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South loses up to two-thirds of the value of its commodity exports due to misinvoicing
by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
Some commodity dependent developing countries are losing as much as 67% of their exports worth billions of dollars to trade misinvoicing, according to a fresh study by UNCTAD, which for the first time analyses this issue for specific commodities and countries.
Trade misinvoicing is thought to be one of the largest drivers of illicit financial flows from developing countries, so that the countries lose precious foreign exchange earnings, tax, and income that might otherwise be spent on development.
Released during UNCTAD’s Global Commodities Forum, the study uses data from up to two decades covering exports of commodities such as cocoa, copper, gold, and oil from Chile, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia.
“This research provides new detail on the magnitude of this issue, made even worse by the fact that some developing countries depend on just a handful of commodities for their health and education budgets,” UNCTAD’s Secretary-General, Mukhisa Kituyi, said.
Commodity exports may account for up to 90 percent of a developing country’s total export earnings, he said, adding that the study generated fresh lines of enquiry to understand the problem of illicit trade flows.
“Importing countries and companies, which want to protect their reputations, should get ahead of the transparency game and partner with us to further research these issues,” Dr. Kituyi said.
The analysis shows patterns of trade misinvoicing on exports to China, Germany, Hong Kong (China), India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, US, and more.
Findings of the report include:
Between 2000 and 2014, underinvoicing of gold exports from South Africa amounted to $78.2 billion, or 67% of total gold exports. Trade with the leading partners exhibited the highest amounts: India ($40 billion), Germany ($18.4 billion), Italy ($15.5 billion), and the UK ($13.7 billion).
Between 1996 and 2014, underinvoicing of oil exports from Nigeria to the United States was worth $69.8 billion, or 24.9% of all oil exports to the United States.
Between 1995 and 2014, Zambia recorded $28.9 billion of copper exports to Switzerland, more than half of all its copper exports, but these exports did not show up in Switzerland’s books.
Between 1990 and 2014, Chile recorded $16.0 billion of copper exports to the Netherlands, but these exports did not show up in the Netherlands’ books.
Between 1995 and 2014, Cote d’Ivoire recorded $17.2 billion of cocoa exports to the Netherlands, of which $5.0 billion (31.3%) did not show up in the Netherlands’ books.
Between 2000 and 2014, underinvoicing of iron ore exports from South Africa to China was worth $3 billion.
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Monument to Puerto Rican Nationalist leader and martyr Pedro Albizu Campos in a park in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. Photo by davsot.
Change in Puerto Rico
by Nils Castro, translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop
There are times when it looks as if nothing is happening and then suddenly new events are unleashed; but while the in-depth situation makes a turn-around, even the best analysts may take time to notice it. And when their appreciations are absorbed by routine, even the left fails to escape from this trend. This is the case of what is happening with Puerto Rico now, where reality has created a dynamic that is entirely new in quality, but which even certain anti-colonialists have yet to notice.
This is reflected in the declaration of the recent 22nd meeting of such a worthy organization as the Forum of São Paulo, celebrated in San Salvador at the end of June. A usual, they repeated that “we support the heroic struggle of the Puerto Rican people for its independence and the just claim of Argentina for their sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands.” In spite of the good faith of this phrase, its scantiness makes for deficiencies. The most simple is that between the immobility of the Malvinas and the present situation of Puerto Rico there is no similarity beyond the geographical accident that both are islands. If it is related to being colonial regimes, then Aruba, Martinique and other possessions in the Caribbean should have been included.
The second error is that in the case of the Malvinas there is a question of territorial integrity, but not of self-determination of peoples. Great Britain took this land from Argentina and replaced its small population with some colonists brought from England. If their descendants were to vote on sovereignty, their choice would be for London. Puerto Rico, on the contrary, is a historic nation, where some four million people defend their own culture, which is of a purely Hispanic-American and Caribbean strain. The question here is to recover the conditions necessary in order for this people to freely decide their own destiny. This is radically distinct from the case of the Malvinas. So to put them side-by-side –- while omitting the other Antillean colonies -– creates more confusion than solidarity.
