The cepo — here, the Embera version of the stocks — an indigenous form of justice that was in place long before the current elites and their recent ancestors invented impunity for themselves. Photo by Eric Jackson.
A slow smash and grab season?
In April, the Varela administration and legislature jammed through a law loosening the telecommunications concessions contracts to allow wireless telephone and Internet companies to buy one another. We were told that our neighbors have fewer companies, so we should join the trend. Thus, following the lead of Honduras to have less competition and more monopolistic practices sailed right through.
In May, we were told that a new electric rate structure would go into effect, so as to essentially ban home and business solar electric generation. Just because. However, there was a brief outcry and the president and his utilities authority backed down.
About the same time, construction starts for the fourth bridge over the canal and other big projects were postponed. Could it be that between the Odebrecht and Blue Apple scandals, all the would-be bidders are skittish about getting caught again playing the same old games at the same time that they are negotiating their plea bargains?
Normally the last year of a presidency is peak corruption season, as people at all levels of the government grab what they can before losing their public jobs. But maybe this time it’s different.
Is the public corruption sector of our economy slowing down along with construction and a sluggishly recovering import/export sector? Time will tell.
China’s claim, which overlaps several countries’ exclusive economic zones as codified in the UN Law of the Sea Convention.
Chinese take out?
China’s assertion of maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea is problematic because it is a vague assertion of the way things supposedly were back in the days of ancient dynasties. China claimed Vietnam and the Straits of Malacca at various points, too. But subsequent dynasties turned inward, going so far as to order the destruction of all documents about the world outside of a lesser China. Then foreign powers carved concessions out of that China, which occupations lasted until the middle of the 20th century.
So should Italy get to claim the old Roman Empire, too, notwithstanding the existence of later legitimate states? Mussolini was into that sort of thinking but even his fellow fascists never bought it.
The construction and militarization of artificial islands is also a problem, but this is of far more recent vintage and a more complicated set of questions. With climate change and rising sea levels the construction or enhancement of islands in the sea may be the only hope for survival of some small Pacific states. It’s an area of international law that cries out for the negotiation and adoption of an amendment to the Law of the Sea Convention.
Panama is a maritime nation and should also look askance at China’s actions in the South China Sea, even if we are now economically dependent on Beijing.
But neither Panama, the American people nor anybody else should accept the Trump administration’s rhetoric about China’s fortified islands in the South China Sea. From the Pentagon’s Joint Staff director Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie we hear that the United States can “take down” China’s fortified islands.
Well, yes. And China can take out Washington, and the United States can take out Beijing, and at least seven or eight countries could take out the Panama Canal. But the threat of radioactive death is unacceptable in the world.
Bear in mind…
Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
Annie Besant
A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism.
Simón Bolívar
All judgment is relative. It may be right today and wrong tomorrow. The only thing that makes it truly right is the desire to have it constantly moving in the right direction.
Frances Perkins
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These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
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In a year when construction was off and the future looked iffy, the industry’s master contract came up for renewal and SUNTRACS shut down work for a month until they got a dignified if modest settlement. Photo by Pedro Silva / Radio Temblor.
SUNTRACS: its art of negotiation
by Marco A. Gandásegui, Hijo
The construction workers’ union has unique characteristics. Its history goes back to the construction of the trans-isthmian railway and the French Canal in the 19th century. The struggles of the builders of the Panama Canal 100 years ago (1904-1914) were epic. In the middle of the last century, the military bases that surrounded the Canal were built into the US war strategies against Japan, Korea and then Vietnam (1935-1975). Despite persecution and repression, the workers preserved their fighting spirit and organization.
After the US military invasion of 1989 they reorganized at the United Construction and Similar Workers National Union – the Sindicato Único Nacional de Trabajadores de la Construcción y Similares (SUNTRACS). In a little more than 25 years it has turned into one of the country’s most powerful labor organizations. Unlike other unions, which have been battered by neoliberal policies, SUNTRACS has managed to unite workers in the construction sector and present a solid front to negotiate with employers.
In this country’s history there are examples of workers’ organizations that have contributed to the development of society with their sacrifices and labor conquests. These are the cases, for example, of the battles waged by the Panama Canal workers during the first half of the 20th century, as well as the workers of the banana plantations and cane fields in the middle of the last century.
