Trump and Xi at last year’s G20 summit. Who will be the last man standing? The favorite is the guy in the blue tie. But people with good sense and good will are hoping that both of their countries will live on the same planet in peace and prosperity when both men are historical figures of the past. Wikimedia photo.
Now China
In 2016, he called in Russian help for his election campaign.
Now that he’s in trouble for soliciting Ukrainian and Australian validation for some weird conspiracy theories he was spinning for the 2020 campaign, Trump has raised the ante.
He sought the assistance of the National Rifle Association, declared a Russian asset in the 2016 election cycle by US intelligence people in the know.
It’s not treason, which is narrowly defined under the US Constitution, but it’s terribly disloyal.
It violates all sorts of election laws and American customs, for sure. Let Mr. Giuliani and the rest of his entourage of discredited lawyers argue that be that as it may, it’s not an “impeachable offense.”
Leave it to “Q” and Trump’s brainwashed fanatic base to argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a politician soliciting foreign assistance to further his personal domestic political aspirations.
Will they get to pointing out all the Latin American tyrants and kleptocrats who have called in Uncle Sam when things got difficult? Will they point out that China, the world’s oldest civilization but more often than not with parts of it ruled by different governments at the same time, has insisted on other countries taking sides in what it considers its internal affairs by shunning Taiwan? No doubt. There goes the GOP, leading a great power to banana republic status on that count, too.
When we hear them talking about civil war, we should take it seriously – they are armed and crazy and Americans need to be prepared to die for America if need be. Let’s not get too dramatic about it, though. We take that risk every time we venture out where criminals might lurk. That’s why there are police. Nations take that risk just by their existence, which is why most of them have soldiers and spies. Threats are being made and free people should perhaps heighten our vigilance but should never cower.
The Panama News does not advise US citizens, here in Panama or anywhere, to amass arsenals for doomsday shootouts. That would be dangerous and offer little protection in return. For another thing, here on the isthmus it would be a violation of Panamanian gun laws, which are much more sensible than the ones in the USA. What we do urge is that all adults with US passports living here register and vote.
I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong, than the one comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
Malcolm X
Bear in mind…
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
The powers that be when this administration and legislature took office. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.
Look to what’s happening, not his public pronouncements, to know where Nito is at
by Eric Jackson
He touched on all the obligatory points, in the process saying a few things that conflict with what some in his party are pushing, when he spoke to the United Nations. La Prensa called President Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo Cohen’s speech boring. Others lamented the lack of any new vision, new theme, new label. A president with little to say, because he really doesn’t stand for anything? The hushed concentration of an old military cadet concentrating as he walks through a mine field? Or is it just the natural style of a man of few words?
Minister of Public Works Rafael Sabonge assures us that there are a few details to be worked out, but the fourth bridge project, which has been contracted out to the China Construction Communication Company and China Harbor Engineering Company group will be going ahead with construction shortly. But Roberto Abrego, the PRD deputy who heads the National Assembly’s Public Infrastructure Subcommittee, says that at first glance the subcommittee considers the contract to be against Panama’s best interests.
Those companies are in many ways the Asian analog to Brazil’s Odebrecht — involved in scandal after scandal, multiply blacklisted by international financial institutions — but since when did this batch of legislators NOT like deals with companies that pay kickbacks? Cortizo says that corruption won’t be tolerated in his administration and if it is encountered complaints will be filed with the pertinent authorities and the government will move on rather than get bogged down over it. And when Odebrecht asked for a waiver of penalties for not completing the new concourse at Tocumen Airport on time? Request denied, with someone other than Cortizo making that announcement.
Do we take the president at his word when he declares that he will strictly respect constitutional separations of powers, leaving legislation to the legislators and the application and interpretation of the law to the courts? God save Panama from the honorable magistrates and deputies.
Do we take the vulgar and thuggish PRD mayor of Colon, Alex Lee, at his word when he said that he talked to the president about the huge pay raise he gave himself and that it was acceptable from on high? Or do we notice that shortly thereafter Lee backtracked and rescinded that measure? (And, in light of the mayor’s rhetoric and characterizations, do we want to spin it as the mayor getting beaten up by queers?)