But the main problem is elsewhere. It is the omission of that fact that ten years of recession and an unpayable debt has made Puerto Rico a headache for the US government as well. This has created a crisis within the colonial political system and its parties. In face of Puerto Rican non-conformity and complaints, and the pressure of Wall Street creditors, the US authorities arrived at two definitive decisions that have annulled the regime of the so-called Associated Free State (AFS).
The first is that the US Supreme Court decreed that the island has no sovereignty, and that this pertains exclusively to the Congress in Washington. The second is that the Congress then agreed to create a Fiscal Control Board whose members will be named by the White House, which will not only manage the fiscal affairs and budget of Puerto Rico, but will reorganize the administration of the country over and above the government elected by the Puerto Ricans, in order to ensure that the vultures of Wall Street collect the enormous debt, at the expense of the people who live on the island. This converts the governor of Puerto Rico into a simple ceremonial rag doll.
The two parties that defend the colonial system — one annexationist and the other autonomist — whose inefficiency and corruption as governors of the country accumulated this debt, have lost their capacity to neutralize the population politically. In order to defend their worn-out privileges they direct their complaints and claims against the new board, but the greater part of the population already sees clearly that the cause of their social and economic drama, their unemployment and poverty, and of the discredit of the political regime, is the colonial system. The same one that, faced with the deterioration of the panorama, calls for creating this new instrument of authoritarian domination.
This in turn has brought the pro-independence party and organizations not only to their moment of greatest political growth, but also to that of the greatest progress in the construction of their unity. This means that Latin American solidarity with the independence of Puerto Rico — and the support for its actors and struggles -– needs to go beyond the usual phrases and calls for new analyses and initiatives in tune with the present demands and possibilities of the situation.
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Getting through the flood waters to the July 2011 opening of the Trump Ocean Club in Panama City, a sure sign that even as a private investor Donald J. Trump is incapable of defending his own interests — let alone those of a great nation — against changing elemental forces. Photo by ElCuara.com.
A Trump presidency: what it would mean for the USA and for Panama, part 1
Climate change
In Cleveland this week, Republicans gather for their national convention in air-conditioned splendor while across much of the country people sweat out a severe heat wave. Inside the convention hall a bizarre discourse will unfold, one part of which is an argument promoted by oil and coal companies that climate change is a politically motivated hoax. It’s an argument that permeates US society and the social media. It even makes its way into high places in Panamanian public institutions.
Think of the enhanced climate change disaster that a Trump presidency would be for the United States. The national embarrassment of having the only leader of an industrialized country who denies that the climate is changing would be the smaller part of it. The US status as a leading scientific power, nurtured by the polymath geniuses Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson from the time that the republic was founded, developed since 1846 by the Smithsonian Institution, popularized among the middle class by the middle and late 19th century legislation that established free public schools and the land grant universities, mobilized for US industry in times of war and peace, bolstered by generations of noteworthy scientists immigrating from other lands, shared with the rest of the world via the Fulbright grants — all of that would be diminished and endangered. The nation’s public infrastructure defenses against rising seas, devastating storms and severe droughts would be compromised. Weird religion and greedy business practices would appear together in US courts when liability for foreseeable environmental damage that could have been reduced or prevented is attributed to God. All of the social dislocations, wars and mass migrations that climate change is already causing and which will get worse would be explained by crude ethnic and religious stereotypes, and the world would see Washington engaged in immigrant-bashing instead of joining in a well informed and well coordinated international response.
Also, think of what climate change denial in a Republican White House that’s supported by a Republican Congress would mean for Panama. Surely there would be less funding and more political interference for that leading outpost of international academia on the isthmus, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. When people are forced by rising seas to abandon their homes on low-lying islands in Guna Yala or Bocas del Toro, or when traditional agricultural uses of parts of Panama become untenable, or when Panamanian water systems become even more dysfunctional, Panamanians could expect lots of derision rather than much in the way of US technical help. A US government that deserts the front lines of climate change response means US citizens living in Panama being blamed by some of their neighbors for policies coming from Washington.
The American people, including those of us living in Panama, don’t need this nonsense.
For more information on Democrats Abroad Panama — the local branch here of the Democratic Party in the USA — including about our stands on issues and our efforts to register and mobilize US citizens (including Panamanian-US dual nationals) to vote in November’s US elections, contact our interim acting chair, Phil Edmonston, by email at lemonaid@earthlink.net.
