STRI director Matthew Larsen, who hosted the Smithsonian’s new dean and undersecretary for museums and research John Davis for the occasion, ceremonially dedicated the artistic new fence around STRI headquarters on January 11. STRI photo.
The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s protective new artwork
photos by STRI
You don’t call it a fence anymore. The Smithsonian’s headquarters in Panama is now surrounded by a “chromostructure,” and to call it that is a sign of respect for noted artist Carlos Cruz-Diez. Yes, it does serve as a barrier to limit the number of entrance and exit points to the campus that occupies the site where once stood the old Tivoli Hotel. A small remnant of the Tivoli is actually incorporated into this, the headquarters of the only Smithsonian outpost outside of the United States, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
A fence not far from the Tivoli acquired great notoriety in the events of January, 1964. That structure is long gone, one of the first things to be dismantled in the long conversion of the old Canal Zone. The most prestigious academic institution in Panama, however, has its own new generation of security needs.
It’s not that STRI didn’t have those needs or a protective barrier five years ago, but it is a different time, under different leadership, which calls for new symbolism. The institute is most noteworthy for its biological research, even if anthropology and archaeology have also been important parts of its work. But the current director broke the mold just with his credentials — Matthew Larsen is a geologist rather than a biologist. The United States is run by an anti-scientific crowd these days, with France openly headhunting to hire away scientists, people from STRI’s international research staff in many cases looking for jobs with which fanatics in Washington are less able to interfere, and meanwhile China is the rising scientific giant.
But the Smithsonian is many things, including the home of artistic excellence. The French and Venezuelan Carlos Cruz-Diez is one of the great op artists on the world scene today, and the look that he has given STRI changes color with the perspective from which it is viewed. It’s a great optical illusion in aluminum and urethane paint. It’s an instant Panama City landmark.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
We celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a moment when our country feels hopelessly divided.
But I still have hope. And I’ll tell you why.
Three months before I graduated from law school, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. Riots broke out in cities across America, including my own. Wilmington, Delaware was burning.
The governor, Charles Terry, had called in the National Guard when rock and bottle throwing escalated to sniping, looting, and arson. As a young trial attorney heading in to work each day, I walked by six-foot-tall uniformed soldiers carrying rifles. Apparently, they were there to protect me.
Over in East Wilmington, mothers were terrified their children would make one bad mistake and end up dead. National Guardsmen patrolled their streets with loaded weapons. Curfews were in effect.
Dr. King told us that “true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” And as a young public defender, I remember imagining how we might heal this God-awful situation. How justice might be done. How we could rise out of the ashes — and find a way out together.
Because back then, we were made to believe that we couldn’t.
Forty years later, I found myself standing on a railroad platform in Wilmington, Delaware once again.
It was January 17th, 2009 — a bitter, cold, but glorious day. Thousands of people were in the streets of Wilmington and the parking lots, waiting for the same thing I was.
I was being picked up by a friend, President-Elect Barack Obama, who was about to be sworn in as this nation’s first African American President.
As I stood on that platform and waited, I looked out over my city — the very same part of the city that was in chaos 40 years earlier, when I had imagined and prayed that we might all live together.
That’s what can change in 40 years in this country.
Last year, this country elected a president who plays off our differences for political gain. It often feels as if we retreat behind those differences. But we simply cannot allow them to prevail once again.
Here’s what I believe — and I’ll believe it until the day I die: All those differences hardly measure up to the values we hold in common.
I believe we will once again move forward together. But to do that, we must realize what Dr. King realized — that opportunity is the only road to true equality.
This nation cannot be what it’s capable of being until it has offered that opportunity, equally, to all Americans.
May he continue to rest in peace, and inspire us for generations to come.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
Murciélago de cara de perro de Freeman (Cynomops freemani) es la tercera nueva especie para la ciencia que se encuentra en Panamá en los últimos años.
