Panama is experiencing its most serious unrest in more than 3 decades, as protesters protesting high food and fuel costs block the country’s main highway and ridicule lawmakers for the expensive whiskey.
The turbulence in this Central American state, long protected from the economic whims of its neighbors due to its peg to the dollar, illustrates how the wave of war-fueled inflation in Ukraine is disrupting even the solid countries of the past.
“Our government is very corrupt and blatantly mocks the people,” said Maria Calvo, an instructor of the protests in Plaza Cinco de Mayo, one of the capital’s main squares. “Increase food, gasoline and everything. “
While Panama’s use of the dollar has protected it from some of the inflation seen in countries that have also experienced currency depreciation, increases in value have left many, in what is one of the most unequal countries in the region, suffering to cope.
The average cost of the basic food basket, adding pieces like reasonable meat and vegetables, rose to $280. 71 in May, an annual backlog of $13. 93. Gas costs rose from $3. 73 per gallon in January to $5. 75 in July.
The protests, which intensified last week, began in late June. They were boosted in part by a video posted on social media in early July that showed ruling party lawmakers celebrating the start of the legislature with $340 bottles of Macallan whiskey.
Much of the protesters’ anger is directed at the National Assembly, which employs a large number of so-called “bottles”: special advisers and other staff members who earn salaries but whose role is unclear. Often, protesters, who come with left-wing structure members and school unions, students, gym workers and indigenous teams, chant “pour a drink and hope other people don’t notice,” a reference to the lawmakers’ beloved taste.
Maria Mendoza, manager of the La Granjita market in northeastern Panama City, said her finishing materials and new vegetables from Cerro Punta, in the western region of Chiriqui, which is cut off from the capital through barricades, were running out. I don’t get much,” he said Monday.
Enrique de Obarrio, a lawyer, businessman and activist, said the crisis is “the worst since the last days of the dictatorship” of Manuel Noriega in 1989 and that daily losses amount to “millions. “
President Laurentino Cortizo, who took office in 2019, traveled Friday to Chiriqui to meet with the indigenous people, who represent 12% of the population and have blocked a section of the Inter-American Highway, the only road that crosses the country.
Cortizo said after the discussions: “I met with the leaders to pay attention to them and locate spaces for discussion that allow social peace and the full participation of all sectors of the country. “
The government agreed over the weekend to a proposal to lower the value of gasoline to $3. 25 a gallon with the coordinating organization National Alliance for the Rights of Organized Persons (Anadepo), but Anadepo said Monday that he had signed under pressure and that the protests would continue.
Toribio Garcia, a leader of the semi-autonomous region of the Ngäbe-Buglé region, directly east of Chiriqui, told Radio Panama on Monday that reducing fuel prices to more than $3 “is non-negotiable. “
The talks are the president’s latest effort to ease the unrest.
It first responded to the July 11 protests with subsidies to freeze fuel costs at $3. 95 a gallon and maintain the cost of staple foods, adding canned tuna, rice and white bread. as well as proposals to reduce the state payroll by up to 10%, aimed at cleaning up the corrupt symbol of the State.
The 69-year-old president also suffers from fitness problems, having been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of cancer, last month. The president said on July 10 that his diagnosis was smart and that he would serve his full term, which is due to expire in 2024. If he resigns, Vice President Jose Gabriel Carrizo, who led the government’s negotiations over the weekend, would be the next to take office. The Catholic Archbishop of Panama José Domingo Ulloa acted as mediator.
The turmoil has led to frustration in the Panama community.
Antonio Paniza, who runs 4×4 Volcán Barú, a mountain tourism company in the city of Boquete, said tourists who booked their facilities canceled after being trapped in the barricades. “We agree that we have to fight for our country, so that we have equality, however, this has already gotten out of control,” Paniza said.
Panama has not yet felt the full economic blow. GDP grew 13. 6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Comptroller General’s Office, thanks in part to an accumulation of profits from the Panama Canal. The channel has so far not been affected by the protests.
However, the Panamanian chapter of Transparency International warned last month of an “alarming” buildup of Panama’s debt, which it said had risen to more than $40 billion through the end of 2021, up from $37 billion in 2020, a 19. 1% increase in 2019. .
Some say that without more basic political reform, the protests will continue, arguing that many aspects of the Noriega regime, in addition to the constitutional charter and electoral system, remain in place.
Carlos Guevara Mann, a political scientist at Florida State University in Panama, said the crisis was a “direct result” of the “political formula that put the dictatorship in a position” and that any solution required an assembly elected with transparency “in which clientelism and corruption have no intervention. “
“Although this initiative comes from political leaders, a popular motion can bring it,” he added.
Find out about Panama when a new story is published