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Editorials: Assigning blame; and the GOP sinks into violent madness again

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Panamanian political culture
Blocking the road in Pueblo Nuevo. Photo from several spots on Twitter, nobody credited for the photo.

Uh huh…

Many households in Panama City’s Pueblo Nuevo had been without electricity for five days, so some of the residents began to block traffic.

The electric company said it was a blown transformer, and blamed the people who live in the neighborhood.

Perhaps the ASEP utilities regulator, as it now is on the PRD shift, will buy that excuse. It’s very much the style that the anointee in the PRD primary, Vice President Gaby Carrizo, behaved during last year’s militant strikes.

In case you haven’t noticed, this kind of stuff is no way to run a country.

 

          Ted Nugent’s homophobic pro-Putin rant in Waco. The MAGAs applaud.

GOP madness

Uh huh. The Donald held a rally in Waco, commemorating the uprising led by a religious fanatic in 1993, wherein 86 people, many of them children, were killed. But of course, to the gun nuts among the MAGAs, David Koresh’s rifles were supposed to protect against a raid by the AFT or any other act deemed to be government repression.

As the rally opened, Trump saluted the flag. But rising above the flags, behind the former president a large screen showed images of the January 6 Capitol riot, in which Trump’s forces tried to stop the orderly succession of power, in accordance with US laws and the will of the voters. For the background music, Trump played a song recorded by a choir of men who were jailed for participation in that riot.

Back in 2016, Trump led people in “Lock her up!” chants. In Waco in 2023, he screeched like a wounded bird about the possibility of he, himself, being locked up. He threatened death and destruction.

You know what? Trump SHOULD be indicted, convicted and sent to prison, for any of a number of serious crimes. Paying off a hooker to stay silent and keep his 2016 campaign on track was one of his lesser offenses.

It’s not in the public eye right now, and there would be problems because a principal witness is awaiting trial on Odebrecht bribe charges, but when Trump tried to thwart the ruling of a US bankruptcy court AND of the former Trump Ocean Club condo owners by leaning on former Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela, he was obstructing justice and also trying to extort an emolument from a foreign potentate, which would have been a violation of the US Constitution had it been forthcoming and accepted.

It’s not just a matter of the sovereignty of the American people to bring Donald Trump to justice. It’s also a matter of righting a wrong in US-Panamanian relations. And would Uncle Sam be left with only tainted evidence? It would seem likely that US intelligence agencies would have electronic communications intercepts and other proofs to bolster the case.

There are other cases with priority. Perhaps the biggest investigation, not yet concluded, is about whether the classified documents that Trump stole were passed on to any foreign powers.

Yes, Trump has violent neofascists, “patriot” militias and other flavors of gunmen on his side. Maybe he can get Marjorie Taylor Greene to whip out her machine gun and join in the fray. None of that should be allowed to stop or delay the due process of law.

Many Republicans look on with dismay and search for an alternative. Maybe a Ron DeSantis book burning would be more fun for them.

Not to say that everything blue is perfect, that the Democrats have all the correct answers. But today’s Republican Party is a disgraceful mess. They’re “conservatives” running on pure hatred, not to actually conserve anything.

Not since the run-up to the Civil War have the choices that US voters will face next year been so stark.

 

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Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor. Shutterstock image.

           To know another language is to have a second soul.

Charlemagne           

Bear in mind…


The world won’t give you any gifts. If you want to have a life, steal it.

Lou Andreas-Salomé

 

The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing, and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.

Fred Rogers

 

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

Virginia Woolf

 

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Water outage season with a twist

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IDAAN

Although we have had a relatively wet dry season…

by Eric Jackson

Lots of water outages in late March? That has been common enough over the years. It’s the tail end of dry season, reservoirs are low and so are streams and in some cases wells from which water is drawn for the nation’s aqueducts. This, however, is a La Niña season, with drought that started a bit later than usual, and some unseasonable showers now and then. If the IDAAN water and sewer utility, and local aqueduct systems, warn of water outages it’s mostly not the usual natural causes. Yet they keep coming:

  • In the Panama Oeste community of Cermeño, the water went out because maleantes stole the cables that powered the local water system’s pumps.
  • In some of the banana plantation areas of mainland Bocas del Toro, water was out or at low pressure for more traditional reasons — the stream that fed the Guabito water plant’s intake ducts was running low.
  • In Puerto Armuelles they water was out because the electricity for the San Bartolo water plant was out. It was planned and previously announced repairs on the electrical grid causing the problem there.
  • There will be water shortages in parts of La Chorrera on Monday the 27th of March, due to scheduled maintenance at the Jaime Diaz Quintero water plant.
  • There will be a water outages during the day on Tuesday the 28th of March in parts of Arraijan, as IDAAN plans some maintenance work on major water mains.
  • The water treatment plant in Penonome was out on March 25, due to one of the frequent power outages that Cocle province has been experiencing. That, along with all of the other outages, elicited protests from local business groups.

