OneOctober morning in Richmond, Virginia, 32-year-old Joseph Coxwatched his friends and neighbors go to the polls for the first time.
The fight to get to that moment had been long, bloody, and vicious. But as a black man newly eligible to vote after a lifetime of discrimination, Cox did something that would’ve seemed incomprehensible only a decade before: He won an election.
Racist white politicians worked to find new justifications for stripping the voting rights of African American men (women could not yet vote), alleging voter fraud and implementing heinous tactics like literacy tests, poll taxes, and voting roll purges.
The fact that thousands of African Americansvoted and held elected officeduring Reconstruction only to face a brutal Jim Crow backlash underscores an important theme in our country’s history: Voting rights have been won, then weakened, and then lost before.
Today, too many people take for granted that the advances achieved during the civil rights movement are still firmly in place. But progress is neither promised nor irreversible.
The latest incarnation of the long right-wing campaign to weaken voting rights isDonald Trump’s “Election Integrity” Commission, which Trump convened after absurdly claiming that he only lost the popular vote because millions of people voted illegally. But there’snot one shred of evidenceof widespread in-person voter fraud in the United States.
The same sham justifications used to prop up voter suppression tactics during the Jim Crow era — claims that such measures preserve the integrity, efficiency, and sustainability of elections — are being unapologetically recycled today.
Trump’s new voter suppression commission, which met for the first time in July, isled by some of the most strident opponents of voting rightsalive today — people who’ve built careers on stripping the voting rights of thousands upon thousands of eligible voters of color.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who co-chairs the commission, is among the worst.
After requiring Kansans to show a passport or birth certificate in order to register to vote — a move that blockednearly 20,000 eligible voters — a federal court said Kobach had carried out “mass denial of a fundamental right.”
Kobach also promotes the “Interstate Crosscheck” program that claims to identify in-person voter fraud. But in reality, the Washington Post reports, the system “gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time” — putting voters at risk of losing their most essential right.
Another member is Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer described by former colleagues as “the point personfor undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.”
Of course, no one should be allowed to vote twice in an election. But voter impersonation isbasically non-existent. While the commission might claim to be about promoting the integrity of our elections, their true task is to find justifications for laws that make it harder for members of certain communities to vote.
The history of voting rights in America is a one filled with both progress and regression.
When I think of Joseph Cox winning his right to vote in Richmond in 1867, and when I think of my grandparents having to fight for that same right in that same place all over again a century later, I wonder how so many Americans have forgotten the fragility of this precious right.
I wonder how so many are blind and indifferent to the assault on the right to vote — a right people fought and died for — happening right before our eyes today. We’ve seen these attacks before. And not all of us have forgotten.
Diallo Brooks is the director of outreach and public engagement at People For the American Way.
The struggle for voting rights, not long before passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Washington Area Spark/ Flickr
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The property in question, with the mouth of the Rio Cañaveral at the bottom left and the beachfront purportedly acquired stretching up toward the east. A basic pointer about rights of possession land: if it’s not lived upon, nor used to grow crops, graze animals nor as business premises, it’s probably not “possessed” such as to support any claim to right of possession. Yeah, you can get a lawyer to tell you otherwise. You can also get a lawyer to handle your purchase of the Bridge of the Americas.
A trial and an arbitration over a land scheme
by Eric Jackson (most of this was broken in La Prensa over several years)
In 1997, after years of agitation and promises, the Pérez Balladares administration created the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca. There were complications. The Bugle — a minority that speaks Buglere rather than Ngabere which is itself divided among folks in the Veraguas highlands and along the Caribbean coast (the latter sometimes known as the Bokota) — were not all happy about being a minority within a larger indigenous entity. Ngabe politics are fractious. And then there were and are non-indigenous people living within to comarca, and pockets of indigenous populations that would not fit within a contiguous semi-autonomous commonwealth. When the comarca was created out of parts of Veraguas, Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro there were a few non-contiguous parts and guarantees for the property rights of the non-indigenous farmers and fishers already living within the entity’s boundaries.