Despite this history, there is a systematic policy of distorting workers’ struggles. The employer interests control the media, the education system and even many religious institutions. These are put at the service of those who believe that workers are not human beings.
Construction workers have been consistently winning spaces for themselves. On the one hand, SUNTRACS has achieved salary increases for its members. On the other, it enforces the labor and human rights of workers. This is due, above all, to two reasons: first, the tenacity of those in the group to maintain discipline and increase membership. Second, its capable negotiating with employers.
The recent 28-day SUNTRACS strike was misrepresented in the media. The demands of the workers had no place in the newspapers or on the television or radio airwaves. When a story appeared it was to say how many thousands of dollars the workers supposedly had hidden under their mattresses. Or it could be about the meetings that workers had with their peers in this country or abroad. The corporate media took advantage to associate workers with figures they considered dangerous to their interests.
No medium sent a journalist to interview the family of a striking construction worker to know their standard of living, their lifestyle or what aspirations they had for their children. For the mainstream media, the education system and many religions, the worker must be (and behave like) a machine. He must not have human feelings or thoughts of his own. He must place his family and the welfare of his children in a secondary place.
On the occasion of the construction workers strike there was a noteworthy case. Panama’s Catholic university, USMA, has an agreement with SUNTRACS to know their form of organization and share this knowledge with the students. In the middle of the strike, and once it was over, USMA was the target of attacks that branded it as a traitor to the employers’ class. USMA defended itself by pointing out that university thinking should be diverse and rich in nuances.
The attacks against SUNTRACS are not only aimed at a particular group of this country’s workers. They embrace all Panamanians who work to meet their basic needs. They attack workers and other social sectors for critical thinking, for the ability to conceive of changes that improve their living conditions, that allow them to live in a country with social justice. The employers’ mouthpieces hate the workers for their struggles.
The elite believe that making a concession to a union is a sign of weakness. But through its negotiating capacity – without violence — SUNTRACS managed to assert itself again. Their victory was a step in the right direction, even though the salary gain was a modest increase of cents per hour. It was still a triumph of the union over the bosses.
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OOOPS! Edit this one OUT of Ricardo Martinelli’s plea for Donald Trump’s political mercy! Photo by the Presidencia.
Martinelli’s last bid to stay in the USA
by Eric Jackson
I swear to God and the Fatherland to faithfully fulfill the Constitution and the laws of the Republic.
Panama’s presidential oath
ARTICLE 191. The President … of the Republic is only responsible in the following cases: … 3. For crimes against the international personality of the State….
Panama’s Constitution
Crimes against the International Personality of the State Article 421. Whoever executes an act to submit the Republic, in whole or in part, to a foreign State [or] to diminish its independence… shall be punished with imprisonment… when the described behavior was performed by a public servant… the penalty shall be twenty to thirty years.
Panama’s Penal Code
‘Look at all I did for you….’ That was the gist of Manuel Antonio Noriega’s complaint to the United States as well.
But the classic retort to such pleas, of which there have been many over the years, is that ‘The United States has no friends it only has interests.’
Ricardo Martinelli’s jailhouse letter to the American people has caused a storm of patriotic indignation here, and the promise of Cambio Democratico primary candidate José Raúl Mulino that he, too, would do everything that the CIA tells him to do.
The former president’s letter includes an interesting set of particulars.
As it is, he stands to be extradited and tried for illegal electronic surveillance. He pleads that his electronic spying was to monitor CIA targets “through legal and ‘other means.'” But he tells the American people that “the courts are not allowed to consider all the facts.” And indeed, among the communications Martinelli intercepted were those of US citizens. For that to come out in open court would not compromise the security and integrity of the United States of America, but it might embarrass some of its former or current public officials. Thus it would be a reasonable bet that some national security claim might be made and such tales would be kept out of court and off the record.
Martinelli tells the tale of an intercepted North Korean freighter with jet fighter parts and other war materiel — some prohibited by an international embargo — hidden under a load of Cuban sugar. He alleges threats by Raúl Castro and insinuates some sort of improper relationship between current Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela and the Cubans. (The alleged “full story” that this reporter heard way back when but could never verify is not in Martinelli’s account.)
The former president pleads that in the United Nations he voted with Israel “100% of the time,” which may be the Trump policy but was not exactly the Obama policy when Martinelli was in charge of Panama.