It may actually be that Lee wasn’t lying, that in person Cortizo assumed a tolerant and non-judgmental attitude with him. More and more, it would seem more likely that any talking about the mayor’s scandalous conduct would have been done by Vice President José Gabriel Carrizo, the former banker who is also Minister of the Presidency. As in, when it’s a matter of drumming up public support and adulation, dealing with foreigners and powerful multinational institutions in search of business for Panama and so on, Cortizo does the public speaking, but when it’s a matter of imposing limits on other politicians Carrizo does the speaking without the press present.
Call the president what you will, but more and more it appears that his usual method of operation is to leave the talking about that which is controversial to his ministers.
It will work up to a point. That point is likely to be when he has to deal with a legislature that, if one listens to the noise, has very different priorities than those which he enunciates.
Ricky’s image. Ricardo Martinelli, out of prison on a factually absurd verdict, is running to retake control of the Cambio Democratico party that he founded but which elected corporate lawyer Rómulo Roux during the ex-president’s incarceration. Here, from a video taken by a neighbor and widely circulated among the social media, Martinelli crosses the yellow ribbon of a police crime scene cordon in Las Acasias, where former police captain and attorney Francisco Grajales was shot dead in the street, gangland-style. The slain man was forced out of the police over drugs missing from the evidence storage and made his living largely by representing drug underworld characters, actual or alleged. Grajales’s wife, attorney Jessica Canto, has a drug conviction of her own on the record and is one of the team of Martinelli’s criminal defense lawyers.
The opposition’s weakness may not be Cortizo’s strength
Are you going to import a left to right spectrum, or a government and opposition paradigm, from someplace else to characterize Panamanian politics? You may be mistaken.
Noriega times shattered the PRD and its junior partners, the latter parties which did not long survive the invasion. (Anyone remember PALA, the “Labor Party” known as “rich man’s PRD,” to which Mayín Correa once upon a time belonged?)
The post-invasion Endara administration saw the disintegration of an opposition whose unity was an unnatural confluence of domestic and external influences. The Civilista white hankies were to some extent a prototype of the CIA-orchestrated “color revolutions” at which the Russian Federation likes to point, but Panamanians largely did agree that the dictatorship had to end even if they could never unite to actually force that point. By the 1994 elections the PRD held onto its around one-third of the electorate base and that was enough to make Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares president in a seven-way race.
Toro tried to discipline his party and its legislative caucus, with big spectacles like the expulsion of Bocas del Toro deputy Mario Miller from the PRD and the legislature over extortion allegations and the arrest and humiliation of a Panamanian diplomat amidst an international gathering here, on charges of dipping into the till of consular collections for ship registration fees. Uncle Sam was unimpressed, pulling Toro’s US visa for the sale of visas and passports to Chinese citizens right after he left office. Miller beat the rap on appeal, went elsewhere politically, and came back to the legislature as a Cambio Democratico (CD) deputy.
Mireya Moscoso succeeded on the Panameñista ticket and navigated through a legislature of many an veteran deputy wearing a different uniform than before. Her administration was not about building the party her late husband created, but showering goodies on a tiny circle of family and friends. When she needed that extra vote to jam her Supreme Court nominees through the legislature, she bought a PRD deputy, Carlos “Tito” Afú from Los Santos, for that occasion. The next time around Tito came back as a Panameñista deputy but has since migrated to CD.
When Martín Torrijos came back in on the PRD third plus some, it was a matter of the usual succession but by then all politics had become transactional. Yes, he put on these technocratic airs, wielded great publicity power with the ad agency cartel mostly on his side and mobilized his party to win a sparsely attended canal referendum in 2006. But it was a sell individual souls and Panama as if there would be no tomorrow time, and that effect has only deepened. Perhaps the tawdriest moment of that was when Colombian racketeer David Murcia Guzmán got diplomatic honors from the legislature and a bodyguard detail from the SPI presidential guards.