Come 2004, the Panamanian government and the United Nations agreed to list more than 28,000 hectares of wetlands in the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca under the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran and designed to protect wetlands, particularly those of importance to migratory birds or of endangered species. Thus was born the Damani Guariviara Protected Area. Development that would adversely affect the wetland is prohibited there, as it is in all sites designated under the Ramsar accord.
Come March of 2010, one Feliciano Baker Valdes filed suit in a Bocas del Toro court to confirm squatters’ rights that he claimed to two beachfront parcels east of Rio Cañaveral, just under 220 hectares in all. Baker does not claim that he had rights of possession by actually having possessed the property. He says that he bought these rights in 2009 from attorney Evisilda Martínez.
Baker got Andino Archibold, the mayor of the comarca’s municipal district of Kusapin at the time, to sign off on his claim. The mayor would not have the authority to do this in any case, and the money claimed to have been paid did not register in the district’s accounts. Various third parties began offering the property, including an American who wanted to advertise it in The Panama News. University students from the comarca got wind of scheme and began to denounce it and Archibold. Residents of Kusapin began to complain to the regional government and others of helicopters frequently coming and going at the beach.
That June the two parcels, along with another adjacent 485 hectares, were sold by Baker to Desarrollo Ecoturistico Cañaveral, a company owned by Costa Rican legislator Antonio Álvarez Desanti. Mr. Álvarez Desanti is neither an ignoramus nor a back bencher. The attorney and businessman has twice presided over Costa Rica’s legislature. He was part of then President Laura Chinchilla’s delegation on a 2013 state visit with Ricardo Martinelli in the Palacio de las Garzas. In the 2018 presidential elections Álvarez Desanti will be the candidate of the National Liberation Party (PLN), one of his country’s historic major parties.
The Costa Rican politician said that his plan was to build a $40 million hotel on the beach. In a meeting with the now fugitive but then Martinelli administration tourism minister Salomón Shamah, the latter promised that if the permits were secured then there would be Panamanian government subsidies for the hotel project. Ricardo Martinelli’s cousin, attorney Francisco Martinelli Patton, handled the paperwork for the purported sale to Álvarez Desanti’s company.
In the Public Registry, the sale was said to be for $72,000. In a bank account set up by Baker to receive the payment from Álvarez Desanti, a $250,000 transaction was recorded. Whatever was claimed to have been paid by any party to the transaction to the municipality does not show up in any bank records.
In September of 2011 Willy Jiménez, the president of the Ño-Kribo Regional Congress (that is, overseeing the part of the comarca that used to be in the province of Bocas del Toro), filed a criminal complaint with the Public Ministry’s anti-corruption prosecutor. He cited falsified documents in local offices, including purported witnesses to prior possession of the property by persons who did not live in the area and never had. Afterward, however, Jiménez seemed to change his mind. The regional government signed an agreement with Álvarez Desanti’s company to approve the hotel. But by that time local residents were up in arms and filed their complaints against not only those whom Jiménez cited but also Jiménez himself.
But Martinelli’s minister of government, Jorge Ricardo Fábrega, came to the would-be developer’s defense. He said that the registered rights of possession to the property were not new and that in any case the beach is not part of the comarca so indigenous authorities or citizens have no standing to complain. By mid-2013 Álvarez Desanti was claiming that the complaints against the transactions and those involved had been dismissed.
A year later, Martinelli had lost his proxy re-election bid, all the paperwork for the project was not done and no public official was willing to sign or issue anything for the hotel project to proceed. Meanwhile the deal had already gone sour in the weeks before the 2014 elections, as the situation looked ugly enough to become an annoying campaign issue for the ruling Cambio Democratico party. In February of 2014 a local judge in Bocas opened a criminal investigation of the matter. The following month Álvarez Desanti filed for arbitration before a World Court panel in the United States, claiming that Panama had improperly stripped him of his property. He’s asking for $100 million in compensation.