Martinelli tells of a Panamanian special operation to rescue a CIA operative running from an INTERPOL warrant stemming from an Italian torture case. He tells of Panama siding against FARC in Colombia’s late civil conflict.
“My political career is far from over,” Martinelli pleads, noting that only four of 23 criminal cases against him are still pending.
Quixotic stuff, but what if the admissions in the ex-president’s letter are taken at face value by this or the next Panamanian government, and deemed to have been the submission of Panama to a foreign power, or at least the diminishment of Panamanian independence? That could be some serious legal trouble here. Might a next round of litigation in the USA ensue to assert that it gives Martinelli the right to refugee status because he has a real fear of political persecution?
Stay tuned. We are dealing with someone who always was kind of flaky, now apparently going nuts in a Miami jail cell. He can maintain whatever delusions he likes, but his life as a viable politician is over. Very likely the party that he created is en route to either extinction or the minor party fringes.
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The Public Utilities Authority (ASEP) put it this way: “The charges that such customers must pay when they inject energy into the network and when they consume energy from it are established, in order that the costs of networks are distributed among the different groups of customers in an equitable manner.” Why that’s equitable and from whence came the idea they don’t say. Photo by ASEP.
New barrier to small-scale solar energy
by Eric Jackson
When the old IRHE electric company was broken up and privatized (except for the main power lines) in the Pérez Balladares administration, the law said that homes and businesses could have windmills or photovoltaic arrays and sell the excess of energy that they produce to the power grid. But that law has never been implemented in a serious way.
Why? The Varela administration’s answer is an unspecified concept of what is “equitable.” Its new rate scheme not only imposes a deduction from selling power to the grid for the cost of maintaining that grid but also jacks up the rates of those who have solar panels when they buy power from the grid. How much? To be announced.
ASEP did not hold hearings for proposals about how to integrate small energy generators into the grid. They held a May 23 hearing about what they are doing, to hear the big companies say that they like the idea of excluding competition — although they did not put it like that — and for everybody else in attendance to say that they were appalled. Then they anounced that the proposal would go into effect. Small solar generators say that it’s an effective ban on selling to the grid.
Recall that shortly after Mireya Moscoso took over the presidency from Pérez Balladares, she brought in a former ENRON executive to write the nation’s energy policy. That was that the big energy companies control everything, that people with solar panels or windmills would destroy the still public ETESA power grid, and that as a matter of ideology the Panama Canal Authority would have to stop generating power at the Gatun and Madden Dams because this would be unfair competition for what rightfully belongs exclusively to private corporations. The Martín Torrijos administration killed the restriction on the Panama Canal Authority.
We went through a period of privatization by way of concessions for just about every river and stream in Panama, purportedly to meet the nation’s power needs but actually mostly to speculate on water and real estate around artificial lakes. There were people and communities dispossessed. No property rights for THEM. And little solution for the dry season hydroelectric power shortage, either. Many of the more blatantly fraudulent concessions have been stalled or revoked.
New and prohibitive taxes were imposed on imported solar cells, windmills and the paraphernalia associated with these. Why? Just because.
Those tariffs violated treaties and the outright bans violated the 1990s law, so there have been retreats and retrenchments The Varela administration’s new policy is but the latest version.
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The sun comes up over the Pan-American Highway near the eastern edge of Cocle province.
A Panagringo Memorial Day
story and photos by Eric Jackson
The lifestyle excludes waking to car alarms — or to alarm clocks. Yes, there is hip hop in these boonies, but the folks who play it loud have to be up for work and they have these disciminating musical tastes that favor things creative and beautiful over shocking antisocial rants. Cumbia, its cousin vallenato, bachata and salsa also get in their mix. But none of that in the wee hours. If I get unusually conked out, I might wake to the earliest of the roosters proclaiming sovereignty over their turf in the neighborhood. But usually I am up before they crow.
This time, however, it’s after the online burnout of the Democrats Abroad global meeting, an uninspiring gathering in Tokyo dominated by the people who lost the 2016 primary 2-1. That was the weekend, though, and this is Monday. In the USA that would be part of a long holiday weekend, but in Panama May Day is the last holiday until the patriotic celebrations of November. As in, buses running like on an ordinary Monday. On a holiday there tend to be fewer.
