Were people who found it difficult to get to work annoyed? Of course they were. Were businesses whose employees were late for work, or absent that day, unhappy about it? You bet. Did the editorial writers for the corporate mainstream press, who never ride the buses themselves, find an occasion to denounce the bus drivers and their organizations? Well, what else is new?

The significance of the August 11 one-day bus strike, however, is missed if those are the only parts of the story you get. This was a test, both of the new administration and of the old bus drivers' organization in the post-Torrijos period. The National Chamber of Transportation (CANATRA) was a creature of the dictatorship's public transportation policies. General Torrijos took away the concessions for the private bus system that served Panama City and whose owners were connected to the politicians he overthrew, and replaced it with a system of owner operated buses that was largely packed with the dictatorship's supporters, who organized themselves into syndicates, which then joined together to create CANATRA, most of the leadership of which has traditionally been affiliated with the PRD.

When the dictator's son, President Martín Torrijos, tried to run the diablo rojo buses that serve metro area commuters out of business, it was a shattering political event. It shattered what had been a solid bus driver bastion of support for the PRD. It shattered CANATRA into warring factions and gave rise to a new generation of bus driver leaders who owed no allegiance to CANATRA or the PRD. To the extent that the CANATRA leadership was still aligned with the PRD and able to exert influence in the PRD-dominated legislature and find sympathetic judges in the court system that's headed by a Supreme Court that has a majority of PRD-appointed magistrates, the bus struggle shattered the PRD's unity to the extent that the president couldn't get his transportation laws through the legislature. Since the younger Torrijos never did his homework to get the infrastructure work ready for the system he advocated, it would not have changed very much if the legislature had accepted his ideas. However the former president took 600 of the 1500 metro area buses off of the road and had nothing to replace them with. It made the daily commute hellish for many people and gave the impression of a lame duck ruling party on its way to defeat --- a self-fulfilling impression, as it turned out.

Now we have a new administration that wants to build a new subway line that will surely displace many of the bus drivers, and no announced policy about what is to become of the diablos rojos. So CANATRA called a strike, without having any particular government policy to oppose or specific demand to press. That situation led many of the bus drivers' critics to call the strike senseless, but really, it made all the sense in the world. It was about CANATRA proving that it was a relevant factor, something that was in serious doubt by the end of the Torrijos years. That most of the bus owners and operators in the metro area heeded the strike call --- along with many in Panama Oeste and a few other points in the Interior, who have other issues with the government --- established that CANATRA still has some relevance left.

The Martinelli administration is about big business, while the bus drivers' syndicates are not like unions in the ordinary sense, but rather associations of small owner-operated bus businesses. The Chamber of Commerce, the mainstream media and the Martinelli administration share a rabiblanco disdain for businesses whose owners get their hands dirty. To SUNTRACS and other labor militants, the bus drivers are capitalists, not workers, and for the most part capitalists aligned with their deadly foes, the PRD. And then, as most regular bus riders will attest, a certain small percentage of the bus drivers are maniacs or thugs.

Diablos rojos are used North American school buses, fixed up and painted for commuter service in Panama. They tend to be rather low-tech simple to rehabilitate and maintain, but it does take a certain amount of money to keep them in safe operating condition, and some owner-operators have been know to cut corners to reduce expenses.

There's a certain amount of reckless driving --- races to see which bus gets to the bus stop first and thus claims dibs on the waiting passengers are the most common example --- and there is a generation of bus drivers accustomed to political protection that includes a collection of brazen scofflaws.

And then there's human error, like that of a driver who tried to drive and close the bus door at the same time on the entrance to the Centennial Bridge. The vehicle went out of control and rolled over, resulting in deaths --- the best publicized of which was of prizefighter "Maco" Arboleda --- and injuries. And then editors and politicians who had their various points to make and axes to grind had another horror story to point at as typical, even if the great majority of bus riders who dread being victim in one of these unusual but not unheard-of incident know that this sort of negligence is not the norm. Another deadly bus crash within a few days, this time in a two-vehicle accident that may not have been any of the bus driver's fault, and those who have reason to vilify the bus drivers had their horrible tabloid photos.

President Martinelli doesn't like unions and says he won't put up with disruptive strikes.  He took the buses that  the Torrijos administration bought out, put cops behind the wheels  and set out to break the CANATRA strike. Because the drivers in a few parts of the metro area ignored the strike and most people eventually did get to  work, his underlings proclaimed victory. Once the strike was over, the Martinelli administration said it would meet with CANATRA at some unspecified "later" time. If CANATRA made its point, so did Martinelli.

I'd call it a draw. Both sides had points to make which had only tangential relationships to their adversaries. Nobody got knocked down. But the future of the diablos rojos and their wonderful art hangs in the balance, the details of plans for a new commuter train system are (except a suggestion that it will displace the present legislative palace) unannounced, and there a cauldrons of labor unrest simmering here and there and around the country.

There's a piece of badly-written fiction circulating online about me. I no longer write a weekly column for The Panama Star. They had a reorganization that all knew was coming, as they advertised for English-language journalists. I did not apply for one of those jobs. I had been approached to write columns for the Star, which I did but for which I was never paid nor formally employed. In the reorganization it was decided that only the editor would be allowed to comment about public affairs. Several columnists, myself included, were discontinued, and several new people were brought in to write specialized columns --- of some of which I am a regular and appreciative reader. For the record I don't begrudge the owners and publisher the right to run things as they want and I am thankful for the months when I wrote for the Star. A sarcastic thing I wrote in an email discussion group about something entirely different was ripped out of context as "proof" that I am out for revenge and making wild attacks against the Star's owners and publisher. Like most bad fiction, it doesn't work.