Baker and Archibold go on trial for forgery and fraud on August 10. The arbitration case in pending.
So who’s making out like a bandit? Perhaps the US law firm of Hogan Lovells. This past May the Varela administration approved $3.77 million to hire them to fend off Álvarez Desanti’s claims before the World Court arbitration panel.
Background: one reason why we don’t do real estate ads
A digression about the evolution of our practices here. The Panama News does not take ads anymore, either paid display ads or the former free unclassifieds that we used to to. This story, in retrospect, is an illustration of one of the reasons why we don’t do that, apart from the primordial consideration that by going ad-free we can use certain content that is subject to cooperative commons restrictions that allow free use but not for commercial purposes.
Long about 2009, there was this American who wanted to place a real estate unclassified ad in The Panama News, seeking to sell a large tract of beachfront land east of Rio Cañaveral. But a faint bells rang from the past. Hey, isn’t this part of the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca, the lands of which are not supposed to be for sale to outsiders? Hey, isn’t this part of an internationally recognized and legally protected wetland area, more or less off-limits for developers?
Indeed — part of the Damani Guariviara Wetlands, protected by international treaty and nationl law in 2004. The Ministry of the Environment now, and its precursor the National Environmental Authority, then and now said and say that on the 24,089 hectare site there were and are no structures.
But this man said he had rights of possession and the approval of comarca authorities. Checking the man further, he was not registered to sell real estate in Panama and several people warned that he was a cut-out, a front for someone without rights or with very dubious rights to various properties trying to sell these to gullible foreigners. So his ad did not run. It was for the sale of the property that is the basis of the ongoing court cases discussed above.
We were not so quick to catch the one from the guy who was trying to sell a house in the Azuero to liquidate and conceal marital assets in the course of a divorce. He didn’t tell us that but SHE did and the ad came down. But the guy with the development in Boquete that was based on the appropriation of marital assets in violation of a US divorce decree? THAT angle was not known until after the fact, and his ads ran. But we routinely omitted the various ads for properties that allegedly included privately owned beaches, because that’s clearly illegal, no matter what the practices might be.
Looking up property titles and right of possession registries in this country is an arcane art, designed that way to provide income for lawyers and opportunities for swindlers in and out of public office. But there are rules of thumb. Rights of possession are essentially registered squatters’ rights, and such right depend on actual possession. To buy rights of possession to a parcel of land that nobody works, on which nobody grazes animals, on which no structure has been built is to buy from someone who is not in possession and thus has no interest to sell. It can get more complicated than that, but the abandonment of a property for which rights of possession are registered means that those rights are extinguished.
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We get more signs of military unrest. Given Venezuela’s history, Latin America’s history, the severe and intractable nature of a Venezuelan economic collapse and a Venezuelan civilian politics that’s about bitter power struggles with hardly a thought for what to do about the country, a military coup would not be a huge surprise. The Bolivarian army stepping in to depose a Bolivarian president who is in the process of tearing up the Bolivarian constitution? Might happen. Any number of other possibilities, most of them awful, may be in store for Venezuela instead. If there is an afterlife, poor Simón Bolívar — who experienced comparable bitterness in his lifetime.
What should it mean for Panama?
First of all, that President Varela uncritically joins with President Trump in efforts to topple President Maduro makes it reasonable to suspect that the present policy of Panama would sign away Panama’s sovereignty as an independent republic. Perhaps the worst victims along the way would be other sister Latin American republic from which this country would serve as a springboard for an attack from the north. Panama should work with other Latin American countries, and only act to the extent that there is a consensus, to assist Venezuela past its troubles. A return to servile foreign policies of the past is a concern for Panamanians, not just for the people in other countries that are targets for foreign intervention.
