Boyaca residents routed by fire get help from neighbors near and far
thanks especially to their across-the-street neighbors, The Danilo Pérez Foundation
Individuals and institutions public and private are coming together for those left homeless and having lost their material possessions in the February 21 burning of San Felipe’s historic Boyaca Building. This historic wooden structure had been rebuilt with help from Spain’s Andalusia region, providing housing to folks of modest means and part of the Casco Viejo’s cultural scene. To one side of Plaza Herrera, is was between the remnant of the colonial city’s wall and the old Conservatorio that’s now home to the Danilo Pérez Foundation. Several people living in the building before the fire had relationships with the foundation and, thanks to some help from the mayor’s office and its connections, three students at the foundation had their destroyed musical instruments replaced.
How the fire started is being investigated. It began in an upstairs room. Photo by MIVIOT.
The subject of rebuilding or replacing is not yet decided, and may bring out some of the gentrification versus affordable housing and historic preservation versus maximum profitability issues that have played out in the neighborhood for years. Temporary emergency housing has been arranged for the nearly three dozen families who were routed by the fire, which completely destroyed the Boyaca building and damaged two other buildings up the street.
Collections began immediately for food and clothing, but now the effort is for bringing a longer-term bit of normality back into the lives of those who lost their homes. Thus a couple of benefit concerts are being put on by local musicians, many of whom have their connections with the Danilo Pérez Foundation. The venue is at nearby Villa Agustina, just off of Plaza Herrera. The two dates are March 1 and March 15, both shows at 8 p.m. The parties are likely to go on into the night, as the announced performers are probably not going to be the only ones. So far the lineups include Conexión Latina, the Luis Carlos Pérez Quintet, Los Nietos de Jazz, Llevarte a Marte and Idania Dowman. If you miss the show will you have missed a surprise appearance by an internationally renowned act? Perhaps. In any case, those are local all stars of Panama’s worthy scene.
Can’t make it? You can contribute directly to the fund that has been established, via the Danilo Pérez Foundation savings account at the Banco General:
Fundación Danilo Pérez Banco General – Savings account N ° 0404012001230 International transfers via SWIFT Code: BAGEPAPA
Just behind where the Boyaca building once stood is a remnant of the Casco Viejo’s colonial fortifications. Any rumor that those who parked in front of fire hydrants and impeded the bomberos will be lined against this wall and shot are exaggerations, but those folks are major villains of the moment. Photo by Eric Jackson.
Panama’s architectural loss. Photo by MIVIOT.
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Para leer el decreto entero, toque aquí, aquí y aquí. Por supuesto tiene referencias a otros documentos, especialmente el Código Electoral. Decreto 10 discrimine abiertamente a favor de oficiales ya en puestos elegidos. Pero hay otras provisiones del Código que parecen como prohibiciones en la recoleccíon de firmas hasta la temporada de campañas, demasiado tarde para ser válidas para lograr una posición en la papeleta.
El problema que independientes
tienen con el Tribunal Electoral
citados de los medios sociales y sus páginas del red
El Tribunal Electoral reglamenta participación de
pre candidatos y candidatos en actos públicos
por Rubén Blades, de su página de Internet
Después de leer el parte noticioso quedé mas enredado. ¿Cómo define el Tribunal Electoral de Panamá un “acto público”? ¿Qué se entiende por “público”? ¿Que sea en la calle? ¿Que tenga audiencia, es decir, que tenga espectadores? ¿Cuántas personas se requieren para que un acto sea considerado como público? ¿Es público un acto del cual nadie se entera que ocurrió?
Si yo, Rubén Blades, invito a un grupo de amigos a mi casa para conversar sobre el problema de la Caja del Seguro Social, por ejemplo; ¿es eso un “acto público”?
Si en un conversatorio alguien me pregunta lo que pienso acerca de un determinado problema nacional, acaso por opinar, ¿me convierto en un “pre candidato” a presidente, aunque no me haya registrado formalmente ante el Tribunal Electoral, ni esté todavía en el proceso de recoger firmas para legalizar tal posibilidad?
