opinion

Another page
by Miguel Antonio Bernal

World society as we know it today has no point of reference by which it may be compared with any that has preceded it. From Alvin Toffler to Michel Serres, there hasn't been one serious writer in the social sciences who has failed to describe to us profound changes that today are part of ordinary life, even though we may not have seen it. The metamorphosis through which human society lives is permanent. In all parts of the world people not only live change, they also prepare for more changes and increasingly want to change.

However, we in Panama continue, more than many other places on the planet, to completely turn our back on the world around us, trying to forget that we are a part of the same and that, if we don't change, the changes are going to make us do things that we had hoped that we wouldn't do. Our political class, and very especially those now in control of the government, suffers from a curious ailment akin to a political Alzheimer's that's extremely dangerous for our present and will take us to a negative future. The absolute absence of a truly democratic project with a serious program for our society; coupled with the sharp increase in injustices and consequently, in the fortunes of the privileged, that has developed against a backdrop that includes a chorus of ridiculous neo-populism, a vulgar cult of personality and disrespectful demagoguery, and with the most complicit and complacent silence of those who are called upon to react and act in the foreground.

During the last 40 years, we have lived as prisoners of structures that belong to a past that never ends. They have obliged us to accept as good or necessary a series of practices and attitudes lacking in political will and vision, which have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the changes that we should have. We continue to be what Don Justo Arosemena called "the country of anomalies," where indifference and egotism prevail for the benefit of a few, always to the detriment of many, many more.

It thus imposes a duty to act upon those citizens conscious of the moment in which we live and of the approaching grave situations for the country that, some day when it's least expected, will blow up as the immediate result of the breach between the extraordinary worldwide advances in all fields and the unsustainable political sclerosis of the local establishment. Once again, we must heed the wisdom of the Greek philosophers --- we must prepare for the unexpected.

It's up to us to start and restart the actions and mechanisms needed to produce the change that's denied us, to make a qualitative leap and occupy the place that we, as human beings, deserve and that those who have patiently tolerated what has been given also deserve. We can't go on contemplating how they have stolen our hopes of a better live and true happiness, of how they deceive us every day while they raise the price of everything and reduce our standard of living, while they divide us so that they can rule.

Another page is possible, if and when we women and men, youth, adults and senior citizens who take human rights as our credo and guiding principle and firmly commit ourselves to be agents of a democratizing movement to get us out of this morass they're trying to drown us in. Another page is possible if, as 2008 begins, we value our dignity and our capacity to make change. This change that today is denied us will nevertheless come our way if we know how to convince ourselves that it's possible for those who believe in freedom, equality, the pursuit of happiness and the eradication of privileges to dedicate ourselves to the search for the democratic means needed to make things better for all, not just for those on top.

May 2008 thus be a year of changes, starting with the changes we must make in ourselves to be able to bring about change. Let's stop turning our backs on social reality and our political duty right now --- so that nobody writes this page for us, and nobody touches the page that we write.

The author is a law professor at the University of Panama, president of the Colegio de Abogados Honor Tribunal, host of the Alternativa radio show and website and independent candidate for mayor of Panama City in 2009