And so it goes. The plan is to get some preventive maintenance done before systems go out during Holy week, which would be considered more serious annoyance than usual. 

 

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Ocasio-Cortéz: Don’t ban TikTok, protect social media users’ privacy

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Representative Ocasio-Cortéz, from her congressional Twitter feed. “Our first priority should be in protecting your ability to exist without social media companies harvesting and commodifying every single piece of data about you without you and without your consent,” the Democrat argues.

In first TikTok, AOC says solution is
not ban but strong privacy laws

by Jessica Corbett — Common Dreams

Amid a national debate over whether Congress should ban TikTok, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday posted her first video on the social media platform to make the case for shifting the focus to broad privacy protections for Americans.

The New York Democrat’s move follows TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifying before the US House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as rights content creators, privacy advocates, and other progressive lawmakers rallying against a company-specific ban on Capitol Hill earlier this week.

Supporters of banning TikTok—which experts say would benefit its Big Tech competitors, Google, Meta, and Snap—claim to be concerned that ByteDance, the company behind the video-sharing platform, could share data with the Chinese government.

Meanwhile, digital rights advocates such as Fight for the Future director Evan Greer have argued that if really policymakers want to protect Americans from the surveillance capitalist business model also embraced by US tech giants, “they should advocate for strong data privacy laws that prevent all companies (including TikTok!) from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone.”

Ocasio-Cortez embraced that argument, saying in her inaugural video: “Do I believe TikTok should be banned? No.”

“I think it’s important to discuss how unprecedented of a move this would be,” Ocasio-Cortez says. “The United States has never before banned a social media company from existence, from operating in our borders, and this is an app that has over 150 million Americans on it.”

Advocates of banning TikTok “say because of this egregious amount of data harvesting, we should ban this app,” she explains. “However, that doesn’t really address the core of the issue, which is the fact that major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of deeply personal data about you that you don’t know about without really any significant regulation whatsoever.”

“In fact, the United States is one of the only developed nations in the world that has no significant data or privacy protection laws on the books,” the congresswoman stresses, pointing to the European Union’s legislation as an example. “So to me, the solution here is not to ban an individual company, but to actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting that companies can do without your significant ability to say no.”

“Usually when the United States is proposing a very major move that has something to do with significant risk to national security, one of the first things that happens is that Congress receives a classified briefing,” she notes, adding that no such event has happened. “So why would we be proposing a ban regarding such a significant issue without being clued in on this at all? It just doesn’t feel right to me.”

The “Squad” member further argues that “we are a government by the people and for the people—and if we want to make a decision as significant as banning TikTok,” any information that could justify such a policy “should be shared with the public.”

“Our first priority,” Ocasio-Cortez concludes, “should be in protecting your ability to exist without social media companies harvesting and commodifying every single piece of data about you without you and without your consent.”

 

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Reporting on the economy through a bus window

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empty billboards
Looking out the bus window, changing conditions in the Panamanian economy emerge from the things you see and the repeated patterns in them. Photo by Eric Jackson.

Not exactly in the form of a “he said, she said” story

by Eric Jackson

In a sense, it’s like 2019, when the government changed hands and a lot of people were asking about who would eat the losses from unsold inventory of all sorts throughout the national economy. Outgoing gangs had taken their pickings and usually were wary of being too obvious. The prudent sticky fingers were also wary about investing in new ventures when no longer riding the gravy train. Plenty of folks in the previous gangs were flat-out on the run, and having bought out a big share of the nation’s billboards, Ricardo Martinelli was finding that lots of businesses were wary of any connection that might be perceived if they rented advertising space from him. But the biggest underlying bottom line was that less business was being done. It was a real estate buyer’s market. Construction projects languished unfinished, or were done but no occupants were to be found.

