Mateo Falcone

26 July 2022: For three weeks now, protests have been gradually spreading throughout Panama. Price increases, along with growing inequality over the past several years, has triggered one of the largest mobilizations the country has seen in several decades. The movement began with a major strike in the education sector, which is now spearheading the mobilization. It was joined soon thereafter by the powerful construction union, social organizations, Indigenous groups, and other working-class and poor sectors, and even by some in the middle class.

This large-scale mobilization opposes the government of President Laurentino Cortizo, which since 2019 has been trying to implement policies favored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Panamanian bourgeoisie. Radical actions have been a hallmark of the movement. Many roads have been blocked, including the Pan-American Highway, a crucial part of Central America’s infrastructure on which huge volumes of goods travel every day. The blockades have also led to significant shortages, particularly in Panama City, the capital.

The government has deployed a host of repressive forces across the country to confront the situation.

A Dollarized Country Hit by the Covid Crisis and Inflation

Panama, a neoliberal country that was invaded by the United States in 1989, has a dollarized economy and has undergone significant growth thanks to revenues from the Panama Canal and the country’s service industry.[1] Its economy, though, slowed beginning in 2020 due to Covid-19. While growth has resumed, it has benefited only the population’s wealthiest people, while the working class, Indigenous people, and Panama’s peasants have become poorer.

Hand in hand with the IMF, the government has carried out major attacks on workers, with huge increases in layoffs and a drastic reduction in living standards. Back in 2015, an official report produced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) revealed that 10 percent of Panama’s wealthiest families in Panama had incomes 37.3 times greater than the poorest 10 percent. It is these deep inequalities, combined with rising prices, that have triggered the current movement.

No to Social Dialogue. Build the Movement’s Power

The political crisis this movement has opened up is forcing the government to negotiate with many organizations, including the National Alliance for the Rights of the Organized People (ANADEPO), the United Popular Alliance for Life, political leaders of the Indigenous regions, and the peasant community. These groups’ main demands are for a reduction and freezing of fuel prices and energy, price rollbacks of food staples by up to 30 percent without adversely affecting producers, lower prices for medicines, an allocation of 6 percent of the country’s GDP to education, creation of an inter-sectoral monitoring committee to resolve the problems of corruption, among others.

Negotiations with the government began on Thursday, July 21, but as of this writing have failed to calm the strikes and mobilizations. The government has agreed to undertake some measures, such as lowering fuel prices and cutting the price of basic foods by 15 percent, a 15-percent reduction on basic food products, but this does not meet the full demands of the current movement.

What is clear is that the government is playing the social dialogue card as a way to calm the situation. Meanwhile, Panama’s workers have proven once again that they have the power to shut down the government and win some victories — just as the movement’s political and trade union leaderships have chosen to lower the intensity of the mobilizations and strikes as the negotiations take place. In contrast to this approach, the path to victory is to turn the mobilizations into a general strike to ensure that workers and the poor do not pay for the current crisis. That is the perspective we must champion!

The uprising in Panama is now added to the growing number of mobilizations we are seeing on five continents. Faced with widespread inflation, the Americas have been a key part of this movement, with recent mobilizations in Ecuador and a major strike at one of Mexico’s largest companies, TELMEX.

Notes

1. The 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States, dubbed “Operation Just Cause,” began in mid-December 1989 and lasted just over a month. Its ostensible purpose was to depose General Manuel Noriega, Panama’s de facto leader (who had been a paid asset of the CIA), who was wanted for racketeering and drug trafficking in the United States. Noriega had become, according to some members of Congress and the American political establishment, a threat to the “neutrality” of the Panama Canal, which had been turned over to Panama from its long U.S. occupation 10 years earlier — but this reason for the invasion was not part of the wide public discourse. U.S. forces dissolved the Panamanian Defense Forces and installed a newly elected president, Guillermo Endara, from a leading Panamanian bourgeois family with close ties to U.S. capitalism. The invasion was condemned as a violation of international law by both the United Nations General Assembly and the Organization of American States.

(Courtesy: Left Voice, a US socialist news site and magazine.)

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In an article in People’s Dispatch, “Panamanian People’s Organizations and Unions Win More Victories”, Tanya Wadhwa adds:

On July 30 and 31, popular movements, social organizations and trade unions, which have been mobilizing across Panama since July 1, protesting the high cost of living and lack of support from the right-wing government, won two more victories.