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All members of Democrats Abroad can vote and participate, either by attending the meeting or by sending in your vote by email to lemonaid@earthlink.net.
(Are you a member? If you voted in the Democrats Abroad primary you surely are. If you get this email directly from Democrats Abroad you surely are. If somebody forwards you this email there may be some question — and please feel free to pass this on to fellow Democrats in Panama. If you are unsure, join Democrats Abroad before the meeting through the international level’s website, at htttp://www.democratsabroad.org/join.)
There is a slate recommended by the Nominations Committee, but nominations from the floor are proper under our bylaws.
The slate of nominees, and their brief biographies are as follows:
Board Candidates (7)
Democrats Abroad Panama Chair Phil Edmonston, lemonaid@earthlink.net
Army Infantry Medic (1961-64) in Panama attached to the 193rd Infantry Brigade and 508th Airborne; ambulance driver transported wounded during the January 9th 1964 Panama protests, freshman graduate of Canal Zone College (1964); graduate, Bowie State College, Bowie, Maryland (1968); founder and President of the national, non-profit, Canadian Automobile Protection Association (1970-87); elected Member of the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa as MP for Quebec (1990-93); Member, Constitution Reform Committee; former Board Member of the Quebec Bar, Consumers Union; and The American Society of Panama. Board Member—Director of Missions, Balboa Union Church (2008-13) and five-year Board member of Democrats Abroad (2010-16). More details at Google “Phil Edmonston”. A writer, teacher, and broadcaster. “I believe the best leadership is teaching others to do your job, and then you move on.”
Democrats Abroad Panama Vice-Chair Ligia Burkett, (donaldburkett59@gmail.com)
Currently, I am the Senior Financial Analyst for the Caribbean Region with The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). I am presently working with the Ecuadorian people to give aid to the many persons devastated by the recent earthquake. I have worked for over 20 years in the finance field, mostly for non-profits in Phoenix, Arizona. I believe that voting is a right and a duty and I would like to help with my capacity to build and administer a strong and transparent organization.
Democrats Abroad Panama Secretary José Bonilla, bonilla.360@hotmail.com
Jose started his major education in the University of Louisville Panama Campus, where he belonged to the student government association serving as Class President. Transferred to Louisville’s main campus to pursue his bachelor in business administration emphasizing in Marketing. Thanks to his permanent resident status Jose successfully worked and studied all his time in the US. He worked in different areas: from restaurants, student housing, to website sales and banking. His last job as international debt collector. Jose became a US citizen on 2015 right before he returned to Panama to try something new. Jose is currently one of the three national team administrators at the Panama Soccer Federation where he handles all the administrative side of the national soccer teams and represents the country internationally as head of delegation.
Democrats Abroad Panama Treasurer Eunice A. Greaves (panaeac@gmail.com)
I was born in the Republic of Panama. In 1956 I migrated to the United States to join my husband who was a member of the US Military. EDUCATION: Primary Studies Panama Rep of Panama; Secondary/High School Panama Rep of Panama; New York University Business School, Computer Sciences; and Canal Zone College Computer Programming (COBOL). ORGANIZATIONS: I have been a very active member of the American Society of Panama (AMSOC) since June 1986. I have served on the
Board of Directors as Secretary, Treasurer, and Events Coordinator. I also worked on John F. Kennedy School and Escuela Estados Unidos projects, acquiring office, kitchen and school supplies. I also chaired the Publicity and Membership Committees. A few years later, I resumed my community involvements, adding the senior citizen’s organization: “3a Edad de Betania” where I served 2 years as Treasurer. Subsequently, I was Treasurer of AMSOC for about 5 years, until 2010, then again in 2012. ACCOMPLISHMENTS: The American Society of Panama being legally recognized as a non-profit organization by two Panamanian government agencies. I currently work very closely with our accountant to ensure we are updated in the DGI.
I am an accomplished Administrator having served over 35 years as a civilian employee with the US Army in various capacities such as Statistical Analyst, Systems Analyst, Computer Programmer, Computer Technician, and several other positions. Working in these capacities, I received numerous awards, commendations and certificates of accomplishment. I am currently serving on the Membership Committee of the American Society of Panama and have been involved with Democrats Abroad Panama for almost nine years.