The Panamanian economy limped along, and then the COVID epidemic hit. Many of the upscale resident foreigners took evacuation flights, never to return. Some left with plans to come back from their also infected and chaotic countries of origin, sometimes to shocking scenes of what had happened to their property in their absence when they did return. The vaunted “expat community” is substantially reduced and that’s a Panamanian business reality.

During and just after the lockdown, while riding by on the busses it was easy enough to see all of the businesses that had been smashed into and looted. Then came brave new businesses, mostly informal ventures by the side of the road, but also renovations, expansions and replacements of more substantial companies that had suffered so much during the lockdown.

(How much of the devastation at COVID’s worst points was directly due to the deaths or illnesses of owners or key employees? That would be an interesting mashup of economic and medical history to research and write.)

Most small businesses that start up do not succeed for very long. So there was another wave of economic change to be seen from the buses, roadside stands that had been opened or reopened, then abandoned. Little drive-up businesses with no customers parked out front. Buildings that had visibly been smashed into during the lockdown and ensuing crime wave, now fixed up but not yet open for business.

Now the order of who is doing which business where is altered, even among companies with deep pockets. For those with the money to risk investing during hard times, there are some assets to acquire or build cheaply. Other than mergers and acquisitions – especially in the telecommunications business — the tales of roving cannibals are exaggerated.

So there are the self-serving declarations of Panama’s business tycoons and wannabes, and the often snobbish declarations of international financial institutions and bond rating services, and of course all o the political propaganda that takes credit or assigns blame, in each case often unduly so.

And again, there are observations from riding down the highway. All the empty billboards are a dead giveaway of an ailing economy. It might even be an apt time, imparting less pain to fewer companies and people, to just ban that sort of advertising.

And of the companies that are putting up billboards, the winding curves of Campana Hill and straightaways from below that into the beaches community also tell of a huge “before” and “after” market change. Gone are the pictures of blonde families in their upscale beachfront homes, with the messages written in English. That’s not the market anymore, if it ever was. Matchbox tracts with Spanish-language ‘you could be home by now’ pitches are the offerings you see now.

Which may feed into the politics of ‘It doesn’t faze Panama or its business climate if all the rest of the upscale foreigners are driven out, either.’

And so at the US Consulate you see relatively few US citizens waiting to be served, and this crowds of Panamanians lined up to get visas to the United States. You don’t see THAT from a bus, but you may see it at the midpoint main order of business punctuating a day mostly spent on buses between the Interior and Panama City.

 

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Hassen, Paving the way for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

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demo against W
A world without accountability paved the way for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A demonstrator holds a sign reading “Impeach Bush” at an antiwar protest in Ithaca, New York. Shutterstock photo.

Will there ever be justice for the Iraq War?

by Farrah Hassen

The wars in Iraq and Ukraine may differ, but both speak to the tragic realities of war. They also make a strong case for strengthening the rule of law instead of undermining it through flimsy pretexts for endless militarism.

Like the 2003 US war in Iraq, which marked its 20th anniversary this March, Russia’s year-long war on Ukraine is an act of aggression in blatant violation of international law.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although Russia is not a member of the ICC, human rights groups hailed the warrant as a step towards justice.

President Biden called the court’s decision “justified,” but acknowledged that the United States isn’t a member of the ICC either. It is important to see the USA support justice and accountability for Ukrainian victims. This should be extended to all victims of wars, including in Iraq.

That illegal war killed upwards of a million Iraqis, displaced over 9 million from their homes, and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. Terrorist groups, including ISIL, emerged in response to the invasion and have continued to unleash violence. Political divisions plague the country, Iraqis continue to struggle, and the United States has troops there even today.

The glaring lack of accountability for our government’s actions in Iraq compromises America’s authority to meaningfully promote human rights, justice, and the rule of law elsewhere — including in Ukraine.

The invasion of Iraq directly contravened the UN Charter’s prohibition against the use of force in international relations. The United States sent 130,000 troops to overthrow Iraq’s government, without UN authorization and under the fraudulent pretext that the country was amassing weapons of mass destruction.

Widespread human rights violations emerged from the invasion and occupation. Among them, tens of thousands of Iraqis were arrested and detained by US personnel. The majority were innocent civilians and many were abused.

