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More pathos than solidarity

So why would the former employees of the ports of Balboa and Cristobal be so enamored of embattled National Assembly president Pedro Miguel González as to place this bilingual banner at the fence around the legislative palace?

The answer for most of them is that they probably aren't all that sincere about it.

Back in the late 1990s the PRD administration of Ernesto Pérez Balladares, one of whose legislative leaders was Pedro Miguel's father Gerardo González, privatized the ports of Balboa and Cristobal, granting the concession to Hong Kong - based Hutchison Whampoa in a controversial process. The port workers were owed severance benefits, but the government has been referring them to the company and the company to the government for all these years. The case is but one more example of how, no matter what assurances may be given to the US Congress, Panamanian labor law is largely a bad joke.

Lately the workers, many of whom were working at the ports thanks to the political patronage of the Torrijos - Noriega dictatorship or subsequent governments, have been concentrating their hopes for compensation on the government. This banner proclaiming support for González can thus be seen as an obsequious gesture in search of some small measure of political influence.

So what do people here tend to think about the Pedro Miguel González affair? Whether or not people like the legislator as a person or as a public official tends to break down along partisan lines, but a lot of people who dislike the PRD and the deputy whom it chose to head the legislature are also unhappy about the prospect of a sovereign Panamanian political decision being trumped by pressures coming from Washington.

Photo by Eric Jackson

Rash of deaths in Ngobe-Bugle Comarca prompts criticism of Torrijos information controls
An epidemic as photo op

Panama rejoining the Andean Community

Sucking up to Pedro Miguel González

Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman is Winner's new columnist
Panama News Briefs