Dos nuevas especies de murciélagos descubiertas en Panamá y Ecuador
por STRI, fotos por Thomas Sattler
Un nuevo estudio publicado en la revista Mammalian Biology describe dos nuevas especies de murciélagos de la familia Molossidae, conocidos como murciélagos con cara de perro: el murciélago con cara de perro de Freeman, colectado por investigadores del Smithsonian en Panamá y el murciélago con cara de perro Waorani de Ecuador.
“Identificar dos especies de mamíferos nuevas para la ciencia es extremadamente emocionante”, comentó Ligiane Moras, quien hizo parte de este trabajo como becaria en el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural (NMNH) del Smithsonian en Washington, DC durante sus estudios de doctorado en la Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil.
“Después de caracterizar las formas corporales de 242 murciélagos de colecciones de museos en las Américas y Europa, comparando su ADN, y agregando observaciones de campo que incluyen grabaciones de sonido, consideramos que hay ocho especies en este grupo, dos de ellas nuevas para la ciencia”, comentó Moras.
Rara vez se observan porque vuelan alto en el cielo nocturno, estos murciélagos también vuelan mucho más rápido que otros murciélagos, debido a sus alas extremadamente estrechas. Es inusual capturar estos murciélagos insectívoros cerca del suelo con redes de niebla, que es cómo los investigadores capturan la mayoría de los murciélagos que estudian.
El murciélago con cara de perro de Freeman (Cynomops freemani) fue descubierto en Gamboa, Panamá, por un grupo de investigadores que trabajan con la científica Rachel Page en el Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI), incluidos Thomas Sattler, Raúl Rodriguez y Elias Bader quien, durante cinco noches en el 2012, capturó y liberó a 19 machos y 37 hembras cerca de varios edificios de madera abandonados. Kristen Jung encontró a otro individuo que había muerto y fue colectado. En agosto del 2017, el becario posdoctoral de STRI Gerald Carter y sus colegas confirmaron la existencia de esta nueva especie en Gamboa. Observaron hembras embarazadas en agosto y juveniles en agosto y septiembre.
Murciélagos similares, colectados por Charles Handley, mastozoólogo en el NMNH y previamente identificados como C. paranus o C. greenhalli, también fueron incluidos como C. freemani por los autores.
“Tuvimos mucha suerte de atrapar a varios individuos diferentes de esta especie con redes de niebla y registrar sus llamados”, comentó Sattler, en ese entonces becario postdoctoral de la Universidad de Ulm y STRI, y ahora en el Instituto Ornitológico Suizo. “Estaban descansando en edificios abandonados. Conocer los llamados de ecolocalización específicos de cada especie puede hacer que sea posible encontrarlas de nuevo en el futuro con un detector de murciélagos, sin necesidad de capturarlos, y así obtener más información sobre su distribución y preferencias de hábitat”.
El murciélago con cara de perro de Freeman fue nombrado en honor a la investigadora de murciélagos Patricia Freeman, quien dedicó gran parte de su carrera a comprender las relaciones entre un grupo de murciélagos conocidos como molósidos o murciélagos de cola libre, que incluye los murciélagos con cara de perro.
El descubrimiento del murciélago con cara de perro de Waorani (C. tonkigui), ligeramente más pequeño, se basa en individuos colectados por la conocida naturalista Fiona Reid y sus colegas y por Diego Tirira de la Pontificia Universidad Católica en Ecuador. El nombre “tonkigui” honra a la tribu Waorani de Ecuador que vive en el bosque circundante de uno de los lugares de captura. Tonkigui significa murciélago en Waorani.
Los investigadores estudiaron murciélagos en colecciones en las siguientes instituciones: el Museo Americano de Historia Natural, Nueva York; el Museo de Historia Natural, Londres; la Universidad Federal de Lavras, Brasil; el Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas en Amazonia, Brasil; The Field Museum, Chicago; la Universidad de Kansas, EE.UU.; la Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brasil; la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Ecuador; el Museo Real de Ontario, Canadá; el Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, Panamá; Texas Tech University, EEUU; el Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Washington, DC y la Universidad de Humboldt, Berlín.