El Tribunal Electoral indica que reconoce como pre candidato a quienes aspiren a un cargo de elección popular por libre postulación, “y ese reconocimiento esté en firme”. ¿Qué quiere decir eso de “esté en firme”? ¿Que esté apoyado sobre una columna de mármol? ¿Que esté en posición militar?
El artículo 243 del Código Electoral tampoco resulta aplicable en casos en los que un ciudadano expresa públicamente su opinión política; con eso no afirma que se esta postulando a cargo de elección.
Bajo que parámetros puede el Tribunal Electoral argumentar que una opinión busca un “provecho político frente al electorado”? ¿Y si se está hablando con jóvenes que no tienen la edad requerida para votar en una elección? ¿Y si son jóvenes confinados por delitos? ¿Y dónde queda el derecho ciudadano a la libre expresión?
La dificultad en la claridad en los articulados del Código Electoral están por todas partes.
El artículo 314 plantea contradicciones que producen eternas discusiones interpretativas, sobre las facultades de una Constituyente Paralela, sobre una “reforma” a la Constitución por un lado y por otro la prohibición de que se cree una “nueva” Constitución. Pero resulta que muchas reformas a la Constitución crean, de hecho y por Derecho, una realidad inédita y por ende, una nueva Constitución. ¿O no?.
Finalmente es necesario poner atención a un detalle nada insignificante: estas reglas para la participación electoral fueron creadas y aprobadas por el “establishment” político actual. Esto no es creación de la voluntad ciudadana sino de los partidos políticos, esos que nos han causado tantas desgracias como sociedad; los mismos que nos roban y nos trampean a través de argucias protegidas por “lagunas legales”, o eufemismos como “donaciones” en vez de soborno.
Desde la Asamblea, sus representantes despilfarran nuestros impuestos y los transforman en ingresos personales; son los mismos que hoy mantienen al país en ascuas, por estar peleando los territorios conformados por intereses creados, los feudos que favorecen a los patrocinadores de la partidocracia y la politiquería.
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So whodunnit? All IDAAN will say is “a private company.” Some of the rabiblanco media say it was “a subcontractor” who was burying utility cables broke the 30-inch water main on Via Brasil. Photo by IDAAN.
A third of Panama City goes without
water for more than a day and a half
photos by IDAAN, note by Eric Jackson
Somebody digging in the right of way along Via Brasil, one of Panama City’s main crosstown traffic arteries, busted a big water main. Immediate damages — the road quickly becomes impassable, causing inconvenience to many and surely some business losses to some whose customers could not come and go by their accustomed routes. Nearly immediate damages — water goes out for about one-third of Panama City, with all of the consequential losses caused by that. It stays out for more than a day and a half. Immediate and continuing damages — all that labor by the IDAAN water and sewer utility, and the problem was fixed with a patch on a water main section that will ultimately need a replacement.
Was there insurance? If so, will the insurer pay?
Has there been a conversation that began, or will there be one that begins, something like this: ‘You idiots! You dug without properly checking! That’s the last excavation YOU will ever do in this city!’? Or would the conversation be more along the lines of ‘We did everything we were supposed to do, but YOUR map didn’t show that water main where it turned out to be!’?
Should we feel blessed, or cursed, that Varela’s nominee who has never litigated a case won’t be on the Supreme Court’s civil bench to hear any appeals?
Assignment of liability for what happened may never be addressed. Corporate secrecy and secret bank accounts often make private contractors and especially subcontractors uncollectable and the owners of those companies unidentifiable. The costs and unpredictability of litigation on the Panamanian courts often drive people with valid claims away. Fear of criminal defamation charges, even when there is egregious fault, keeps most media from getting into matters like whose company made everyone go without water, even if they are able to get around the secrecy laws and establish the truth with great certainty.
Business news? Out in rural Cocle, two bus rides away from the capital for most of the people in this reporter’s neighborhood, the economic effect could be seen. As in construction workers coming home early, as the worksites on which they had been building were shut down for lack of water starting on a Thursday afternoon, and a few of them returning to the city on the weekend to make up for lost time. Extra bus fares for members of the militant SUNTRACS construction workers’ union? Since when has the chump change of people like THAT ever mattered except when the union forced the issue?
