|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
newsAlso in this section: Two
bomberos electrocuted, five others injured, in Colon Free Zone blaze Martín Torrijos on the campaign trail Miguel Antonio Bernal on the campaign trail Partido Alternativa Popular on the campaign trail Méndez
fights charges that he tried to set up a shooting incident
At the Tribunal Electoral to
start the drive to get ballot status
Photo courtesy of the Partido Alternativa Popular Leftists try to put new party on the ballot by Eric Jackson In 2009, Panama is unlikely to see anything like one of the leftist electoral victories that have been registered in several South American countries in recent years. The left here is divided, and when all is told in aggregate it amounts to no more than 10 percent of the electorate, if that. (Of course, there are those who claim that the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party, the Panamanian affiliate of the Socialist International, is "leftist." Usually Panama's cordial relationships with Cuba and Venezuela are taken as exhibits A and B of that Miami Cuban exile leadership's paranoiac fantasy. Another version has it that the PRD, which is totally committed to "globalization" on the US corporate model, has a left-wing "tendency" that includes Housing Minister Balbina Herrera and other prominent party figures.) The long odds against getting a left party on the ballot when the biggest left-wing factions that are grouped in FRENADESO scoffs at the project has not daunted the Partido Alternativa Popular, a group of leftists that includes leaders and former leaders of unions representing University of Panama professors and Coca-Cola bottling plant workers and folks from the Trotskyist strain of the old left. To get the Partido Alternativa Popular on the ballot for the 2009 elections, these activists must sign up some 60,000 party members, with minimum numbers required in each province. That recruiting drive began at the Tribunal Electoral offices in Panama City on October 24, and then moved into grass roots campaigning in the Panama City - San Miguelito metro area, Santiago, David and Changuinola. So why all this hard work, if the Cuban-Americans who dominate US policy toward all of Latin America say that we already have a leftist government? It's a matter of a commitment "to the construction of a new political alternative for the Panamanian people, which will do away with the corrupt and anti-popular parties of the Panamanian oligarchy that have governed us for these past 17 years," the embryonic party said in a press release. Also in this section: Two
bomberos electrocuted, five others injured, in Colon Free Zone blaze Martín Torrijos on the campaign trail Miguel Antonio Bernal on the campaign trail Partido Alternativa Popular on the campaign trail Méndez
fights charges that he tried to set up a shooting incident News
| Business
| Editorial
| Opinion |
Letters |
Arts | Review | Community
| Fun | Travel
Make the Executive
Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
Find the boat of your dreams through Evermarine --- http://www.evermarine.com |
|||||||||
|