~ ~ ~
Estos anuncios son interactivos. Toque en ellos para seguir a las páginas de web
Danilo Pérez, hijo. Fechas del Festival: Enero 15 al 20, 2018. Foto por Eric Jackson.
Inaugura el 15° Panama Jazz Festival:
‘El Jazz como antídoto al conflicto’
por Karla Jiménez Comrie — Panama Jazz Festival
Este lunes 15 de enero, tras culminar su tradicional conferencia de prensa, la Fundación Danilo Pérez inauguró formalmente su decimoquinta entrega del Panama Jazz Festival, que se consolida como “Puente de las Américas” para estudiantes de toda la región.
Representantes institucionales, empresarios, artistas, estudiantes, medios de comunicación y entusiastas de la música se dieron cita en el Centro de Convenciones de la Ciudad del Saber para conocer los pormenores del festival que ha logrado posicionarse como un proyecto cultural que consolida la creatividad, el intercambio y el talento, con un fuerte compromiso con la educación y bienestar social panameño.
El acto inició a las 9:50 a.m. con la presentación del Proyecto Shuruka, iniciativa musical liderada por Maye Montero, que busca hacer un recorrido por las diferentes regiones de Panamá con sus cantos, bailes, instrumentación y folclor.
Acto seguido, se inició la congregación liderada por el Embajador Cultural y Director Artístico del Panama Jazz Festival, Danilo Pérez y la compañía del Alcalde de la Ciudad de Panamá, José Isabel Blandón; el director de las artes del Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Edwin Cedeño; el director ejecutivo de Fundación Ciudad del Saber, Jorge Arosemena; Vincy Godoy, en representación de la Autoridad de Turismo de Panamá; Ariadne Castrellón, de BAC Credomatic; Juan Antonio Fábrega Roux, vicepresidente de Asuntos Corporativos de la Cervecería Nacional; Marco Ocando, director de mercadeo de COPA; el director de mercadeo de y publicidad de Cable & Wireless, Carlos Gómez y la presencia de Milagros Velásquez, coordinadora de Programas de Salud Preventiva del Despacho de la Primera Dama; el Gobernador de la Provincia de Panama, Rafael Pino Pinto; el rector de la Universidad Especializada de las Américas, Juan Bosco Bernal, y los artistas internacionales Santi Debriano, Bill Dobbins y Luciana Souza.
Gracias a la continua misión de proveer oportunidades de desarrollo social y formativo en el país, el Panama Jazz Festival ha permanecido fiel a su diverso público, que ha crecido y se ha unido a los proyectos sociales y programas educativos que dependen del festival y que se han convertido en modelo para otros países americanos que buscan avanzar en el desarrollo social de sus ciudadanos a través de la música.
“La Ciudad de Panamá se presta dentro de un año y unos meses a cumplir 500 años de su Fundación y en 2019 seremos Capital Iberoamericana de la Cultura y gran parte de lo que Panamá puede mostrar como actividad cultural al resto del mundo, es precisamente esta actividad de carácter internacional, donde se destaca el Panama Jazz Festival”, afirmó durante el evento el Alcalde Capitalino, José Isabel Blandón.
Por su parte, el director de las artes del INAC, Edwin Cedeño, manifestó que gracias a la Ley 312 por medio de la cual se establece el Panama Jazz Festival, se ratifica el respaldo de la primera casa de la cultura en solidarizarse con la visión de la Fundación Danilo Pérez en convertir la violencia en música y en arte. “Y es que el arte es una de las formas más valiosas que tenemos la sociedad de convertirnos en un colectivo más humano y con mayores sensibilidades”, agregó.