And what about IDAAN? Managers of a crumbling system that breaks down a lot, employers of a work force that’s burdened with too many political hirees who don’t know what they are doing nor care to learn, the people at the top who tend to know anything are often replaced en masse with every new administration’s hirings and firings, and even those with civil service protection often flee to any other job they can get just to avoid the overbearing political appointees above them.
In this case, the first patch that IDAAN applied did not hold. Was that because they tried to do it without shutting off all of the water pressure first? Reading IDAAN’s updates that appears to be the case. And in the end, the fix was a patch, not a replacement.
It has been worse in other administrations. After all, President Varela is an industrial engineer. He’s neither a dictator’s son not a caudillo’s teenage thrill, neither a lawyer nor a financial operator nor a supermarket baron. At least he knows the problem.
These sorts of outages take a toll on the Panamanian economy. However, a full accounting is never had.
They tried to patch it while THAT was sloshing around?
Will the patch be “permanent” if it lasts until the 2019 elections?
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Something not to buy in Dubai: the Emirates’ pitch for their Sunni jihad, a tiny bit of which is shown here in Yemen. Wikimedia photo.
Panama is not “The Next Dubai” — and this country should be wary of the current one
President Varela is off to Dubai to talk with oil sheiks, selected Gulf Arab political officials and business leaders from that region and Latin America. Before heading out, he announced a deal whereby Panama will export fresh pineapple to the United Arab Emirates. Ostensibly the trip is to attend the February 27-28 Global Business Forum Latin America 2018 but Varela’s schedule has him going to the Middle East a few days before that. The vice president and foreign minister will go with Varela, along with several other cabinet ministers.
From the United Arab Emirates side, we read that Varela will be the only Latin American head of state there, although several former presidents for the region will attend. The sponsor is the Dubai Chambert of Commerce. The host is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emir and ruler of Dubai, who is also the prime minister and vice president of the UAE. If the two leaders will meet outside of the purely economic business context, we are not told what is on their agenda.
Panama should beware. Neutrality is the central part of Panama’s defense — a canal that everyone can use and nobody would want to attack is the basic premise. But the United Arab Emirates, in addition to getting its name all over Panama on soccer jerseys for the poor, is engaged in a merciless and expanding Sunni jihad. Emiraiti bombers are in action over Yemen every day and have flown combat missions over Syria and Iraq. The Saudi-UAE alliance’s cold war against the governments of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Qatar is heating up. If the embattled crook who leads Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, figures it’s a convenient time for his country to join the jihad, that’s no excuse for Panama or anybody else to do so.
Perhaps Varela will be doing or attempting a bit of peacemaking. Panama has sometimes played that role. However, it looks like he’s flying away from an unfolding political and perhaps constitutional crisis at home in search of some very wealthy patrons. That all of the other Latin American heads of state consider it a fool’s mission ought to give pause to Varela, and to Panamanians. It’s unwise to identify ourselves with Dubai, the UAE and especially its wars.
It goes back some years: Wayne La Pierre’s note to Alexander Torshin.
The NRA continues the assault on high school kids
Wayne La Pierre, the principal shill for a gun industry whose false advertising message is that having a gun makes you and the people around you safer, has been justly derided for orchestrating a vilification campaign against Florida high school students who, having survived a horrific massacre at their school, launched a protest movement aimed at among other things banning assault rifles.
All of the vacuous slogans and facile non-solutions were deployed, all the trolls came out with technical jargon and semantic arguments and insults, and waves of bots posing as people swept across Facebook and Twitter “liking” and spreading these messages. The kids are fake actors, we were told. The kids were coached, they told us when it was made manifestly clear that these were actual people who survived an actual event. Some went on to weave conspiracy theories around that fact that the father of one of the outspoken survivors works for the FBI.