Malignant Brazilian imperialism, in the juridical person of the thug construction conglomerate Odebrecht, got its foot in Panama’s door in Martín Torrijos times and then moved in big during the Martinelli and Varela administrations. Martinelli, who has served as Seguro Social director under Torrijos and Minister of Canal Affairs under Moscoso, came in with third place legislative caucus but through bribery and extortion — but WAIT! they say it’s a crime to call it that when the courts have never ruled as such! –assembled a National Assembly majority with turncoats from other parties.
Martinelli considered himself betrayed when the nation rejected a puppet slate that would have left him effectively still at the helm of state, so he turned on the CD legislative caucus, warning that he had files on every member and would use them against those who did not do as he told them. But hey, the Panamanian sports scene was a slush fund for legislators, Odebrecht, its partners and subsidiaries and its domestic imitators were not picky on partisan lines about to whom they kicked back money from overpriced public works contracts, and Varela also came into office with his party wielding a puny minority in the legislature.
With Martinelli making his threats, first in person and later from exile and later yet from prison awaiting trial, Varela indisposed to do Martinelli-style arm twists and the PRD in shock from having lost two general elections in a row, the deputies were left to their own devices and with the president at their mercy. At first, dissident CD and PRD deputies ignored their party leaders, who wanted to impeach Varela as their first order of business. They formed a temporary “governability pact” to avoid total public sector paralysis, with a grateful Varela leaving them to their games.
(WHY would impeachment seem like such a good idea to Martinelli and the PRD heavies of the time? That would put VP Isabel de Saint Malo, an independent, in the president’s chair — and after all, didn’t her brother Raúl launder Odebrecht bribes for the Martinelli family?)
Eventually, as contemplated, the pact dissolved as the PRD and CD caucuses united to block Varela’s appointments — good ones and bad ones — in order to establish their apparent bona fides as “the opposition” ahead of the May 2019 elections. Nito and the PRD won that contest, with the party narrowly winning the presidency on the strength of its usual third of the vote, but sweeping most local offices and winning nearly a majority in the legislature and a safe majority when one counts in their MOLIRENA junior partners.
However, both in the PRD caucus and in others, you have a legislative culture in which individual deputies are now long used to thumbing their noses at party bosses. From the PRD ranks they elected the little-known and not saying things to make himself known deputy Marcos Castillero as National Assembly president, and the firebrand demagogue Zulay Rodríguez — whom Nito crushed in the PRD’s presidential primary — as the legislature’s vice president.
Since this assembly’s installation in July Zulay has been the prime mover of a bewildering agenda of legislation, with assists from deputies of other parties. It has nothing to do with what Cortizo says he’s trying to do.
There are all sorts of foreigner-bashing, most notoriously with what would in effect be a ban on foreign music on Panamanian radio and surely consequent international cultural and tourism boycott of Panama. Never mind that the president wants to revive a moribund tourism sector. All sorts of financial demagoguery favoring this or that special interest — the privatization of health care by requiring all persons aged 60 or over to get private insurance, with means-tested exceptions under rules to be set by a board of insurance company execs is the latest coming from CD and Panameñista ranks. Demands for hack jobs for PRD and MOLIRENA activists. Never mind that Cortizo’s stated policy is austerity in the face of a debt crisis. All manner of blame assignment, lots of it directed against the Motta family, lots of it downright racist, much of it spun online through an array of false persona trolls. From MOLIRENA et al, a proposal coming out of the international religious far right to create a registry of women who have miscarriages or who deliver stillborn babies. The crudest sort of gay bashing.
So what does Nito do if some of this gets to his desk for signature or veto? And what does he do if key elements of what he wants to do get rejected in the legislature?
In another opposition caucus, there is an election race, really a repeat of the last presidential primary contest, to see whether former Panama City mayor José Isabel Blandón Figueroa or former housing minister Mario Enrique Etchelecu Álvarez. Their party barely scored in double digits last May and both men have some unflattering political baggage, the former of an Odebrecht variety and the latter of a land titles scams variety. (Not that either has been charged with a crime or will be, but certain things happened on their respective watches.)
Splintering, shattering or usual but manageable fragmentation?
On September 23, 11 deputies sent a note to Marcos Castillero, requesting to form a new caucus. The deadline for this came and went in the first half of July, so officially it’s not happening. The note contained the names of CD members Sergio Gálvez, Leopoldo Benedetti, Mayín Correa, Hernán Delgado, Arnulfo Díaz, José María Herrera, Alaín Cedeño and Fátima Agrazal, all staunch Martinelli loyalists.