Democrats Abroad Panama Board Member-at-Large, Chiriqui James Audlin, jaudlin@gmail.com
I’m a retired pastor of churches and university professor and career journalist (most notably Opinion page editor for the Poughkeepsie Journal), and here in Panama I work full-time on writing more books carefully designed never to sell enough copies to make a profit. If it’s useful, I speak Spanish fluently, live in the Volcan, Chiriqui region, and am married to a monolingual Panamanian. I admit to being a Sanders supporter, but if y’all put me on the board I would exercise that position with utter disinterest between Bernie and Hillary as candidates. And, to be frank, I have so many publishing deadlines that I need to be on the board like a hole in the head. By the way, they are incorporating our local village of Paso Ancho, and I got elected to the first government thereof, as secretary. So you can mention if you wish that I am technically now a Panamanian government bureaucrat, with incredible power and influence over my pet cat.
Democrats Abroad Panama Board Member-at-Large Jan Woolford Carles, jan_woolford@hotmail.com
I am a young Panamanian/American who believes in bridges, not walls. Truth, not talking points, and transparency in all things. VISION: To increase value and maximize efficiency and profit by improving operational efficiencies and maximum utilization of available resources. OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position where my analytical, technical and bilingual skills can lead to success and enhance my abilities to meet any challenge. KEY FOR SUCCESS: I believe in: Personal integrity and strong leadership through training, teamwork, sharing, and recognizing the worth of others. I realize this requires continual improvement and enhanced communication skills. EDUCATION; Law and political science 2015
USMA, Panama City Panama, Ramos Generales, Insurance course 2014; INTEC, Panama City Panama; Bachelor of Arts, Communications. 2013 University of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Bachelor of Arts and science 1996-2008; Colegio de la Salle, Panama city; EXPERIENCE: Grupo Melo (094) 2014-2015. New projects: Executive, Loteria Nacional, Panama City, Panama 2010-2013, Information technology/ Web management IMA Panama City, Panama 2009, information technology support; Grupo PRO, Panama City, Panama 2008. Construction Assistant; Bicicletas Rali, Panama City, Panama 2008
Sales Associate; Empresas Carretero,Panama City, Panama Summer 2007
Manager Assistant; Rali Sports , Panama City, Panama Summer 2006, Sales Associate: HONORS & ACTIVITIEs: WTO Ministerial Conference 2007
Panama International Forum; Speed-Reading & Comprehension Course 2003
Panama City, Panama; LANGUAGES: Spanish (native speaker), English (fluent); SKILLS: Marketing, Communications, professional sales, consumer behavior , Microsoft Office Proficiency, technology, and strong leadership
Democrats Abroad Board Member-at-Large Donald Burkett, donaldburkett59@gmail.com
Retail Sales Administrator. Ten years of retail sales experience demonstrating track record of outstanding sales, merchandising and customer service results. Equally strong qualifications in all areas of convenient store: inventory control, training, security and other functions. Effective communicator, leader and problem solver who builds teamwork and possesses the initiative to exceed goals. Able to perform well under stress.
Substitute Teacher/Teacher. Followed the instructions left by the teachers or alert the administrator if there are no plans to follow. Carried out the instructions of the regular teacher, including grading daily papers and leaving a summary of work covered. Maintain a positive learning atmosphere in the classroom. Employed kinesthetic (tactile learning), visual, and auditory approach to make lessons interesting and interactive. Utilized relevant equipment and organized student-led group sharing. Enhanced student academic and social growth by using varied teaching strategies and techniques to provide solid academic foundation.
Assistant Camp Director. Responsible for camp operations and scheduled camp instructors during session. Taught and develop a lesson plan on daily living and financial responsibilities. Facilitated reality therapy counseling in wilderness program for serious juvenile delinquents. Coordinated instructions on outdoor skills such as overnight backpacking and wilderness survival. Coordinated and facilitated the logistics of extra-curricular activities, such as boot camp training, rock climbing, swimming, paintballing, arts and crafts. Coordinated counseling/problem-solving session for adolescent issues. Mediator for camp personnel disagreements. Coordinated camp emergencies.
Child Support Enforcement Officer. Analyzed and interpreted financial data used to calculate debts owed and payments applied; interpret court orders and worked independently.