Durante el evento se destacó los avances del primer Centro de Musicoterapia de Panamá, establecido “gracias a los esfuerzos de Fundación Danilo Pérez y del Panama Jazz Festival”, explicó Patricia Zárate Pérez, fundadora del centro que en conjunto con la Universidad Especializada de las Américas han creado el Diplomado de Musicoterapia de alta calidad académica y que consta con un total de 22 estudiantes, provenientes de cinco países latinoamericanos y que en el marco del Panama Jazz Festival culminarán sus estudios.
Para el director artístico de Festival, Danilo Pérez, el jazz representa mucho más que un género. “Es un antídoto contra el conflicto”, dijo durante el evento con la firme convicción de que por este medio es posible abrirse hacia nuevas posibilidades.
La Fundación Danilo Pérez se estableció legalmente en el 2005, pero su trabajo y espíritu se origina en los años 1960’s cuando Danilo Pérez Sr. experimenta con la educación básica de niños en riesgo social y comienza a componer canciones para el aprendizaje de todas las materias escolares. Esta experiencia culmina en 1967 con el escrito de una tesis en pedagogía que sugiere que los profesores de todas las materias deben tener una formación musical básica ya que sus observaciones muestran que los niños aprenden más rápido, retienen el aprendizaje por más tiempo, y practican el proceso creativo que finalmente los ayudan a convertirse en adultos más productivos, sensibles, con menos incidencia a la violencia, la pobreza y la marginalidad.
La contribución de Danilo Pérez Sr. y más tarde, de Danilo Pérez Jr., a la vitalidad cultural de Panamá se expande por más de cinco décadas y a varios continentes en el mundo, culminando con la creación de uno de los eventos educativos y culturales más importantes de América latina: el Panamá Jazz Festival.
Apoyado por grandes leyendas del jazz como Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock y Chucho Valdez, el Panama Jazz Festival es el proyecto más grande y conocido de la Fundación Danilo Pérez. Desde sus inicios el festival ha otorgado más de 4 millones de dólares en becas, ha convocado a más de 300,000 personas de todo el mundo, ha atraído a miles de estudiantes de todo el mundo y ofrece cada año más de 80,000 dólares en educación musical en una semana.
El Propósito de la Fundación Danilo Pérez tiene raíces profundas en la educación musical, y más ampliamente, en el desarrollo humano. La misión es crear un ambiente donde las personas puedan desarrollar su máximo potencial y puedan vivir vidas productivas y relevantes.
Las iniciativas y programas de la fundación, junto con el apoyo de instituciones nacionales e internacionales, han contribuido al desarrollo social, económico, y cultural de Panamá, haciendo de este proyecto un modelo para varios países en Latinoamérica y el mundo.
¿La próxima generación será hip hop? Foto por Eric Jackson.
~ ~ ~
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.
This is the outside, with the inside just back open, mostly after repairs and refurbishing. It’s at the intersection of the northernmost entrance to the Casco Viejo and the beginning of the Cinta Costera. The Mercado de Mariscos was a gift from the Japanese government and for those at all assimilated to a Panamanian diet and lifestyle it’s one of the treats of living in the noisy, dirty, chaotic capital city.
So what do you do with one of the big snappers like that? Have it scaled and cleaned at the market, with dorsal and pectoral fins cut off but the tail fin and the head left on. Squeeze enough fresh limes to wet the outside and inside of the fish with the juice. Then sprinkle the outside with salt and pepper. Then slather it with olive oil on both side and broil it, turning when it’s done enough on the first side. On the side, stir fry some sliced up cabbage, onions, sweet red peppers and pitted green olives. When the second side of the fish is about done, top it with the things you have just stir fried, broil just a bit more, and then serve.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
As people began to gather early, this man had a message that summed up a lot of the sense of what it was all about: “Nobody is the country, we are all it.”