Named and signed were Panameñista deputies Elías Vigil and Pedro Torres, although the latter then clarified that he didn’t want to leave the Panameñista caucus. Also named in the document, but not signed, was Manolo Ruiz, a MOLIRENA deputy who migrated there from CD and currently head of the MOLIRENA delegation in the National Assembly, which is formally allied with the PRD.
Were the entire MOLIRENA caucus to desert its alliance with the PRD, then all of a sudden President Cortizo’s party would be a vote short control of the National Assembly.
Just the usual self-centered stuff from the political caste? Perhaps. It comes, however, in a time of a debt squeeze and Cortizo’s efforts to address it by way of austerity policies. Martinelli may be rich enough to provide deputies who join his caucus with the picnic hams, small children’s toys, soccer balls, domestic appliances and other goodies that politicians pass out to build and keep loyal followings.
Do not discount the effect that might have in times of weak party discipline, selfish and corrupt deputies and jaded constituencies used to being paid in more than good words for their votes.
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Tejido viviente de corales ralentiza la futura disolución del arrecife
por STRI
Experimento in situ en la Gran Barrera de Coral prueba escenario futuro de acidificación del océano.
Un equipo liderado por David Kline, científico permanente del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, se preguntó qué pasaría si disminuyeran el pH en un arrecife de coral. Mediante chorros de agua de mar enriquecida con dióxido de carbono (CO2), controlados por computadora, simularon una situación futura de cambio climático. Sus resultados, publicados en Nature Ecology and Evolution, subrayan la importancia de proteger los corales vivos.
El océano absorbe aproximadamente la mitad del carbono que se produce por la quema de combustibles fósiles, contribuyendo a hacer que el agua de mar sea más ácida. Y según un informe de la ONU, la acidez de los océanos podría duplicarse para el año 2100. Pero la mayor parte de lo que sabemos sobre los efectos de la acidificación en los corales proviene de experimentos en acuarios.
“Queríamos alejarnos de los experimentos en cajas de vidrio y hacerlos en el arrecife, en condiciones naturales”, comentó Kline. “Pero nunca imaginamos que las diferencias serían tan dramáticas”.
“Durante el período experimental de ocho meses, utilizamos unos cinco tanques de gas CO2, del tipo que usan las embotelladoras de refrescos para agregarle gas a las latas de soda, para acidificar el agua del mar”, comentó Kline. “Nuestra máquina del tiempo bajo el agua (también llamada sistema de enriquecimiento de carbono oceánico libre o FOCE, por sus siglas en inglés) utilizó una serie de sensores y bombas dosificadoras para simular futuras condiciones de altos niveles de CO2, mediante el bombeo controlado de agua de mar con alto contenido de CO2 sobre colonias vivas y muertas de Porites en la estación de campo Heron Island de la Universidad de Queensland en la Gran Barrera de Coral”.
El pH y la temperatura fluctúan naturalmente durante un período de 24 horas, por lo que el equipo creó un sistema para aumentar el CO2 consistentemente por encima del nivel natural. Limpiaron los canales, tomaron muestras de agua y calibraron constantemente las redes de 40 sensores, para asegurarse de que estuvieran añadiendo los niveles de CO2 pronosticados para el futuro.
Al igual que las conchas marinas, los esqueletos de coral están hechos de carbonato de calcio. Y a medida que el agua de mar se vuelve más ácida, los esqueletos de coral acumulan carbonato de calcio más lentamente o incluso se disuelven, como una tiza sumergida en un vaso de vinagre.
“El uso de un sistema FOCE no es la única forma de estudiar los efectos de la acidificación del océano. Es solo una entre varias herramientas, pero nos da predicciones realistas”, comentó Kline. “La ventaja es que brinda información consistente sobre un arrecife real, donde los corales están expuestos al ecosistema natural de los habitantes del arrecife. La desventaja es que es costoso y difícil de configurar y operar”.