Examined new and existing data for accuracy; made financial adjustments as needed for maintenance of fiscal records and assist to ensure accurate disbursement and distribution of child support payments.
Applied law, policy, procedures, regulations and rules to work assignments, built and maintained interpersonal relationships.
Master in Arts /Elementary Education – Partially completed, University of Phoenix, Phoenix AZ;
Bachelor of Science, Business Administration, University of Phoenix, Phoenix AZ;
Substitute Teaching Certificate, AZ Department of Education;
Accredited Foster Family Home, AZ Department of Economic Security.
Deliver the word, fellow Democrats — so many of our neighbors here in Latin America would see it as a rare privilege to be able to vote against Donald Trump. It’s our job to get the American citizens, including the dual US-Panamanian nationals, to register and vote.
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What do those who marched against it know about the Law 61 sex education proposal?
A Spanish-language video report by Mauricio Valenzuela and Hugo Vera.
Time to take away the churches’ veto on sex education
Astroturf is imitation grassroots. Astroturf is a march against sex education in the public schools, largely composed of religious school students and their marching bands whom religious authorities have drafted into the cause. Astroturf is the draftees and the true believers marching through the drizzle and the reverends of would be mega-churches that they hope will pay very high salaries riding in an SUV. Astroturf is a political campaign that, notwithstanding the Bible’s injunctions about about bearing false witness, is founded upon lies about the sex education programs that are contemplated. Astroturf is about a significant but relatively small minority of the population insisting on a “consensus” that allows them to veto any public policy reaction to the on average 32 teenage girls who get pregnant every day.
Sex education in the schools is a no-brainer, and proposed Law 61 is a modest and way overdue step in that direction — a giant stride for Panama in the face of bad faith objections and scare tactics that have worked here for many years. But then, followers possessed of faith without brains is a lucrative business for some.
Trump is a symptom, but the problem is the GOP
I’d much rather find out whether or not anchor babies are citizens because a lot of people don’t think they are. We’re going to test it out.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump has “moved toward the middle” — of the Republican Party — with his choice of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate. That’s a problem for America, because Mr. Lincoln’s party is way off the deep end these days.
In the first two Republican administrations, between 1861 and 1865, Americans fought a terrible Civil War in which more than 600,000 people were killed. In the aftermath of that war, a republic that was Republican-dominated at the time passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the US Constitution. The 13th banned slavery and the 15th banned discrimination against former slaves. The most far-reaching of the post-Civil War amendments protected people from punishment by the states without due process of law, extended federal concepts of equal protection under the law to states and provided that every person born in the United States is a citizen of both the United States and any state in which she or he might reside.
Donald Trump promises to defy the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship, using racist slurs to justify it. Mike Pence also sponsored legislation while he was a member of Congress to define away that right.
In Congress, and repeatedly as governor of Indiana, Pence has promoted unconstitutional measures to establish his personal religious views — he’s a convert to a particularly hardcore sort of Evangelical Protestantism — that bar business dealings with homosexuals, insurance companies covering birth control services, and of course, abortion under any circumstances.
The old conservatism of avoiding anything too novel, paying for government programs as one goes rather than running up debts, maintaining the rule of law and paying attention to the traditional views of the broad mainstream of “Middle America” are out the GOP window these days. Today’s Republicans are the party of mass imprisonment, race baiting, gay bashing and female servitude. Their latest platform plank, a gesture to the Bundy family and the “sovereign citizen” and “patriot” militias who outright reject the validity of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, is to privatize most of the federal lands in the western part of the country — including the national parks that were set up by a Republican president of yesteryear, Teddy Roosevelt.
It promises to be an ugly presidential race between two unpopular major party nominees, but there is and will be a difference. The United States might muddle along by making a few changes around the margins to a corrupt and dysfunctional system that many American, probably most Americans, dislike. The Republican alternative is a return to the plantation economy.
Bear in mind…
It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.
Margaret Mead
The best means to prepare citizens to satisfy their future responsibilities as those who are governed or those who govern is to make use of the right to an education.
Ricardo J. Alfaro
Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one
Thomas Carlyle
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A quixotic tweet by former labor minister Alma Cortés against legislator Yanibel Abrego. It’s more or less an admission that deputies were paid off to jump to the Cambio Democratico party during Martinelli’s time in office. And does Cortés now say that Abrego never worked for the party? One might expect that were that the case it would have come up in the nominating process for the 2014 elections. Abrego, first elected in 2009 as an independent, was re-elected on the CD ticket in 2014.