Second, Panama can’t solve the terrible individual problems of the millions of Venezuelans. Asylum for political figures facing arrest over political charges is a traditional expression of Panamanian neutrality and assistance for peace processes, but it should first be fairly impartial as the tides of fortune move in and out and second should not be a license for anybody to use Panama as a platform from which to direct, arm or incite a civil war in another country. The many Venezuelans who have already come here? The hatred against them needs to stop. So long as they obey our laws their integration into Panamanian society should unfold. But our own economy is weak and we just can’t take in a much more populous nation whose real income has been cut in half over the past few years. One thing should be certain for Panamanians: anyone who would become president of Panama running on a platform of hating our neighbors would ultimately turn on fellow Panamanians as well. That person is unfit to hold that office which she or he seeks.
Third, Venezuela has a large outstanding debt to Panama, but as a nation Venezuela also helped Panama through some of our hard times. As the chaos lifts Panama should be generous, astute and looking out for Panama’s needs in negotiations to settle the debt. A process in which Goldman Sachs gets dibs on Venezuela’s oil revenues and what’s owed to Panama gets forgotten ought to be an unacceptable outcome here.
Bear in mind…
Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.
Dorothy Parker
No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded.
Margaret Mead
All who have served the Revolution have plowed the sea.
Simón Bolívar
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The Hiroshima firestorm, by survivor Keiji Nakazawa.
Hadashi no Gen / The Barefoot Gen / Gen Pies Descalzos
an autobiographical anime classic by Keiji Nakazawa
un anime autobiográfico creado e ilustrado por Keiji Nakazawa
Today, August 6, is a day to remember in world history. On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb to be used against human targets was dropped on Hirohsima, Japan. Debates linger about how necessary or unnecessary, how justified or how criminal it might have been. The world has moved on. But this past week the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved stronger sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles tests and accompanying threats. You can read propaganda of both sides, and some other perspectives as well, about the personality of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un and the nature of his regime. But to begin to fully understand the controversy, you need to know that some of Kim’s missiles have been fired over Japanese territory, and that for historical reasons Japan has a particular set of attitudes about nuclear weapons. How better to understand the genesis of this attitude than through the art and also eyewitness account of Keiji Nakazawa, who as a boy survived the bombing of Hiroshima? Hoy, 6 de agosto, es un día para recordar en la historia del mundo. El 6 de agosto de 1945, la primera bomba atómica que se utilizó contra objetivos humanos fue detonada sobre Hirohsima, Japón. Los debates continuan sobre lo necesario o innecesario, lo justificado o lo criminal que pudo haber sido. El mundo ha seguido adelante. Pero la semana pasada el Consejo de Seguridad de las Organización de Naciones Unidas aprobó por unanimidad sanciones más fuertes contra Corea del Norte por sus pruebas de armas nucleares y de misiles balísticos, y las amenazas acompañantes. Puede leer la propaganda de ambos lados, y algunas otras perspectivas también, sobre la personalidad del dictador Kim Jong Un y la naturaleza de su régimen. Pero para comenzar a entender completamente la controversia, es necesario saber que algunos de los misiles de Kim han sido disparados sobre territorio japonés y que por razones históricas Japón tiene un conjunto particular de actitudes sobre las armas nucleares. ¿Cómo comprender mejor la génesis de esta actitud que a través del arte y también la cuenta de testigo presencial de Keiji Nakazawa, que como un niño sobrevivió al bombardeo de Hiroshima?
The Barefoot Gen, dubbed into English.
Hadashi no Gen / Gen Pies Descalzos, japonés con subtítulos en español.
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Prime Minister Netanyahu is in trouble about a questionable arms purchase, so an argument over the death penalty serves him at the moment.
Wistful eyes
by Uri Avnery
The whole world watched with bated breath while the days passed. Then the hours. Then the minutes.
The world watched while the condemned man, Muhammad Abu-Ali of Qalqiliya, waited for his execution.