A rejuvenated patriotism
on the Cinta Costera
photos and story by Eric Jackson
Yes, it was panned, ignored or distorted by the major political parties and by the major news media — all of which have their ties to individuals, companies, banks, law firms, brokerages or relatives who are implicated in the massive Odebrecht and Blue Apple scandals, by which almost every public works contract with every business foreign or domestic was overpriced, with politicians, parties or politically connected individuals getting some of the excess kicked back to them. It was that way under the Martín Torrijos and Ricardo Martinelli administrations and it’s like that with the Juan Carlos Varela administration. So the power brokers angling to get the inside track in the 2019 elections were unhappy, and for those who rely only on rabiblanco media for their information it’s a story largely untold.
And then there are the Evangelical gay-bashers — who were also on Martinelli’s planilla — urging that January 9th is a day to honor those who gave their lived for Panama back in 1964, so it sullies the solemnity of the occasion to talk about corruption. But symbols of identity and faith were common enough in the crowd. There were Che Guevara t-shirts and crucifixes and stars of David. There were rastas in dreadlocks and Orthodox Jews in black hats and Muslims wearing kufi caps. There were LGBT rainbows. But then came the common expressions of faith, as the crowd sang El Himno Istmeño and El Tambor de Alegría. It was Panamanians who despite all differences expressed a common belief that we should demand better, a common sense of justice in the face of all the sneers and fatalistic apathy.
Off on another side of town, there was the vanguard of the broad masses of workers, campesinos and revolutionary intellectuals — except for those infected by revisionism, deviationism, bourgeois eclecticism, religious obscurantism or other ideological maladies. They had exclusive dibs on the Day of the Martyrs tradition and marched off in their reduced numbers to claim it.
Then at various shrines, the government and its personalities and parties and prestigious families made their annual gestures, making their claim of exclusive dibs on an event with which they and their parties had nothing much to do.
Some of the survivors of that day in 1964 also gathered at their old high school. They were outnumbered by hangers-on who wouldn’t want to look unpatriotic but also would not be so disrespectful as to demand an end to the corruption that holds Panama in its grip.
Did the mainstream say “hundreds?” Well, yes. DOZENS of hundreds gathered on the Cinta Costera, overflowing the Mirador Fotografica and ultimately so crowding the overlooking pedestrian overpass that the police stopped people from adding to the numbers. Not that there was any nastiness with the cops — they really were interested in safety.
Yes, another anti-corruption demonstration with Miguel Antonio Bernal and his friends. But not just, and not even in its inception. This was called by the irreverent La Cascara TV show producer / director and satirist Ubaldo Davis, Senior and some of his friends. Bernal, the Colegio de Abogados and many others jumped on the bandwagon. The cry is for “civil death,” a ban on persons and companies involved in corruption having anything more to do with public business. Compared to prior demonstration, the crowd was a bit darker-skinned and substantially younger. And much larger. All of the competing distractions were dwarfed.
Where will it all lead? Hard to say. Probably those in power will not listen, but the new political reality is that those who are fed up are now on the streets in great numbers.
Even before the “official” 9 a.m. start, standing on the ground one could not see where the people with the microphones were speaking.
From an obstructed view spot — there were a few folks in wheelchairs, but by and large forget about any actual seats.
Some notable did briefly speak, but this was neither a celebrity show nor a rally for a candidate.
The crowd on the overpass and in the park got bigger and bigger, well after the appointed starting time.
It is said that those who can’t deal with this generation are really going to dislike the next one.
“Panameño, Panameño….”
Part of the crowd, seen from the pedestrian bridge at about 10.
From the bridge at about 11, about when the policewoman started to tell people not to go up and add to the crowd looking from on high. People marched a short way to across from the Hotel Miramar, where the president lives.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
The youngsters of the heroic deed of January 9, 1964 knew to take action at the right time. They didn’t vacillate, they did not hesitate, nor were they intimidated, nor did they hide, much less did they split, in their show of indignation at their country torn, trampled, tainted and outraged by foreign boots.