Los resultados de este primer experimento FOCE en un arrecife de coral poco profundo fueron desalentadores: tanto los corales vivos como los muertos se vieron seriamente afectados por la acidificación del océano. Las tasas de crecimiento de los corales vivos disminuyeron a casi cero, mientras que la tasa de disolución de las colonias muertas casi se duplicó. Estos resultados sugieren que, frente a los niveles de CO2 pronosticados para el futuro, los arrecifes de coral comenzarán a disolverse antes de lo que solía pensarse. Sin embargo, una de sus conclusiones ofrece esperanza para el futuro de los arrecifes:
Los esqueletos de coral cubiertos con tejido vivo eran mucho más resistentes que los corales muertos en este experimento, porque estaban protegidos de los gusanos marinos y otros animales que se alimentan de corales desde el interior de los esqueletos de coral, y también de los erizos de mar, peces loro y otros bioerosionadores que viven en la superficie exterior de los corales, y que se comieron a los corales muertos rápidamente.
“La gran diferencia entre el destino de los corales vivos y muertos en un entorno natural me da esperanza”, comentó Kline. “A medida que creamos reservas marinas y aprendemos a incrementar la cantidad de coral vivo, mediante la restauración de arrecifes, estamos generando un ciclo positivo de reatroalimentación, porque el coral vivo hará crecer el arrecife y disminuirá su disolución.
Kline trabajó con colegas de Scripps Institution of Oceanography, The University of Queensland, Stanford University, OceanX, Florida State University, Carnegie Institution y The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“Fue increíble trabajar juntos en Heron Island”, comentó. “Es un sitio muy bien estudiado: la gente ha estado investigando allí durante 100 años. Muchos de los estudios históricos sobre arrecifes de coral se realizaron allí.” Ahora, la máquina del tiempo de Kline de dirige hacia el otro lado del mundo, donde verá si llega a las mismas conclusiones en la Estación de Investigación de Bocas del Toro del Smithsonian en Panamá.
La institución posee colecciones internacionales de ambos cultivos que albergan cientos de variedades con una inigualable diversidad genética. Foto por CATIE.
El futuro del café y el cacao se resguarda en el CATIE
En Costa Rica, específicamente en Turrialba, el CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza) alberga las colecciones internacionales de cacao y café, reconocidas mundialmente por la amplia diversidad genética que conservan, imprescindible para asegurar el futuro de ambos cultivos.
Este 2019, ambas colecciones están de aniversario; la de cacao cumple 75 años de haber sido establecida, mientras que la de café cumple 70.
Estas colecciones conservan recursos genéticos que han permitido mejorar las variedades de café y cacao existentes. Desde hace varias décadas, el CATIE realiza investigaciones con la riqueza genética que existe en ellas y logró generar seis nuevas variedades de cacao e Híbridos F1 de café, con características como tolerancia a enfermedades, capacidad de adaptarse a diversas condiciones de clima y suelo, alta productividad y una excelente calidad.
Los nuevos materiales de cacao y café han sido diseminados exitosamente entre las familias cacaoteras y cafetaleras de Centroamérica y México y han contribuido a incrementar la productividad y sostenibilidad de los cultivos, así como los ingresos de las familias productoras generándoles bienestar económico y social; al mismo tiempo que se conserva la biodiversidad y los servicios ecosistémicos, a través de los sistemas agroforestales que se conforman a partir de estos cultivos.
La Colección Internacional de Cacao inició en 1944 con materiales introducidos de 25 distintos países, entre ellos, Ghana, Brasil, Belice, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Indonesia, Trinidad y Tobago, Camerún y Malasia.
Actualmente, cuenta con 1235 accesiones y fue declarada por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO) como una de las dos colecciones internacionales de cacao más importantes del mundo. Además, es parte central de la estrategia mundial para la conservación y el uso de los recursos genéticos de cacao promovida por Bioversity International.
Por su parte, la Colección Internacional de Café inició en 1949 con materiales introducidos de Brasil, Guatemala y El Salvador. Posteriormente fueron traídos materiales silvestres de Coffea arabica provenientes de Etiopía, Kenia y Yemen, colectados por la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y la Agricultura (FAO), el Instituto Francés de Investigación Científica para el Desarrollo en Cooperación (ORSTOM) -hoy IRD- y el Instituto Internacional de Recursos Fitogenéticos (IPGRI).