Abu-Ali was a convicted terrorist. He had bought a knife and killed four members of a family in a nearby Jewish settlement. He had acted alone in a fit of anger, after his beloved cousin, Ahmed, was shot and killed by the Israeli border police during a demonstration.
This is an imaginary case. But it resembles very much what would happen if a real case that is now pending were to take this turn.
There is no death penalty in Israel. It was abolished during the first years of the state, when the execution of Jewish underground fighters (called “terrorists” by the British) was still fresh in everybody’s mind.
It was a solemn and festive occasion. After the vote, in an unplanned outburst of emotion, the entire Knesset rose and stood at attention for a minute. In the Knesset, such expressions of emotion, like applause, are forbidden.
On that day I was proud of my state, the state for which I had spilled my blood.
Before that day, two people had been executed in Israel.
The first was shot during the early days of the state. A Jewish engineer was accused of passing information to the British, who passed it on to Arabs. Three military officers constituted themselves as a military court and condemned him to death. Later it was found that the man was innocent.
The second death sentence was passed on Adolf Eichmann, an Austrian Nazi who in 1944 directed the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps. He was not very high up in the Nazi hierarchy, just a lieutenant-colonel (“Obersturmbannführer”) in the SS. But he was the only Nazi officer with whom Jewish leaders came into direct contact. In their minds, he was a monster.
When he was kidnapped in Argentina and brought to Jerusalem, he looked like an average bank clerk, not very impressive and not very intelligent. When he was condemned to death, I wrote an article asking myself whether I was in favor of his execution. I said: “I dare not say yes and I dare not say no.” He was hanged.
A personal confession: I cannot kill a cockroach. I am unable to kill a fly. That is not a conscious aversion. It is almost physical.
It was not always so. When I had just turned 15, I joined a “terrorist” organization, the Irgun (“National Military Organization,”) which at the time killed lots of people, including women and children, at Arab markets in retaliation for the killing of Jews in the Arab rebellion.
I was too young to be employed in the actions themselves, but my comrades and I distributed leaflets proudly proclaiming the actions. So I certainly was an accomplice, until I left the organization because I started to disapprove of “terrorism.”
But the real change in my character occurred after I was wounded in the 1948 war. For several days and nights I lay in my hospital bed, unable to eat, drink or sleep, just thinking. The result was my inability to take the life of any living being, including humans.
So, naturally, I am a deadly enemy of the death penalty. I greeted with all my heart its abolition by the Knesset (before I became a member of that not-very-august body.)
But a few days ago, somebody remembered that the death penalty was not really quite abolished. An obscure paragraph in the military code has remained in force. Now there is an outcry for its application.
The occasion is the murder of three members of a Jewish family in a settlement. The Arab assailant was wounded but not killed on the spot, as usually happens.
The entire right-wing clique that governs Israel now broke out in a chorus of demands for the death penalty. Binyamin Netanyahu joined the chorus, as did most members of his cabinet.
Netanyahu’s attitude can easily be understood. He has no principles. He goes with the majority of his base. At the moment he is deeply involved in a huge corruption affair concerning the acquisition of German-built submarines. His political fate hangs in the balance. No time for moral quibbles.
Putting aside, for the moment, my personal mental disabilities concerning the death penalty, judging the problem on a rational basis shows that it is a huge mistake.
The execution of a person who is considered a patriot by their own people arouses profound anger and a deep desire for revenge. For every person put to death, a dozen others arise to take their place.
I speak from experience. As already mentioned, I joined the Irgun when I was hardly 15. A few weeks before, the British had hanged a young Jew, Shlomo Ben-Yossef, who had shot at an Arab bus full of women and children, without hitting anyone. He was the first Jew in Palestine to be executed.
Later on, after I had already forsworn “terrorism,” I still felt emotionally involved whenever the British hanged another Jewish “terrorist.” (I take pride in having invented the only scientifically sound definition of “terrorism” — “A freedom fighter is on my side, a terrorist is on the other side.”)