Today there are those who are interested in us forgetting the early hours of the evening of January 9, 1964, which forever marked – as a nation without distinction – the Panamanians. The aggression hurt, but it also united.
The blood, the sweat and the tears that were shed then have not been and cannot be forgotten. Thus the memory of Ascanio Arosemena, Maritza Avila Alabrca, Luis Bonilla, José del Cid Cobos, Teófilo Belisario de la Torre, Gonzalo A. France, Victor M. Garibaldo, Jose Enrique Gil, Ezequiel Meneses Gonzalez, Victor M. Iglesias, Rosa Elena Landecho, Carlos Renato Lara, Evilio Lara, Gustavo Lara, Ricardo Murgas Villamonte, Alberto Nichols Constance, Estanislao Orobio W., Jacinto Palacios Cobos, Ovidio L. Saldaña, Rodolfo Sanchez Benitez, Alberto Oriol Tejada and Celestino Villarreta is today tainted by those who steal our present, promoting social, economic and cultural inequality, in order to stay in power and make us accomplices of a system that lives by and for corruption with impunity.
To commemorate another anniversary of the Day of the Martyrs, now is when we must take those actions that will help us to change the country. Not to continue as spectators beholding the daily robbery or our wealth, of our hopes, of our dreams to have honest governments, transparent and accountable authorities, who do not destroy the environment, who do not sow hatred and resentment.
We must revive the indignation and with it our values. Therefore we must go tomorrow, Tuesday the 9th at 9 in the morning, to the Cinta Costera so that our martyrs know, that now is the time when their presence is reborn. Now is the time to repudiate the Ali Babas, and give them civil death for their pretensions.
~ ~ ~
These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.
It was easy enough to deduce, given that Torrijos was already known to do business with foreign mobsters — the Genovese Family — and surely knew what Odebrecht’s long-standing reputation was. Then, as part of his bargain to get his prison sentence reduced, Marcelo Odebrecht testifide that the company’s practice was to bribe all of a country’s relevant political factions or nobody at all and the bribes paid to others in Panama may still be denied but they are well demonstrated. Here we have a Spanish-language video circulating in the social media, apparently former Odebrecht “external” lawyer Rodrigo Tacla Durán — a Spanish-Brazilian dual citizen, now in custody in Spain and turned state’s evidence — telling prosecutors about how Martín Torrijos was paid by Odebrecht. Video via @ExpOdebrechtPma. Click here to open in a Facebook page or here to open it in Twitter.
The corruption revelations keep on coming and
public disgust grows — but will anything change?
by Eric Jackson
The rabiblanco power brokers had their early favorites, and perhaps those have not changed. The media here are for the most part not openly party-aligned — Ricardo Martinelli’s ill-gotten empire of newspapers, NexTV and radio stations the big exception — but generally they do have recognizable editorial slants. TVN is the Motta family line. Medcom is more or less PRD. La Prensa straddles factions, except without the left or the Martinelistas. It can no longer live up to a former reputation as Panama’s “newspaper of record,” but from those times it still retains the strong influence of former publisher Bobby Eisenmann’s strain of libertarianism. La Estrella and El Siglo just underwent a Washington-forced change of ownership, with the new publishers vetted by Uncle Sam and with solidly rabiblanco credentials leaning somewhat toward the PRD — but they haven’t purged the leftists or independents from their cast of contributors as of this writing.
So what are they to report when what appears to be an extract of a Spanish prosecutor’s deposition of the Spanish-Brazilian lawyer who set up Odebrecht’s system of bank accounts to launder bribes indicates that former President Martín Torrijos was also bribed by Odebrecht? Ricardo Martinelli’s necro-porn tabloid, La Critica, did acknowledge the recording with a ‘look who this loose cannon is accusing now!’ approach. Otherwise, silence from that quarter.