Esta colección de café, compuesta por alrededor de 2000 variedades, es la cuarta más grande del mundo y la colección de C. arabica más importante del continente americano, tanto por el número de variedades como por la diversidad genética que conserva. Es considerada una de las cuatro colecciones de origen del mundo, según la Estrategia Global de Conservación de Recursos Genéticos de Café desarrollada por Global Crop Diversity Trust y World Coffee Research (WCR).
Ambas colecciones son de dominio público y desde su creación han apoyado a los programas de mejoramiento genético de muchos países en todo el mundo, ofreciendo también oportunidades para producir chocolates y cafés diferenciados, de mejor calidad, más saludables y con sabores innovadores.
A lo largo de los años, el CATIE ha contado con el apoyo de importantes socios para el mantenimiento de las colecciones y el desarrollo de investigaciones, entre ellos, PROMECAFÉ, el Instituto del Café de Costa Rica (ICAFE), GAIA Coffee, Cafetalera Orígenes, San Francisco Bay Coffee, el Programa PROCAGICA (del Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura y la Unión Europea), Crop Trust, WCR, el Centro de Cooperación Internacional en Investigación Agronómica para el Desarrollo (CIRAD), Starbucks, la Asociación de Cafés Finos de Costa Rica, Nestlé, Mars, Bioversity International, World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), el Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería de Costa Rica (MAG), el Instituto Nacional de Innovación y Transferencia en Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), la Cooperación Coreana para la Alimentación y la Agricultura en América Latina (KoLFACI), el Departamento de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos (USDA) y FAO.
Celebración de aniversarios
Este 27 de septiembre, el CATIE llevó a cabo en su sede, en Turrialba, una ceremonia para conmemorar el 75 aniversario de la colección de cacao y el 70 de la colección de café. El evento congregó a importantes actores del sector cacaotero y cafetalero, y contó con presentaciones de expertos como Carlos Astorga, consultar nacional de café en Costa Rica; Daniel Peterson, gerente general de la Hacienda La Esmeralda en Panamá; Wilbert Phillips, experto internacional en mejoramiento genético y enfermedades de cacao; y Falguni Guharay, de la India actual gerente del Programa de América Latina para el Proyecto Climáticamente Inteligente del Cacao de la WCF.
Estos expertos compartieron con los presentes la historia e importancia de las colecciones para la investigación y la difusión de recursos genéticos, así como la historia de éxito del café variedad Geisha, en Panamá.
Finalmente, se realizó una visita en campo por las colecciones, en donde se otorgaron reconocimientos a personas e instituciones, quienes han colaborado con la conservación y uso de ambas colecciones.
~ ~ ~
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web
These birds, common in the lowlands of Panama in much of the year, nest in the eastern United States and some adjacent parts of Canada, then winter in a range from southern Mexico to northern parts of Colombia, Venezuela and adjacent parts of Ecuador and the Guianas. Some of them just migrate through Panama, while others winter here. They are often seen in mangroves and seldom far from water. They are among the earliest migratory bird to appear here every year.
~ ~
Estas aves, comunes en las tierras bajas de Panamá durante gran parte del año, anidan en el este de los Estados Unidos y algunas partes adyacentes de Canadá, luego pasan el invierno en un rango desde el sur de México hasta el norte de Colombia, Venezuela y partes adyacentes de Ecuador y las Guayanas. Algunos de ellos simplemente migran a través de Panamá, mientras que otros pasan el invierno aquí. A menudo se ven en los manglares y rara vez lejos del agua.
https://youtu.be/6hj3X6V1dds
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
Address by the President of the Republic Of Panama Laurentino Cortizo Cohen to the 74th United Nations General Assembly
Mr. President of the General Assembly,
Mr. Secretary General,
Excellencies,
Today, our region and the entire world face great challenges; some regional, some global, and we will not find solutions if we act, individually and not collectively.
Only by joining forces will we make progress!
United Nations … and nations of the world: truly united, nations, we will achieve a more just, safe, and human dignity world.