Another argument against the death penalty is the one I described at the beginning of this piece: the inherent dramatic effect of this penalty.
From the moment a death sentence is passed, the entire world, not to mention the entire country, gets involved. From Timbuktu to Tokyo, from Paris to Pretoria, millions of people, who have no interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get aroused. The fate of the condemned man starts to dominate their lives.
Israeli embassies will be deluged by messages from good people. Human rights organizations everywhere will get involved. Street demonstrations will take place in many cities and grow from week to week.
The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people, until then a minor news item in newspapers and on TV news, will be the center of attention. Editors will send special correspondents, pundits will weigh in. Some heads of state will be tempted to approach the president of Israel and plead for clemency.
As the date of execution grows nearer, the pressure will grow. In colleges and in churches, calls to boycott Israel will become shrill. Israeli diplomats will send urgent alarms to the Foreign Office in Jerusalem. Embassies will strengthen anti-terror precautions.
The Israeli government will meet in urgent emergency sessions. Some ministers will advise commuting the sentence. Others will argue that that would show weakness and encourage terror. Netanyahu, as usual, will be unable to decide.
I know that this line of argument may lead to a wrong conclusion: to kill Arab assailants on the spot.
Indeed, this is a second discussion tearing Israel apart at the moment: the case of Elor Azaria, a soldier and field medic, who shot at close range a wounded Arab assailant lying on the ground and bleeding profusely. A military court sentenced Azaria to a year and half in jail, and the sentence was confirmed on appeal. Many people want him released. Others, including Netanyahu again, want his sentence commuted.
Azaria and his entire family are enjoying themselves hugely at the center of national attention. They believe that he did the right thing, according to an unwritten dictum that no Arab “terrorist” should be allowed to remain alive.
Actually, this was openly pronounced years ago by the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir (who himself, as a leader of the Lehi underground, was one of the most successful “terrorists” of the 20th century). For that he did not need to be very intelligent.
From whatever angle one looks at it, the death sentence is a barbaric and stupid measure. It has been abolished by all civilized countries, except some US states (which can hardly be called civilized.)
Whenever I think about this subject, the immortal lines of Oscar Wilde in his “Ballad of Reading Gaol” come to my mind. Observing a fellow prisoner, a convicted murderer, awaiting his execution, Wilde wrote:
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon the little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky…
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To go to the Spanish-language website of Transparency International in Panama, click here.
A stride toward justice
by Libertad Ciudadana (Panama’s chapter of Transparency International)
In this historic moment in the anti-corruption struggle through which the republic lives, the announcement made on August 1 by the nation’s attorney general, Kenia Porcell, that this past July 26 she signed an agreement for effective cooperation with the Odebrecht company, is a necessary step toward attaining justice.
With this agreement there begins the handover of information for which all of Panamanian society awaits. This will lead to effective investigations by the Public Ministry in the course of this inquiry into the conduct of three administrations, which cannot be put off.
From now on we insist that the Attorney General’s office maintain a flow of communication, which will generate an accompanying civic vigilance. We want to see not only fines and frozen money, if we are not to be witnesses to impunity in the end, by way of knowing the terms of the accord and evaluating its benefits for the country.
Taking into account that the administration of justice is composed of both the Public Ministry’s investigative phase and the trial phase before the courts, we demand that both institutions fulfill their roles, so that there are strictly legal trials of all those who were involved, so that the criminal schemes that were used are known and that the proper restitution is made.
In case information exists that includes officials with special immunities, we expect that this will be sent to the proper institution, whether it’s the National Assembly or the Supreme Court, that these will be resolved by persons uninvolved in the Odebrecht corruption scheme and free of conflicts of interest, and that all of those responsible account for their actions — whoever may fall!
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The editor, in the middle of a last week in July that was no fun.
