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newsAlso in this section: May 23 protest march the first big test of political strength, leading up to a threatened nationwide general strike Strikes, demonstrations brewing over CSS reforms by Eric Jackson On the morning after President Torrijos announced his package of reforms to the Social Security Fund (CSS), this reporter looked out from a high point in the city of Colon for the black smoke of burning tires and the lighter but more noxious fumes of tear gas. But none of it compared to the acrid guck coming out of the smokestack of the incinerator that burns the refuse from ships. There were some student protests, but those were brief and restrained. There were none of the preventive arrests of Colon’s community militants that characterized the Moscoso year. The riot police did not put in an appearance, and instead of blocking traffic their usual antagonists were quietly canvassing the neighborhoods and workplaces, urging people to come to a meeting to discuss the contents of the government’s proposal the following evening. Similar things were happening in the capital and the Interior. Members of the SUNTRACS construction workers’ union briefly blocked traffic just to flex their political muscles, but opened the streets a few minutes later. Students blocked the Transistmica in front of the University of Panama for awhile, and even dragged a dumpster into the road and set it afire, but without any challenge from the police decided to retire from the scene after making their point. That doesn’t mean that the people who had been campaigning for months against a possible CSS privatization and more likely cutbacks in retirement benefits felt any sort of relief when the president released the details of his plan. They just wanted everybody to get a chance to read the proposal and a couple of days of discussion and debate before any decisions about actions to be taken were made, and they didn’t want to live up to their adversaries’ stereotype of being knee-jerk opponents just looking for an excuse to riot. The following Saturday at the University of Panama, leaders of some 60 labor unions as well as members of the usual suspect leftist groups convened in the main auditorium, pronounced the reforms anathema, and decided that if and when the Torrijos administration proposal got to the point of the second of three required readings in the National Assembly there would be a nationwide general strike. The cast of characters was similar to the crowd in the 2003 protests, when a general strike call went unheeded by most working people. The construction and banana workers, whose unions are the strongest in a barely organized private sector, again played lead roles. Most public employee unions --- with the notable exception of those representing Panama Canal workers --- were part of the strike call. The teachers, who have several unions, said that apart from the general strike call, they would abandon their classes on Wednesday, May 25 to go down to the legislature and press their demand for the restoration of their special retirement plan. The protests against the CSS reforms will begin in earnest on May 23, with an after-work march from Parque Porras to the National Assembly that has been called by the National Council of Organized Workers (CONATO). Drivers who want to get where they want to go earlier that day would be well advised to avoid the University of Panama area. As with most protest movements, the true test of the opposition to the Torrijos plan will be who shows up at the rallies, and in what numbers. Surely the reforms would be painful to many Panamanians, and in the 2003 crisis that ensued after Dr. Juan Jované was fired as CSS director a very large crowd turned out in the driving rain to protest. Torrijos says he won’t back down, and if the May 23 march is counted in tens of thousands he won’t have to. But if the crowd that gathers before the legislature exceeds 100,000 and includes middle class elements and a lot of rank-and-file PRD members, the government may yet have to back down even though the president commands a solid majority in the assembly.
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