Martinelli moves to purge most of his Cambio Democratico party
by Eric Jackson
They run CD on the emotions of three people.
Yanibel Abrego (CD-Capira)
“Los locos somos más” (There are more of us crazies). Sic. In 2009 Ricardo Martinelli ran for president on a platform of being crazy, ran a corrupt and heavy-handed five-year regime and then fell short of his attempt at a proxy re-election (a figurehead with a surname for president and the first lady for vice president). Now in exile in Miami, the vagaries of the legal systems and politics of two countries make the former Panamanian president’s existence precarious. More than a dozen criminal cases slowly proceed in the Panamanian courts, with perhaps the weakest political case for a US extradition to Panama most advanced. Martinelli’s closest US political friends, the right-wing Cuban-American exiles, are politically at their weakest since the middle of the 1960s. Of the 25-member Cambio Democratico legislative caucus, 16 are in open revolt against the party’s founder and boss.
The erstwhile president’s inner circle is down to about three since an edict from Martinelli that CD Secretary General Rómulo Roux’s functions and powers will be largely transferred to former Labor Minister Alma Cortés but the Electoral Tribunal declining to recognize the validity of that reorganization. The troika would be Martinelli, his publicist Eduardo Camacho and Cortés.
The latest criminal investigation to annoy Martinelli has Panamanian prosecutors asking questions about the ex-president’s brother-in-law Aaron Mizrachi and asking courts to help them obtain bank records or other documents in three countries — the United States, Mexico and the British Virgin Islands — about a bribery scandal which has earned an exec from the SAP software company a conviction in a US federal court that came with a judge’s order not to contact any of his co-conspirators, one of whom was named as Ricardo Martinelli. If evidence comes up pointing to Ricardo Martinelli, as is surely the intention, then the investigation continues in the Public Ministry as to Mizrachi but gets referred to the Supreme Court insofar as it involves Martinelli. An extradition request to the United States about a bribery case that has already been adjudicated as to others in the US federal courts would be more politically palatable to Washington than the current request, which is about illegal electronic eavesdropping.
So is Alma Cortés, who came to the Martinelli administration from a career as a noteworthy defense attorney for money launderers and other mafiosi, going to get her man off the hook? Actually, there are other lawyers working on that — lots of them — but Cortés is facing her own troubles, about allegations that she obtained some $3.5 million while holding a public office, which she cannot explain as having come from any legitimate source.
The dissident CD deputies, now part of a majority legislative coalition with PRD colleagues who have turned their back on their party’s paper boss Benicio Robinson and the members of President Juan Carlos Varela’s Panameñista Party, are busy with talks to divide committee assignments for the next year. The group that rebelled against Martinelli is assured five of the 15 committee chairs.
Ricardo Martinelli vows to expel the wayward majority of his party and remove the rebellious deputies from their seats in the legislature. But the expulsion from the party would be much easier than removing people from the legislature. To remove a legislator the party must show that she or he violated clear party statutes that had been in force and approved by the Electoral Tribunal before that legislator was elected. Past decisions suggest that the election magistrates will set the procedural bar so high that the CD rebels will not be removable by any means that pass legal muster. If the Electoral Tribunal wants to get radical about it — unlikely, but possible — they might hold that it’s flat-out improper to run a Panamanian political party from foreign exile, or that it’s illegal for a political party to be run as a dictatorship in the context of our purportedly democratic society.
The first two test cases for Martinelli’s purge are being brought against Capira legislator Yanibel Abrego and her colleague from Anton, Raúl Hernández. They vow to fight the expulsion both inside and outside of the party. Their lawyers have begin a rather standard defense, arguing that the deputies have not received proper notice of the moves against them. Will they be able to run out the calendar on this year’s legislative term by procedural motions alone? Will the accusers be in jail by the time that any accusation against Abrego or Hernández gets heard in court?
Roux, for his part, is going through the motions of being party secretary general and most probably enjoying the lack of orders from Martinelli. He’s calling for party unity and wants to be the CD nominee in 2019.
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