Mass protest in Panama targets regime’s policies

Fifteen thousand people marched in protest in Panama City on March 18, defying President Ricardo Martinelli’s attempts at intimidation. Police actions blocking access stopped thousands more from taking part as the police detained workers carrying construction union banners and stopped and searched buses carrying demonstrators.

Photo: Popular Alternative Party

Outrage over the imposition of a new tax reform, changes in social security, the high cost of living and an educational reform that harms the people had provoked this first such protest since supermarket magnate Martinelli took office in July 2009.

Aware of the growing protest mood, Martinelli’s government began a campaign of repression directed particularly against the construction workers’ and teachers’ unions. Two days before the march, as members of the Sole National Union of Construction and Similar Workers (Suntracs) were distributing flyers rejecting the government policies and promoting the “Great March of the People” for the 18th to passersby on the streets, police started arresting workers who were on their jobs. Without any judicial order, police raided construction workplaces, jailing 300 workers.

Government minister José Raúl Mulino, who is closely tied to Colombia’s pro-U.S., fascist Álvaro Uribe regime, was involved in these raids. Mulino is responsible for the establishment of the 11 bases on Panamanian territory that the Pentagon can use. He also oversees the joint border operations with Colombia’s army, known for its ties to criminal paramilitaries.

The following is a commentary on the current situation in Panama by the general secretary of the Popular Alternative Party, Olmedo Beluche, a leader in the opposition to Martinelli.

The honeymoon with Martinelli ends

The mind-numbing impact of recent elections, induced with the help of the bourgeois media, is beginning to fade. The Panamanian people are awakening from the empty illusion that a government of bankers and business heads could possibly solve the enormous social problems that have accumulated through 20 years of neoliberal “democracy” and bring about the change that everyone wants. [Note: The U.S. invaded Panama in December 1989 and has put the government under its tutelage ever since.]

Following the advice of the same neoliberal gurus who earlier advised former President Martín Torrijos, Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli has taken advantage of the honeymoon after last May’s elections to impose his anti-people program: a tax reform that will draw between $200 and $500 million from the pockets of the working and middle class in order to fatten up public finances that feed direct contracting, turning millionaires into multimillionaires; and an attempt to destroy the most militant unions — those of construction workers and of teachers, the former through repression and the latter through an education reform that puts their jobs at risk.

Those who believed the fairy tale about “real change” are now discovering that Martinelli is more of the same. His reality: price increases of basic foods, especially the products he himself sells in his supermarkets; no hope for the 42 percent of the workforce that is underemployed, much less for the 8 percent sunk in open unemployment; poor neighborhoods and also “middle class” ones ridden with crime and violence; and industrial and agricultural producers paying higher taxes and receiving no stimulus, of course, since the government is in the hands of import merchants.

But people are waking up from their stupor. The smear campaigns against the trade union movement carried out by well-paid “communicators” have failed, and so have the efforts of thousands of police deployed into the streets, not to fight crime, but to persecute workers, and even more so their violation of the rule of law when they arrested 300 people for distributing flyers and held them in arbitrary detention for three days. The obscenities expressed against the workers by the government and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino failed to stop the awakening.

Springtime came to Panama on March 18 when more than 15,000 people gathered for the march called by the teachers’ associations, trade unions and popular organizations. There could have been more, but the police operation redirecting buses stopped hundreds of people and prevented their arrival. But it does not matter. The people also know that only the people can save the people and that without struggle, there are no victories.

The illusion ended and the struggle has begun, as it did before with the governments of Guillermo Endara, Ernesto Pérez Balladares, Mireya Moscoso and Torrijos. We can only add that along with the struggle for the defense of the social, economic and democratic rights of the Panamanian people, we must also include the struggle to build a political party from below, so that one day there is real change. To that end we are building the Popular Alternative Party.