It’s mostly for naught. La Pierre’s outfit is losing corporate sponsors left and right. The companies that are bailing out of their relationships with the National Rifle Association are doing so not only because the association loses them more customers than it wins in the aftermath of yet another school shooting, but because another shoe looks ready to drop. We shall see if Mr. Mueller indicts about it, but the allegation is out there that La Pierre and his group were the conduit for Russian funding of advertising that boosted the Trump campaign. Ties to a vicious fanatic who lies to sell a popular if controversial product is one thing, but the link with a disloyal person and organization who sold the American political process to a foreign dictator is generally not a smart position for a company that wants to sell some product or service to the American people.
Let’s step back a second, though. What’s that about the kids from that high school being “coached?” As in, taught to think analytically in the midst of a crisis? As in, learning basic civics, so as to be able to exercise their First Amendment constitutional rights to freely express themselves, assemble peacefully and petition the government for a redress of their grievances? As in, having been taught to assemble and make a coherent argument in speech or writing?
The horror, the horror! A young generation of Americans who can think for themselves, express themselves — and VOTE. While La Pierre and his trolls and bots continue with their attacks on them, older folks with consciences ought to lend all possible assistance to those high school kids who remain under fire of a different sort, and still won’t be silenced.
Bear in mind…
I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come. And then — I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. One doesn’t luckily have to bother about that.
Agatha Christie
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
Benjamin Spock
Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
Robert Jackson
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Legislator and PRD secretary general Pedro Miguel González, the maker of the motion, is for now the big winner in this. The vote to reconfigure the Credentials Committee had been postponed, with the appearance that he did not have the votes. But he did and now as an opposition leader he retains credibility and wields enhanced bargaining power. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.
What if? We’ll see, but Varela is weaker
by Eric Jackson
In the middle of 2014 the Varela years began with some deals in the legislature that prevented Ricardo Martinelli, who was blackmailing the members of his Cambio Democratico party’s legislative caucus with the claimed contents on surveillance files he had on all of them, from making Panama ungovernable. It its first version the governability pact was mainly a deal between the Democratic Revolutionary Party caucus, with just over one-third of the deputies and the president’s substantially smaller Panameñista caucus, plus a few others.
That first deal left most of the Cambio Democratico deputies unhappy because it cut them out of most of the political patronage perks, which form the reason why most of them were ever with Martinelli in the first place.
Goodies were distributed, Martinelli’s hand was weakened by the removal and imprisonment of his main main on the Supreme Court, Alejandro Moncada Luna, and then much more so when he fled the country. Power struggles ensued within the PRD and CD, making for some tricky bargaining. Martinelli and PRD deputy Benicio Robinson though that they had a deal to take over the legislature and impeach Varela, but it turned out that neither could muster the needed votes from their respective parties. Instead an alliance of Panameñistas, PRD dissidents and CD dissidents cobbled togehter shaky coalitions while both the PRD and CD were engaged in internal faction fights.
In both of those opposition parties the dissidents won the power struggles. In the PRD legislator Pedro Miguel González eclipsed Robinson and in CD Rómulo Roux ousted Martinelli as president of the party he had founded and always led. In mid-2017 the governability pact continued, but with González vowing to lead his party into opposition. The very immportant Credentials Committee, which can pass presidential nominations for high court magistrates on to the National Assembly as a whole or bottle them up and asphyxiate them, was configured last July to include four Panameñistas, three PRD members and two CD deputies. But the thing is, Article 162 of the Panamanian Constitution plus a couple of provisions of the legislature’s own rules state that the allocation of committee seats should be roughly proportional to the partisan composition of the assembly. However, Varela’s party holds only 16 seats, as against 25 each for CD and the PRD. An independent and a few “others” round out the 72-member legislature. Strictly speaking, four of the nine seats on the Credentials Committee for the Panameñistas is illegal.
But last summer there was a five-day window of opportunity for objections to the committee’s composition and that came and went without anyone challenging the division.
After that brief window, Martinelli was jailed in Miami to await or perhaps avoid extradition, additional witnesses and documents came forth to make the case that Varela took millions from the hoodlum Brazilian company Odebrecht and Varela moved to strengthen his weakening had by two Supreme Court appointments, one of a manifestly unqualified legal thinker who on the other hand was a loyal Panameñista, the other the top anti-corruption prosecutor whose promotion would wreak havoc on many public corruption cases. The Credentials Committee, on the margin of the four Panameñistas and one CD dissident against four opposed, said yes. The plenum of the National Assembly said no and suddenly all of the old deals were off.