Sometime earlier than usual on Sunday night, the words started moving around on the computer screen so I folded the laptop, retired to bed and immediately conked out. It was still dark, without any barnyard fowl noises, when I came to. Back in the computer room, the screen said quarter to four. YIKES! I had been wanting to get up around three.
I washed myself, got dressed, packed my bag, locked up and headed to the bus stop. I got there at 4:34 a.m., a half hour later than I had hoped.
When taking multiple public transportation, one must figure not only distance but frequency along the various routes. PLUS, in the boonies, not only the buses but the chivas. These latter are improvised rural buses, pickup trucks that generally have four-wheel drive and rear compartments with improvised benches, holding rails and roofs to hold off the elements. If I am at the bus stop at three or four in the morning, the buses won’t be running yet but the chivas that started up in the hills will be and I will take one of those into Anton.
At 4:48 came the San Juan de Dios – Anton Coaster bus, stopping to pick someone up at the stop ahead of me. And it whizzed right by, and by the stop behind me too. This driver would start his runs in Anton, but need to pick up his “pavo” — secretary if I want to show some more formal respect for a working person who is one of my neighbors — on the way. The Juan Diaz to Anton mini-bus came by at 4:57 and was packed by the time we got to the Pan-American Highway, when about half the people got out to head west toward Penonome.
La Caseta? El Puente? The former for me and a couple of others. I was the one guy at the bus stop who didn’t work construction. The strike is over and some of the SUNTRACS guys were waiting for their employers’ buses — a benefit to them and a better chance of a full work crew to the boss — while others were waiting for whatever bus coming down the road. This was the La Pintada bus, about half full. I got on.
A half-full bus from elsewhere in Cocle at five in the morning means a lot of local stops to pick up and discharge passengers headed into work, and at some of the other stops a wait for the bus to gather more riders. Get on a, say, Santiago or Macaracas bus and there will be less of a choice of seating but a greater chance of the driver going like a bat out of hell with few stops.
I got the more and longer stops, and not far east of La Chorrera, got the first of the traffic jams. Had I been up for the first of the chivas to come by the village, I might have missed that. Then, having been caught in the first one, from the turnoff onto the Arraijan Ensanche to the Bridge of the Americas was another long traffic jam.
(Say, didn’t Martinelli pay those Blue Apple thugs to resolve all this? What about the extra lanes on the Pan-American Highway? What about the Howard-Burunga Interchange to relieve jams on the western approaches to the two bridges? Oh, they copied US transportation planning theories that had been discredited long ago? Oh, they rushed through an interchange contract with ridiculously faulty plans, so that it could be signed and the goodies distributed before the next administration? No use arguing about planning principles with these guys. It’s about graft.)
I got to the bus terminal in Albrook at 8:45. The ceremony at the American Cemetery in Corozal started at nine.
The Corozal American Cemetery. Administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission, it’s part of the old larger Corozal Cemetery, the other part being run according to way different standards by the Panama City municipal government.
Damn! No time to use my bus and train card on a Metro Bus. I would have to spend the extra four bucks on a cab. (Yes, you can look at the ATTT fare card and argue. I had neither the time nor inclination to argue.)
The conversation with the cabbie began in Spanish, with an explanation about why gringos gather on Memorial Day. “Oh, Memorial Day! I know that.” Turns out he was a US Army veteran who decided not to go for citizenship, so he told me, like other members of his family had. He was born in the old Coco Solo Hospital, next to which I grew up.
So, he asked, what would be his chances of getting a green card now? My take was that with an honorable discharge and no criminal record, that would be likely in a normal US administration, but not this one. I am not a consul and I didn’t ask him visa type questions about his background. He left me at the cemetery gate.
Which was closed, with a Panamanian rent-a-cop hassling about ID and invitation. So things have now declined to the point that such patriotic ceremonies are not open to the entire American community? Are we that afraid? Are we that exclusionary? Some folks who knew me, who were not asked to show anything, identified me and I was let in.
The US Marine Corps color guard. If some band of people with a cause chooses the US diplomatic mission here to be its target, the marines’ job may entail taking a bullet. However, by training and instinct their job is to make the attackers take the bullets.
I got there just in time for Cemetery Superintendent Oliver Villalobos to give his welcome. The Banda Republicana first played the Panamanian national anthem, then the American one. Pastor Ryan Skinner from the nearby Crossroads Bible Church gave the invocation.