Together we can build the future, if we summon the nations, without impositions, and in freedom. If nations, small and large we live with equality and respect.
The world will be more fraternal, if we have the purpose of making peace enduring, shared … and universal.
Mr. President:
I come for the first time to the United Nations and I come from Panama.
We live in the pass where two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, meet in 35 minutes.
We are a country where we serve, with vocation, humanity.
That is our destiny, historical and geographical.
Excellencies …
The Panama book contains many pages, written and to know; That book is much more than a Canal.
They are the Afro-Antillean hands that built it, they are all the migrations that with their efforts, their blood, united the oceans.
The Panama book contains … the first transismic railroad that linked two oceans, and facilitated world trade.
We are Geisha coffee, cultivated by our Ngäbe-Buglé Indians, the best quality coffee in the world.
In that book are the pages of the efforts for peace, dialogue … negotiations and consensus.
A page of that book contains the dream of Simón Bolívar when he wrote ” If the world were to choose its capital, the Isthmus of Panama would be designated, for that august destination.”
In those pages there is also the struggle of generations of Panamanians, and the support of the world, which culminated in the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
I refer to Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and Omar Torrijos, Head of Government of Panama, who led the negotiations between two nations, one large and one small, and they agreed and a historical repair was achieved, the recovery of our Canal and our territorial integrity.
Also in that book there is a page written in January of this year by Pope Francis at the end of World Youth Day, where it reads: “Panama is a country of noble people.”
Those are the pages of Panama. . . .
Citizens of the World and People of Panama:
It is a privilege to be here proudly representing my homeland. … Global problems require multilateral solutions.
As we have done in the past, Panama offers to contribute to conflict resolution, particularly regional ones.
Now our nation, our home is heading towards the next conquest, the fight against poverty and inequality. It is a great challenge, but we Panamanians have decided that together we will do it.
Poverty and inequality harm human beings mistreat families, close the future to youth, not only from Panama, but from the entire planet.
For every word I speak here, thousands die in an unfair war, without doctors or medicines …
In it, few earn millions, and millions survive with little.
Letting people die in misery is inhuman and there is no room for that indifference …
Let’s go from words to deeds, Let’s join forces!
The fight against poverty and inequality and the fulfillment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals go through confronting corruption with an effective administration of justice. . . .
Excellencies:
The most important task is to transform education, we have children who go to school and do not learn.
We need educational systems so that students learn to think about working as a team, solving problems, being creative, caring for the environment, and being sensitive to art, culture, science and technology.
Education frees from poverty. Education confers individual power to achieve a dignified life.
Education is social peace. Education levels opportunities makes us more equal in diversity. Education is human dignity.
Sharing knowledge is a universal goal of sustained development from early childhood to the best university in the world.
Share knowledge with generosity, without selfishness and without monopolizing it. . . .
Leaders of the world:
We have heard loud and clear and share the concerns and warnings that were given at the Climate Action Summit.
The greens of our tropical forests are the most beautiful in the world.
In Panama there are more than 10,000 varieties of plants and a thousand species of birds. The biodiversity of the planet is in our hands. United, we must change to avoid the danger of becoming extinct.
There are millions of endangered species!
Multilateral initiatives to strengthen the response to climate change must be deepened, and that which is signed must be carried out.
It is a change of culture, it is a crossroads, it is a redefinition of our own existence. We have to redouble efforts!
Members of the United Nations:
We invite the world to Panama.
Panama proposes greater spaces for dialogue and regional and global understandings. I do not speak of eternal dialogues, I mean the dialogues that unite and resolve.
We are facilitators of good investments, we have the best connectivity — air, sea, port and telecommunications — in the region.
We are the Hub of The Americas.
Panama is a territory for innovation, science and technology. A place for universal knowledge to meet.
There is a place in the world called Panama.
On the pages of our history book it is written, that we never let ourselves be overcome by adversity.
We know that better times are coming. That is what we want and aspire for, for Panamanians and for the entire humanity.
I want to reiterate, Panama is a country of noble and good people.
These are the pages of our book that we will continue to write.
Leaders of the world:
Today we face great challenges, but only by joining forces will we be able to move forward.
The moment is now!
THANK YOU!
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