Photos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in April 2004 revealed horrifying, unlawful acts of torture. Naked men were leashed like dogs, electrocuted, and beaten. This barbarism was part of a broader post 9/11 torture network that spanned secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Europe to the notorious US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Years later, WikiLeaks published classified US government records that included evidence of other war crimes in Iraq. In the “Collateral Murder” video published in April 2010, shocking footage from 2007 showed US helicopter gunships killing civilians and two Reuters journalists in Baghdad.

No US government officials who created, implemented, or oversaw torture have been held accountable. The only ones to face charges over the WikiLeaks revelations were the people who publicized them. And no US officials faced consequences for waging a war that killed nearly 4,600 US soldiers and that continues to cost our government trillions.

If the United States is serious about enforcing international law, it must right its own wrongs in Iraq and elsewhere.

Joining the ICC would be a positive step.

On previous occasions, the United States has undermined the court, such as by derailing its investigation of US crimes committed in Afghanistan. More recently, Pentagon officials stymied efforts to share US-gathered evidence of Russian crimes with the ICC due to reported concerns that it could one day set the stage for prosecuting Americans.

This highly selective “rule of law” breeds a culture of impunity. As Russia’s actions demonstrate, these double standards weaken the rule of law and human rights around the globe.

A long overdue reckoning with Iraq is also important for Americans who were lied into this devastating war in order to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

In the meantime, Iraqis still wait for accountability. Like all victims of war, they deserve justice.

No one is above the law.

 

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¿Wappin? Lista de reproducción del 23 de marzo / March 23 playlist

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Samara Joy
Samara Joy McLendon and band at INNtöne Jazz Festival 2022. Wikimedia photo by Schorle.

The Friday after the Exquinox
El viernes siguiente al Exquinox

Samara Joy – Can’t Get Out Of This Mood
https://youtu.be/tb1reqE4BzY

Fito Páez en Viña del Mar
https://www.youtube.com/live/wER1tcsrL3E

Janis Joplin – Ball and Chain
https://youtu.be/Z1LAphWvPwI

U Roy, Big Youth, Mad Professor & The Robotics at Rototom Sunsplash
https://youtu.be/eVS7TMDLCFY

The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian
https://youtu.be/Cv6tuzHUuuk

Cássia Eller – O Segundo Sol
https://youtu.be/QdWtFUiBLE0

Peter Tosh – Burial
https://youtu.be/eirblXMl30s

Billie Holiday – All of Me
https://youtu.be/7ON5i5-Trf4

Celia Cruz – Nuevo Ritmo Omelenko
https://youtu.be/JHHYiAM5vAs

Zoé & Denise Gutiérrez – Luna
https://youtu.be/6W4L2O-JQ-w

Roger Waters in Lisbon the other day
https://youtu.be/bdgaAJ-sayo

The Corrs – Dreams
https://youtu.be/-_GMSQD5bTg

Samantha Fish in Dortmund
https://youtu.be/8pFpIFJ_hvs

 

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Dinero

Labor: Los Angeles schools on strike

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UTLA
United Teachers of Los Angeles protest, photo from their Facebook page.
“How do we properly service our students when we are being overworked and underpaid and disrespected?” asked one special education assistant.

Tens of thousands of LA teachers strike
in solidarity with support workers

by Julia Conley — Common Dreams

Demanding “respect and dignity” for tens of thousands of school support workers who help the Los Angeles Unified School District run, the union that represents 35,000 teachers in the city has called on its members to join a three-day strike starting Tuesday as school support staffers fight for a living wage.

Members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 “work so hard for our students,” said United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) on Monday. “They deserve respect and dignity at work. We will be out in force tomorrow to make sure they get it.”

Roughly 65,000 teachers and support professionals including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teaching aides, and grounds workers are expected to walk out from Tuesday through Thursday this week, nearly a year after SEIU Local 99 entered contract negotiations with LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the United States.

The union is calling for a 30% pay increase for its members, who earn an average of $25,000 per year, or roughly $12 per hour. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage in the Los Angeles area is more than $21 per hour for a single person with no children and far more for people with children.

“I am a single mother and for the past 20 years I have worked two and sometimes three jobs just to support my family,” Janette Verbera, a special education assistant, told In These Times Monday. “How do we properly service our students when we are being overworked and underpaid and disrespected?”