This being a strange and conflicted time among Americans and a chaotic period in the US State Department, the ranks of those making presentations and the tones of things that were said were scaled back from in years past. Also casting a shadow over the events was Ricardo Martinelli’s groveling jailhouse complaint about how during his presidency he dutifully followed CIA orders. And so it was, for example, that although Panamanian National Aeronaval Service (SENAN) officers were in the front row, there was no mention of the young officer who went down over Colombia on a US Southern Command mercenary flight out of Albrook a few years ago. Many wars were mentioned, but not The War on Drugs, not Afghanistan and not the American Civil War.
Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, to honor fallen Union soldiers in the wake of the Civil War. More than 600,000 people died in that national trauma, which along with its aftermath has been selectively remembered, forgotten, misrepresented and rediscovered. By the most common account the custom began in Michigan, where women and girls decorated the graves of Union martyrs. Another version tells of an atrocious prison camp at a horse racing track in Charleston, South Carolina, where slaves who had been pressed into service burying the imprisoned warriors of the Grand Army of Republic remembered where the mass grave was, dug up the remains to be reburied in individual graves, and held a black community parade around the racetrack in the liberation fighters’ honor.
(These days, of course, you have a young neo-confederate fanatic awaiting execution for the assassination in Charleston of a black state senator and seven other people, a guy who was on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors who blamed it on the slain senator, and a national discourse that has the alt-right claiming that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments resulting from the Civil War are invalid, that slavery was good for black people and yadda yadda yadda. And then you have Kanye West, a sort of guy whom the White Citizens Councils used to call a “responsible negro spokesman,” nodding in agreement. It’s a mess and no one party or faction has a monopoly on concern.)
We heard Navy Captain Turner read the US president’s proclamation (mercifully not his tweet), Chargé D’Affaires Roxanne Cabral and former Panama Canal Commission board member Robert McMillan speak, laid the wreaths and stood solemnly for taps. When the benediction was over, some socializing and photography was in order. Citizens of a conflicted nation paid their respects, with reasonable respect toward one another.
Captain Turner, the senior US defense official at the embassy, reads the proclamation.
Roxanne Cabral pays a diplomat’s respects for fallen soldiers.
Republicans pay respects.
Democrats pay respects.
And back to the village. No traffic jams to give my old hippie mind ample time to wander.
But along the way, a scene to break my heart.
On the north side of the Arraijan ensanche a huge swathe of forest has been cut down. And there by the side of the road, a little anteater wandered in a state of confusion. His or her world had been destroyed. I hope that somebody came to the rescue, but whatever the case it was a refugee, a stranger in a strange land, now.
And on past the familiar landmarks and the tell-tale signs of an economy gone soft, on to Anton. Then the local bus back to Juan Diaz, where the power was out and had been for enough hours for the fridge to be entirely warm. From accounts elsewhere it seems to have been a widespread outage, one that began about the time that the Memorial Day ceremony began. It had not been deemed worthy of mention in the rabiblanco media.
Schoolboys under the router, waiting for a bus home. Time for a mind shift from Gringo to Pana, and to notice first that kids don’t get full school days here and second that they want to read but need more and more interesting stuff to read.
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“I have seen the suffering in the people who pay the heaviest price for decisions made by other people.” Dr. Tedros addresses another ebola outbreak in a country wracked by conflict. WHO photo.
Health as a bridge to peace
by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, closing speech to the 71st World Health Assembly
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
Sometimes the challenges of our world can feel overwhelming.
Poverty. Hunger. Inequality. Pollution. Violence. War. Disease.
But we come together as the nations of the world because we choose not to be overwhelmed.
We choose hope. We choose a better future.
In the past year I have visited several conflict zones, and seen the suffering in the people who pay the heaviest price for decisions made by other people.
Everywhere I go, I have the same message: health as a bridge to peace.
Health has the power to transform an individual’s life, but it also has the power to transform families, communities and nations.
This week, you have charted a new course for WHO. You’ve made a firm statement about what you want us to do, and the results you expect to see.
The General program of Work you approved gives us a strong mandate, and an ambitious agenda to get on with.
Now it’s time to implement it. We have no time to lose. Five years is no time.
Everything we do must be evaluated in light of whether it will help us to make progress towards the “triple billion” targets.
We will invest in and reinforce anything that helps us to do that.