Contagious
by Eric Jackson
I was. It is said that it’s the website owner’s fondest hope to go viral. Not this way.
But then, along the route to what I am doing now, I had occasion to work in a day care center and learned all about conjunctivitis, or more colloquially, pink eye.
There are various forms — reactions to environmental irritants, bacterial and viral. The viral stuff is what’s going around in Panama. It’s not deadly but it’s highly contagious. The Ministry of Health is calling it a “low intensity epidemic,” with more than 10,600 cases recorded, mostly in the Panama City – Colon – San Miguelito metro area. Surely there are many more unreported cases. One of those was mine — what was the point of seeing a health care professional about something annoying which can’t be treated and runs its course in a week or less?
Yes, there can be serious complications. If you go rubbing your itchy eyes — which will be bloodshot to pink in the whites and may have a discharge like the yellowish goo coming out of mine — you can aggravate the situation and cause permanent eye damage. If it gets well nigh intolerable, use a cold compress on your eyes.
The government doctors are urging people not to self-medicate. There is an outside chance that analgesics could cause complications — an elevated chance with some serious risk if you give aspirin to a child. And antibiotics for a viral infection? — don’t be a total fool! That will not affect the conjunctivitis but it may well make some other bug that you are carrying antibiotic resistant. Inappropriate use of antibiotics can kill you or someone else.
At the day care center we would send kids with pinkeye home, and it made parents furious. Oh, well. And on a bus from Penonome back to my home in rural Anton on this day, there was a schoolboy in his uniform, perhaps seven years old, rubbing his reddish and runny eyes. Whatever he touched will be contagious.
Limit your social, work and educational life when you have conjunctivitis. Keep washing your hands and avoid touching people. Don’t send a kid with conjunctivitis to school, nor let that child out to play with the neighbor kids while his or her eyes are inflamed.
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Comunicado acerca de la posición internacional asumida por el gobierno de Juan Carlos Varela en el caso de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela.
Comunicado del PRD
El Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) señala que el gobierno del presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha irrespetado la dignidad del país al rebajar a Panamá a la condición de apéndice sumiso de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos, al respaldar las sanciones impuestas por Estados Unidos a Venezuela y a funcionarios de ese país, de manera unilateral.
La administración del presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha cometido un atentado contra la personalidad internacional de la nación panameña al subordinar su política exterior a la de los Estados Unidos.
Es deplorable que el presidente Varela haya aceptado, sin rubor alguno, la recolonización de la política exterior del país.
Para el PRD es inadmisible que la administración del presidente Varela avale sanciones unilaterales contra Venezuela que son violatorias del derecho internacional. Resulta penoso que el gobierno de Panamá, país que sufrió en 1988 y 1989 sanciones injustas e ilegales que afectaron severamente la economía nacional y la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos, ahora apoye acciones semejantes contra Venezuela.
Es vergonzoso que el gobierno del presidente Juan Carlos Varela avale hoy contra Venezuela las acciones condenables que ayer se aplicaron contra Panamá.
Ahora, el gobierno del presidente Varela pretende erigirse en juez supranacional, cuando ni siquiera es capaz de resolver los problemas que aquejan a la población panameña y mucho menos enfrentar con eficacia las graves denuncias de corrupción de ésta y la pasada administración.
El creciente descontento ciudadano y la falta de credibilidad internacional de la administración del presidente Varela no se mitigarán plegándose a los designios de países extranjeros ni formando parte de alianzas injerencistas ni pretendiendo un triste protagonismo de conveniencia con respecto a Venezuela.
Con la posición asumida frente a Venezuela, el presidente Juan Carlos Varela ha hecho retroceder la política exterior de Panamá a las épocas más oscuras de entreguismo y ha desechado las mejores prácticas diplomáticas del país caracterizadas por la adhesión y aplicación de los principios de no intervención, respeto a la soberanía nacional y a la autodeterminación, el no uso de la fuerza y la solución de los conflictos por medio del diálogo y la negociación.