PRD leader González moved to reconfigure the Credentials Committee, something never before attempted in the midst of a legislative session. It matters not only because that committee must first pass on the next couple of nominees that Varela may come up with to fill the high court vacancies. The Credentials Committee also decides whether a Supreme Court magistrate or the president of Panama may be impeached before the National Assembly as a whole.
The Panameñistas walked out of the legislature’s chamber, a few mostly CD deputies were absent and the vote to reconfigure the Credentials Committee was 45 in favor, on CD dissident against, and independent Ana Matilde Gómez and Partido Popular deputy Juan Carlos Arango abstaining. The resolution that passed gives three seats to the PRD, three to CD, two to the Panameñistas one for someone who is not affiliated with any of the main caucuses — Gómez or Arango.
The Panamaeñistas say that they will file an “amparo de garantías,” a summary challenge to the move’s constitutionality. If any high court magistrate decides to accept the case, then there is a stay and the resolution is suspended pending a further decision of the court. The probable result of such a suspension would be any Varela nomination, and perhaps some ordinary government housekeeping bills coming from the president, being dead on arrival.
What a mess! Perfect for horse trading that gets benefits for one’s self or constituency, when you think about it. But is that what the legislature wants to do?
Most probably those who voted for González’s resolution each have his or her own particular mix of reasons. Do they want to shape the composition of the Supreme Court more to their liking? Do they want local projects funded so that they can run for re-election with something to show the voters? Are they in a nihilistic mood to disrupt the government? Have they at long last been moved to confront the rampant courruption in one or more impeachment trials?
What will happen remains to be seen. What has happened is that the hand of President Varela and his party has been dramatically weakened in the legislature.
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In a society which has never acknowledged its violent foundation from the genocide of Native peoples, to slavery, the violent overthrow of governments around the world in order to impose regimes that favor US corporate interests, its brutal war against the Vietnamese people, its recruitment of young people into a pre-army ROTC, and its romanticization in movies and TV of super weapons and violence, it is no surprise that it is easy to convince men that “real men” use weapons and violence to get their way in the world.
Even Obama, the darling of the liberal world, spent every Tuesday morning approving targets for drone attacks that killed far more innocent people than school shootings in the same period have.
Patriarchal and class-based societies have always used violence to establish and maintain their rule, and the advent and mass availability of super-powered weapons makes the violence that used to be the special privilege of the powerful elites is now also available to the masses.
Of course these weapons should be banned, though the powerful interests of the gun lobby and the military-industrial complex are going to make that very difficult.
Nonetheless, applaud the students who refuse to listen to the voices that tell them to be realistic and that they cannot change the world. Yet the pervasive fear generated by a competitive marketplace, with its message that everyone is against you and you have to protect yourself from others who would dominate you or take advantage of you if they could, provides the fodder that the NRA and its supporters need to valorize unlimited access to guns. Until a political force arises that addresses those fears and champions a new ethos of love and caring for each other and for the earth, it is going to be difficult to dislodge the power of the NRA and other fear mongers (importantly, the military-industrial complex).
Most people want a more loving and kind world, but also don’t believe it possible. Only a movement that links its specific demands with a positive vision of a world based on caring for each other and caring for the planet, and helps people overcome their fears and their depressive certainty that such a world is impossible, can hope to win the relatively simple demand to create rational laws governing the use of firearms. And until there are more fundamental assaults on the assumptions of patriarchy and class domination, and gently and lovingly helps men overcome their societal-induced fears that they will be weak and vulnerable without guns, violence will still be an ever-present reality.
A first step now is to eliminate all assault rifles and automatic guns and rifles. We can only hope that the indignation and courage shown by the young people mobilized by this latest massacre will lead to the emergence of a massive movement for fundamental change in the values, institutions and patriarchal conditioning that have shaped our violent society.
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