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People had explained and argued, fought and pleaded, accused and defended, learned and educated, but mostly worked in a thousand different ways for many years under successive governments to get Panama to adopt basic environmental legislation that requires anybody who wants to build something to consider the project's environmental impact. The scope of things considered was inadequate --- when considering a new road or a residential development, a public or private developer must think about soil erosion but not increased demands for public services, and so on. Still, there was a baseline of social responsibility. Criminals in and out of government proceeded to corrupt the process --- with the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) accepting alleged environmental impact studies that were photocopies of studies done of other places for other projects, and all sorts of extra-legal exceptions being allowed. When ANAM did do its job, developers with the support of crooked politicians just ignored them.

And now the extreme right-wing government of Ricardo Martinelli has passed legislation to abolish environmental impact studies for projects declared "in the social interest," and developers of projects that are not in society's interest can get a presidential exemption from environmental laws by agreeing to undefined "good practices." But those who would build a house, commercial establishment or industrial plant who are not from the "right" family, have not paid sufficient bribes to the "right" public officials, are not of the "right" race or nationality, etc.? For them, officials at the shell that's left of ANAM are now in a position to play the "no se puede" game until palms are greased.

And thus business and labor have, for their own special reasons as well as a common desire for a cleaner Panama, joined the environmentalist movement in objecting to Law 177, which among other things has the complained-of anti-environmental provisions. On Tuesday, June 15, several thousand protesters turned out for what was Panama's biggest-ever environmental protest --- bigger than the demonstrations against Mireya's proposed road through a national park, bigger than the protests when the Torrijos administration proposed to allow multinational hustlers to capture the dolphins out of Panamanian waters to sell them abroad.

President Martinelli has signed the law and let it be known that watching his favorite Italian soccer team is more important than listening to the protests of his Panamanian constituents. The usual backward elements --- in the National Assembly and in the English-speaking community --- have thrown the usual epithets at those who object, and have assured everyone that a silent majority supports what has been done. The next credible opinion polls ought to give us a sense of what the immediate fallout is, but on the streets, in the courtrooms and over the business lunches Panama's environmentalists have new allies. It's one aspect of what appears to be a sea change in the national discourse.