Demandamos que la administración del presidente Varela desarrolle una política exterior de autonomía e independencia basada en esos principios que le dieron credibilidad y respeto a Panamá en el ámbito internacional.
Todo esfuerzo exterior, tanto bilateral como multilateral y en los organismos internacionales, que honestamente y sin agendas ocultas desee contribuir a una solución a la problemática que vive Venezuela, debe basarse en el acatamiento del Derecho Internacional, en el respeto estricto a la soberanía de Venezuela y a su institucionalidad democrática, en el rechazo a la violencia, en el apoyo decidido al diálogo y la negociación como vías irremplazables para lograr una solución política duradera que restablezca la paz social y la convivencia en ese hermano país.
Secretaría de Relaciones Internacionales
Partido Revolucionario Democrático
31 de julio de 2017
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We have two men who would have been in a position to know who have made public statements that President Juan Carlos Varela took money from the corrupt Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.
The first to say that had been Varela’s minister without portfolio, de facto leader of Varela’s Panameñista Party and for the first year and a half of this administration Varela’s right-hand man, attorney Ramón Fonseca Mora of Mossack Fonseca infamy.
The second to say that was Spanish-Brazilian attorney Rogelio Tacla Durán, whom Odebrecht hired as an outside counsel to set up a system of companies and bank accounts that would allow them to make corrupt cash payments without leaving any paper trail.
And what has the jailed former CEO of Odebrecht, Marcelo Odebrecht, said? About his company’s general modus operandi in the bribery game, he said that they would either pay off all sides in a country’s political system or they would pay nobody. There is strong documentary evidence and there are multiple witnesses that Ricardo Martinelli was paid handsomely by Odebrecht, so what does that say about Varela’s Panameñistas and the PRD?
Yes, innocent until proven guilty. Yes, nobody whose statements implicate the president is an admirable person whose honesty is beyond question. But the sophistries and pseudo-legal excuses about why Varela can’t and shouldn’t be investigated are annoying. The personal attacks on those who are demanding a proper investigation are sickening. From the Panameñista camp the creepiest of the screeds are coming from the same crew and assuming the same tone as the attacks on those who questioned their flagrantly corrupt hero of yesteryear, Bosco Vallarino.
Varela should agree to and cooperate with a full, honest and independent investigation of the allegations against him or he should resign.
Contain Trump
Will The Donald be going the way of Mr. Flynn and Mr. Scaramucci in short order? Perhaps. It’s hard to see how he can go the distance at the pace he’s going. The replacement will be another set of serious problems if Trump goes. A Democratic Party led by people without many good ideas — to the extent that anyone can be said to lead the party at the moment — would not help matters if he goes right away.
Best for the opposition to dig in for a long struggle, in the course of which it is to be hoped that the factions will find their leaders and a common program will be agreed. Good ideas are actually being introduced as bills in Congress, but of course few of them have any chance of passing. Right now the name of the game is blocking bad ideas.
The United States is at war in too many places, hardly any of them where there is a credible end game in mind. The cost of the present course, which predates the Trump administration, may yet bankrupt the nation. It’s already letting other powers gain economic advantages. Major new wars, escalations of old ones, and geopolitical blunders are the most important avenues of action on which Donald Trump should be blocked. “Tough talk” and foreign policy goading by Democrats may well blow up in the nation’s face. We are dealing with a dangerously unstable man. We aren’t going to get any sober reasoning from Trump and this imposes on his opponents a duty to remain scrupulously level-headed. The demagoguery coming from the White House can’t be usefully countered by its mirror image from Democrats.
Bear in mind…
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce
Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.
Jane Goodall
The leader’s good intention is not enough, what’s indispensable is the collective factor that the workers represent. The people of Mexico are no longer impressed by hollow phrases like freedom of conscience or economic freedom.
Lázaro Cárdenas
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