The representatives of the People United for Life Alliance, the National Alliance for the Rights of the Organized People (ANADEPO), and the Indigenous Peoples Alliance, the main organizers of the ongoing national strike and nationwide demonstrations, signed agreements with the Laurentino Cortizo government to increase the public education budget to 6% of the GDP as demanded by teachers’ unions, and to establish price caps for around 150 medicines.

The government agreed to gradually expand the education budget in the next two years. It will allocate 5.5% of the GDP in 2023 and 6% of the GDP to education in 2024.

In addition to increasing the budget, the government also promised to definitively close the 1,200 “ranch” schools which are underfunded rural schools that consist of improvised open-air structures and to improve the conditions of existing schools in rural areas. The government committed to finishing over 100 school infrastructure projects and to repair existing schools. It pledged to add science, computer and other laboratories to all schools, open school canteens and boarding schools, provide dignified restrooms, ensure availability of drinking water and electricity in all educational centers, among others promises. It also vowed to guarantee bilingual and intercultural education.

The Education Ministry swore to end the bureaucratic barriers to accessing money from the Fund for Equity and Quality of Education (FECE), and to introduce a new mechanism that facilitates distribution by using an online public contracting platform.

In total, the teachers’ associations won 22 agreements. The representatives of the unions and the government agreed to establish a subsequent process to monitor compliance with the agreements.

Teachers’ unions presented the signed agreements with grassroots movements on August 1, and collectively decided to end the strike in the sector that began on July 6. According to Luis Sánchez, general secretary of the Association of Educators of Veraguas, the teachers will return to the classes on August 2 with a restructured and extended school year, to be concluded by the end of the year. Teachers also drafted a methodology to recover lost classes, which they will now present to the Education Ministry for its approval. The unions and the ministry had already agreed that there would not be a school break for the rest of the year.

With regard to the agreement to resolve the issue of high prices and shortages of medicines, the government committed to guaranteeing access to quality medicines at affordable prices without excessive bureaucracy in a time not exceeding 90 days from the signing of the agreement. It also promised to create mechanisms for direct purchases from international agents such as the United Nations and the Council of Health Ministers of Central America (COMISCA) to further address the issue. It also established price caps for around 150 medicinal drugs.

The government vowed to modify the regulations on transparency so that the information on the supply of medicines is available to the public, and to sanction anyone who falsifies or hides information regarding the supply of medicines or fails to comply with the purchasing processes to benefit one or another company or to the detriment of the institutions. The government also agreed to encourage companies to manufacture medicines within the country.

On the other hand, there remain several disagreements between the government and the social movements. Saúl Méndez, general secretary of the Single Union of Construction Workers (SUNTRACS) and one of the representatives of the People United for Life Alliance, lamented that the government didn’t agree to create a special entity to regulate the profit margin in the chain of purchase and distribution of private pharmacy drugs. “The president favors five large oligopolies that dominate the sector and enrich themselves at the expense of Panamanians and their taxes,” said Méndez.

Last week, the organizations signed two agreements with the conservative government: one to reduce and freeze the price of fuel at USD 3.25 per gallon, and the other to reduce the cost of 72 essential commodities by 30%.

The allocation of a greater budget for the education sector, the freezing of the price of medicines and resolving the lack of medicine supply, the reduction and freezing of the price of fuel and the reduction and freezing of the price of basic commodities are four of the eight essential demands of the people’s organizations. Other demands include reducing and freezing the price of electricity, measures to combat corruption, evaluation of the crisis of the social security fund, and the establishment of an official instance to monitor the compliance of the agreements with all sectors.

The next session of the negotiations will resume on Wednesday, August 3. The movement is expected to present proposals on the reduction and freezing of the electricity tariff, as well as anti-corruption measures.

Meanwhile, hundreds of citizens continue to remain in the streets in defense of the right to a dignified life. They have declared that they will continue to mobilize until all demands are achieved. At the same time, the right-wing oligarchy and business class, which are against the negotiation process, have been running a defamation campaign against the mobilizing sectors in mainstream and social media. The people’s organizations have been actively responding to their false claims.

(Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch, an international media organization with the mission of highlighting voices from people’s movements and organizations across the globe.)