The school district offered a 20% overall pay increase spread over several years on Friday, along with a one-time 5% bonus.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, noted that LAUSD has a $4.9 billion surplus and said the district must use those funds to “invest in staff, students, and educators.”

SEIU Local 99 members voted to authorize a strike in February, and said the limited three-day action is a protest against the district’s negotiating tactics.

LAUSD has claimed the strike is unlawful and that workers are actually staging the walkout over pay without having exhausted all bargaining avenues. A state board over the weekend denied the district’s request to block the strike.

As In These Times reported, negotiations between the district and SEIU Local 99—as well as separate ongoing talks with the teachers’ union about educators’ contracts—are being led by Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho, “whose $440,000 salary is nearly 10 times that of a starting salary for a LAUSD teacher.”

“LAUSD won’t get away with underfunding our schools,” tweeted UTLA last week. “This is for our students, for our communities and for our lives.”

 

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The editor is running for secretary of Democrats Abroad Panama

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running
I’d hope that others jump in for other races, and don’t leave DA Panama up to people who were elected to do a job and did not do it during last year’s midterm election campaign.

I am for a well coordinated coalition of the different strains of Democrats, people concerned with doing the work more than flaunting the titles.

And me with the bit part that I seek.
 

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Editorials, The CD internal elections; and Dershowitz and Trump’s legal woes

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them
A rent-a-crowd cries fraud outside the Cambio Democratico headquarters, before moving its protest to the Electoral Tribunal. This posed video from the Twitter feed of one of Ricardo Martinelli’s communications media. It’s much less than viral, which is an indication of Martinelli’s appeal to Panamanians these days.

It should have taken just a couple of hours

More than a day later and still no official word on the Cambio Democratico internal election results?

Yes, early on the official party leadership, headed by Rómulo Roux, admitted that there will have to be some reruns in several corregimientos. It was usual things like ballots printed without all the candidates listed, polls not opening on time, self-appointed goons keeping people from voting with made-up-on-the-spot “rules” and so on. But only in a few places.

So, with only a few exceptions, shouldn’t the official outlines of the result have been known rather quickly?

It turns out that some time ago the legislature, at the insistence of the Martinelli people among others, decided to leave the running of and vote counting in party elections to the party organizations. The Martinelistas accuse Roux and his faction of failing to pay the Electoral Tribunal to run the intra-party elections of convention delegates and the leaders of the CD women’s and youth organization, and fault them for that.

Say WHAT? It’s this terrible offense for a political faction NOT to pay election officials? Only in Panama.

The announcement will belatedly be made, and from observers at the polling places it seems that Roux and his entourage will be re-elected to the party leadership and that Ricardo Martinelli and his proxy Yanibel Ábrego will continue to allege fraud. Then, upon receipt of a complaint in acceptable form, the Electoral Tribunal may look into the allegations.

Even if Ábrego’s team pulls out a narrow victory in the end, it’s not the smashing and obvious victory need to maintain Ricky Martinelli’s aura as a sure winner in 2024.

On the other hand, wipe away all the dishonest Martinelista slop thrown at Roux, and still there remains the image of a party leader who couldn’t manage something like unquestionably fair and efficient elections in his own party.

So Roux intends to have himself declared the CD presidential candidate for 2024. As a corporate lawyer, he does seem to be the type who would be a worthy fiduciary for a rich person to retain in defense of his or her fortune. Not, however, the sort of president for working people to trust to defend their interests.

Martinelli and Ábrego? They are not to be trusted to guard what belongs to the public, nor really, what belongs to anyone rich or poor other than themselves.

It’s very unlikely that Roux or Ábrego will be the next president of Panama. Perhaps, if he can get another winning streak in the courts going, Martinelli might be. However. The glitter has rubbed off of him, such that he couldn’t convincingly win his old party back. The patina will dull considerably more as Panamanians observe his upcoming corruption trials.

It’s likely that both Roux and Ábrego will be figures on or supporting different coalition slates next year. Many are the conventional wisdoms that might be disproven. Some bad years not entirely of politicians’ creation — after scandalous post-invasion decades — may have taken us to a breaking point.

There is no obvious front runner in the 2024 presidential race, but the possibilities for coalitions are beginning to fall into place. Stay tuned.

 

Let the guy have his say, and understand how abominable it is.