As you know, universal health coverage is the foundation. Investing in stronger health systems will help make the world fairer, safer and healthier.
As President Kagame said on Monday, universal health coverage is an opportunity, not a burden.
I wish to thank the many countries who made concrete commitments this week to strengthen their health systems. WHO stands ready to support you with world-class technical know-how to turn those commitments into realities.
In the coming weeks, months and years, we look forward to engaging in policy dialogue with each Member State to identify areas in which the best health systems can be made even better, and the weakest and most fragile can be supported and strengthened.
That is what WHO is for.
This week, we have seen proof that the reforms we have made in our emergencies program are working. The work started by my predecessor, Dr. Margaret Chan, is paying off.
The Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee has given its stamp of approval to our work on emergencies, and has recognized that we are better positioned to act with greater speed and predictability.
The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has demonstrated exactly that. I am proud of the way that we have worked seamlessly at all three levels of the organization.
Let me assure you that I am personally committed to ensuring that we do everything we can to stop this outbreak as soon as possible.
We have come a long way, but there is always more we can do to make the world safer.
I appreciate the hard work you did this week to negotiate the resolution on the International Health Regulations, which will help to improve public health preparedness and response by strengthening core capacities.
The new Global Preparedness Monitoring Board that we launched with the World Bank this week is another vital brick in the wall of global health security. I’m very grateful that Dr. Gro Brundtland and Mr. Elhadj As Sy have agreed to co-chair this new mechanism.
You have also made important commitments to turning back the tide on diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries.
You have committed to implementing a road map to reduce deaths from cholera by 90 percent by 2030.
You endorsed our five-year strategic plan on polio transition, to strengthen country health systems that could be affected by the scaling down of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. You passed resolutions on tuberculosis and noncommunicable diseases that will help us prepare for the High-Level meetings at the UN General Assembly in September, to ensure we make the most of these historic opportunities.
You approved our new Global Action Plan for Physical Activity, which is essential for our fight against noncommunicable diseases.
The very successful Walk the Talk event last Sunday, and the regular yoga sessions during our committee meetings, have helped to liven up the Assembly and are important statements that we practice what we preach.
You asked us to develop a five-year road map to address access to, and the global shortage of, medicines and vaccines. This is a major cause of financial hardship. I look forward to presenting that road map to you next year.
For the first time, you committed to reducing the unacceptable burden of deaths and disabilities from snakebite.
You’ve resolved to take action on assistive technologies and rheumatic heart disease.
And you have agreed to increase the development and use of digital technologies to improve health and keep the world safe.
I am also pleased that you approved a resolution committing to us to receiving 50 percent of our interns from developing countries, and to paying them a stipend, by 2020. This is an important step towards making WHO fairer.
I would particularly like to thank the Wellcome Trust, which has generously offered to support 150 interns from low- and middle-income countries in the next three years.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The GPW calls on us to measure our success not by outputs, but by outcomes — by the measurable impact we deliver where it matters most: in countries.
Ultimately, the people we serve are not the people with power; they’re the people with no power.
The people of Bikoro, who look to us to protect them from Ebola;
The mother in Yemen, who looks to us to keep her child alive;
The people who face a daily choice between sickness and poverty because they cannot afford health care.
So the true test of whether our discussions this week were successful, or just more talk, will be whether they result in real change on the ground.
As I said on Monday, there are three keys to our success:
First, a transformed WHO. This is a job especially for the Secretariat, with support from you, the Member States;
Second, political commitment. This is a job especially for you, the Member States, with support from the Secretariat;
I especially want to thank my brother Martin Chungong from the Inter-Parliamentary Union for his partnership.
This week we signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with IPU to strengthen the role of parliamentarians in achieving UHC, and we agreed to have a meeting of parliamentarians here at the World Health Assembly every year. We’re also hopeful that a resolution on UHC will be passed at the IPU Assembly in March next year.
And the third key to success is partnership. This is a job for all of us: the Secretariat, the Member States and all of our partners who can help us achieve our mission.
I urge each of you to go home with a renewed determination to work every day for the health of your people.
Do not accept the status quo. Do not believe that some problems can never be resolved. Choose to believe instead that it is within your power to make real, lasting change.
The commitment I have witnessed this week gives me great hope and confidence that together we can promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable.
I thank you.
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These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information. Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web.