How did that video get into the social media? Perhaps an elaborate hoax, but given the other parts of Tacla’s long interrogation have been published, it would be expensive to credibly fake. A Spanish connection? Perhaps. A Brazilian connection? That would also be possible. And then there is the somewhat more likely possibility that this was a leak from the Panamanian Public Ministry, perhaps some maneuver from the top but perhaps some individual working in that institution for whatever his or her reason recognized a time for a document that Attorney General Kenia Porcell and her minions would have had in their possession for months now.
So is the Public Ministry’s cohesion crumbling? It would not be the only thing.
The Electoral Tribunal has cut off polling ahead of the May 2019 elections, so we must deduct from various circumstances, like the rise in PRD membership against declines in those of the other two major parties, Cambio Democratico and the Panameñistas. We can see the highly partisan Martinelista Electoral Prosecutor’s move against PRD candidate and former agriculture minister Laurentino “Nito” Cortizo, one of the leading hopefuls for the PRD nomination, and see if there are fear factors to be deduced from that or whether it really is about enforcing a ban on too-early campaigning. We can read the call center crap in the comments below political articles in the daily newspapers and try to weigh and interpret fears and loathings.
And then there’s Tuesday’s anti-corruption rally on the Cinta Costera. Called on The Day of The Martyrs — January 9 — by television personality and lowbrow satirist Ubaldo Davis Sr., it immediately brought forth slams of the “anti-values” found in the adolescent male humor and occasional racism of his La Cascara television show. That the show airs on TVN and that NexTV made a bid to acquire it are pointed out to prove something or the other. (The Mottas’ TVN? OBVIOUSLY a sinister Jewish plot. Martinelli’s network wanted it? CLEAR proof that Davis is an amoral mercenary, ever ready to sell his soul to the highest bidder but at the moment launching a personal political career. No recognition of the November 29th National Liberation Movement as the workers’ vanguard and the only true opposition to corruption? That BOURGEOIS PIG!)
What is more likely is a youthful reinforcement of long-running protests that were drawing mostly an over-40 middle class “good government” crowd, and perhaps an eclipse of the slightly larger anti-corruption protests that FRENADESO / SUNTRACS / MLN-29 have been separately sponsoring.
The nation’s principal bar association, the Colegio Nacional de Abogados, has taken the unusual step of endorsing the Cinta Costera protest. Mainstream media which generally ignore protests have been panning this one in advance. Will Varela squeeze off bus traffic from the Interior, close or slow the Metro trains, make a show of riot squad force or seed the clouds to reduce the turnout? Or will incredulous or lazy Panamanians just take the holiday off at the beach and wait for the gringos or the chinos to solve Panama’s problem?
And it IS a problem. Institutionally, as it appears that Varela’s high court nominees are now dead letters. Also in the legislature, as Ricardo Martinelli calls for his party’s deputies to form an alliance with the PRD caucus, and nobody other than the usual sycophants will say in public that this might be a good idea. In the business community, as the Chamber of Commerce issues a statement reminding Varela that there is or ought to be a separation of powers in the Panamanian constitutional order and warns him not to make any rash power grabs in his last year and a half in office. In the justice system, as prosecutors and courts just made a deal with Martinelli crony Cristobal Salerno, who got an exclusive tax collecting contract with the former administration, which the comptroller general says cheated the public out of more than $29 million, but Salerno cops a plea, agrees to pay a $300,000 fine and forfeit a bit more than $20 million, then goes on his merry way with the difference, without a prison sentence disrupting his life.
It’s all rigged, the rigging is coming loose, but this reporter should not be confused with a prophet. Who knows what will happen? Things are just unstable.
The lawyers.
Many of the radicals. Click on the graphic to see the video.
“Civil death.” As in corporations involved in corruption get dissolved and lose all standing, as in people involved in corruption are forever barred from public life.
Will the number of dogs in attendance at the protest be an indication of how deep the feelings run?
It’s being waved in everybody’s faces and a younger generation with uncertain prospects may be getting upset about it.
~ ~ ~
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.