The torture lawyer defends the untenable

Former Harvard Law School professor and renowned attorney Alan Dershowitz says it’s against the law and the Bible to indict Donald Trump for paying Stormy Daniels to remain silent about his sexual activities with her during the 2016 campaign.

Well, not the most heinous offense. Nothing like the incitement of a violent attempt to overturn the will of the American voters as expressed in the 2020 election. Nor like attempts to pressure state election officials to commit fraud about the same matter, nor the procurement of fraudulent “electors” also for the purpose of thwarting the proper succession of the presidency.

ALSO not as heinous as trying to strong-arm the president of Ukraine into framing Joe Biden’s junkie son Hunter for offenses the younger Biden did not commit, nor as bad as trying to pressure former Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela into overriding this country’s condominium owners’ rights and the decision of a US bankruptcy court in order to keep The Trump Organization as the management of that mobbed-up knockoff of the Burj Al Arab in Punta Pacifica. In those cases it was a matter of soliciting, perhaps attempting to extort, foreign emoluments that US presidents are not supposed to accept.

Dershowitz, the learned gentleman who in the wake of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States advocated the institution of torture warrants to make bad guys confess their secrets? US law didn’t get such warrants, but US politics got a string of shameful scandals, with untenable defenses under US and international law, at places like Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base and Guantanamo Naval Station. Low-ranking servicepeople like Private Lynndie England and several others took the hit. The intellectual authors of this crime wave, the people of power or influence, were not charged.

Donald Trump rode into power on the crest of a great moral crisis. He validated, or tried to validate, all sorts of brutality, dishonesty and disloyal relations with foreign powers. Perhaps the stolen documents case will shed light on the extent of the latter situations.

But for Dershowitz to distinguish going after Trump over payoffs to silence a Stormy Daniels for the purposes of a US presidential campaign from going after Al Capone for tax evasion after things like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre really is a nonstarter. Taxes were one of Capone’s lesser crimes, and payoffs to Stormy Daniels were one of Trump’s more petty offenses. It doesn’t mean that Americans should put up with that stuff as a feature our US political campaigns.

 

3
Archimedes’ Lighthouse, a sculpture by Dominique Rolland in René Lévesque Park in Montreal, Quebec. The lights originally planned for it were not installed because it’s believed that they could interfere with navigation on the adjacent St. Lawrence Seaway. City of Montreal photo.

 

There is a time when quiet courage and audacity become for a people at the key moments of its existence the only form of adequate caution. If it does not then accept the calculated risk of the great steps, it can miss its career forever, exactly like the man who is afraid of life.

René Lévesque

Bear in mind…

 

Trust in God: She will provide.

Emmeline Pankhurst

 

 

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Marcel Proust

 

 

Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.

Fannie Lou Hamer

 

 

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Bernal, Let’s have a national referendum on this copper mine contract

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mine
This ever-expanding hole in Panama’s forest, from which toxic sludge leaks into the water. CIAM photo from 2018 – it has gotten worse.

For a referendum on mining

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

To be able to speak of democracy in our times, citizen participation is a prerequisite. Otherwise, one of the main political rights of the citizen, which is the source of public power, is being violated.

The prevailing authoritarianism, protected by the militaristic constitution imposed 50 years ago on our country, is supported by the erroneous belief that the exercise of the vote is a right and a duty, but only to participate in the designation of representatives in the government: representantes, mayors, legislators, the president.

In this amputated and kidnapped democracy in which we live, the right of citizens to participate in the making of decisions of general interest, through means of direct democracy that are inherent to them as citizens, such as the revocation of mandate, town meetings, popular consultations, citizen assemblies, plebiscites and referenda, among others, have been cut off.

A basic instrument of citizen participation today is the referendum, a political right through which citizens intervene directly to express their will in any public matter that may affect the state.

In a matter of great transcendence like mining in Panama — in this specific case the contract signed by the Panamanian government with the First Quantum mining company — went behind the backs of the citizens. It’s therefore necessary that we demand a referendum so that, through it, and in use of our political rights, we Panamanians can all decide in a participatory and democratic manner what to do about the exploitation of our mineral resources.

We still have time to redouble our efforts to achieve citizen participation in this decision. The prevailing authoritarianism seeks to impose it on us, but that clearly goes against our interests as a country, as Panamanian citizens.

 

Contact us by email at fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com

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