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News
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Volume
15, Number 15 |
Also in this
section: The
consortium that won the contract for the new locks
Grupo
Unidos por el Canal
by Héctor Endara Hill --- Panamá Profundo The nefarious history upon which the Panama Canal expansion is founded never ceases to represent an enormous danger for the Panamanian nation. The signs, proofs and evidence of the outrage that was the expansion project's imposition are abundant. Just the analysis of what they tried to impose through the ominous Law 44, which came to naught fundamentally because of an organized farmers' struggle, revealed the shadowy ambitions of powerful economic clans who sold illusions with the canal expansion project while they enriched themselves with rocket-ship speed. Alberto Alemán Zubieta resigned the presidency of Constructora Urbana SA (CUSA), a family business that has very probably come to be the country's most important construction company, once he was named Panama Canal administrator. CUSA won the first contract bidding (for excavation) in the canal expansion project. Previously the same company had won other contracts for maintenance work with the same canal. In the media it was reported that the "Grupo Unidos por el Canal will build the new set of locks for $ 3,118,880,001." What a coincidence! What a surprise! CUSA is part of the recently formed "Grupo Unidos por el Canal." According to the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) report, in a "TRANSPARENT" bidding process --- the most pristine, clean, beautiful, glorious, immaculate one ever in the history of mankind --- the contract for the design and construction of the new set of locks was awarded. What garbage! Now the same, most interested source, says that this had nothing to do with canal administrator Alemán Zubieta's past with CUSA. We should understand --- leaving any suspicion of cross purposes or conflict of interest aside --- that there is nothing bad, nor is there any violation of the law or of ethics, to go from being president of a family construction company to be the canal administrator. So that this is left clear --- that is, in the opinion of the person most interested and directly involved in the subject --- CUSA has won many contract bidding processes and the most important of these, the multi-billion-dollar canal expansion job, "shouldn't cause any suspicion." The same administrator explained to La Estrella de Panama, in a story published on July 9, 2009, that: "For the ACP administrator, Alberto Alemán Zubieta, that fact that he has been a shareholder in CUSA and that his cousin, Rogelio Alemán, is the current president of this company, should cause no suspicion." At the conclusion of the envelopes containing the bids, Alemán Zubieta said that he left CUSA 14 years ago when he assumed his post at the ACP and that in 2005 he sold the shares that he held in the company. Only since then, we are told, has CUSA begun to participate in canal contract bidding. Can you imagine a Panama Canal Authority administrator who is at the same time president of a construction company, which then begins to excel in the national market, winning major contracts, of which works for the Panama Canal stand out? We can't imagine it. However, to resign the presidency of CUSA to assume the administration of the Panama Canal looks like a game in which the sale of the "remaining" shares was a logical subsequent step. A full investigation is the very least that a responsible government should do, in order to unveil the interests and overblown ambitions involved in the canal expansion project. The arguments and complaints that were made before the project's fraudulent imposition serve to complement the new arguments and justified suspicions that show on the face of this project, despite all the publicity and the huge investment in imagery that the ACP has made.
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Panama
Hotel:
Luxury apartment rentals in Casco Viejo, Panama City |
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©
2009 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or phone: (507) 6-632-6343 Mailing
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