives during 21 years of the dictatorship, and that the previous government resuscitated with its corruption and robbery, has flourished anew.

There can be no doubt that we are again faced with "the same with the same." The same fanatics who don't know, or are they interested in, nor do they pay attention to, the reality of today's world. They go on with their preconceived ideas to search for new money with cheap demagoguery and retrograde neo-populism to accomplish their goal: power for the sake of being able to have power.

Only the fanatics of the group of the "same with the same" can act without hesitation like they did for the constitutional patches and now with the tax reforms: centered in their personal manias, without even trying to understand the situation in which the great majority lives, without accepting the problems in such dimensions that demand more participation than corruption, admitting as their only model of acting in society that which they do or are capable of doing.

Will any of them know, at the beginning of 2005, how many times Latin America has paid the amount of the foreign debt it has had for two decades? According to World Bank figures, Latin America had in 1980 a foreign debt of $157 billion. Between that year and 2003, the most recent for which data are available, it has repaid $1.99 trillion in interest and amortization, that is, seven times the original debt. Does "the silent hemorrhage of resources, which has now become more acute with the transfer of profits to the multinationals that participated in the privatization of the region's assets, and about which there is no debate" matter to any of these reformists?

I again quote my friend: "The height of power for the politicians, despite their notorious insensitivity about fixing the country's social and economic disorders, constitutes one of the contradictions tolerated by our contemporary institutional organization. The self-regulating mechanisms of a democratic state don't function among us with the punctuality that political theory promises and this is how they affirm false certainties and arrogance with the impunity permitted by an electoral regime that doesn't register the true national aspirations."

Those who are trying by their actions to bury the need for a true national dialogue and debate in order to --- by way of a constituent assembly --- put Panama on a better course, are the "same with the same" who over three decades supported repression, deceit and corruption to appropriate or transfer the riches produced by the Panamanian people. They're the same with the same.

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Committee to Protect Journalists, Venezuelan journalist's prosecution
Noriega, The new geography of world trade
Kolker, Aid finally comes to disaster-wracked Guyana
Macías, The dynamics of Mexico's next presidential election
Emeagwali, Nothing new about globalization
Weisbrot, The hype about 2018
Leis, At the World Social Forum
Bernal, More of the same old same old

opinion

The same, with the same