Jon Subinas *

Panama is facing its biggest political crisis since the transition to democracy, with mass protests and gatherings and closures of major roads across the country, generating shortages in stores and gas stations, closing schools and universities, and significant economic losses, the statement said. Chamber of Commerce. Picketing also appeared in front of the mine and against political representatives, including the residence of the President of the Republic himself in the province of Colón.

On Friday, October 20, 2023, the National Assembly approved in the third and final debate the contract with Minera Panamá (a subsidiary belonging to the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals), thus sanctioning Law 406. This approval process was lightning fast, in two days and ignoring different sectors of the population, which caused strong public rejection. The response was swift, with a call for a national protest on Sunday, October 22, organized by groups such as Suntracs (the largest construction workers’ union), Asoprof (the teachers’ union) or Sal de las Redes (the youth organization), among dozens of others organization across the country, with the goal of repealing Act 406 and approving a moratorium on mining.

In Panama, two protesters who took part in a protest against a mining company were killed

The protests decry the environmental impact of the country’s open-pit mining activity and point out that the contract contains arbitrary advantages for the company, such as the ability to expropriate land within and outside the allotted area, tax exemptions, management of ports and airports, and lack of government oversight, among others. In the eyes of a large part of the citizens, these advantages make this mining project understood as a colonial enclave under the control of a foreign power, which has clear echoes. the struggles of the last century for the restoration of the canal. Faced with massive rejection, the Government declared that the mining contract was an opportunity to pay pensions in the context of the financial problems of the Social Security Fund.

A country characterized by political stability and the absence of major conflicts, and which former First Vice President of the Republic Ricardo Arias Calderón himself defined as “a country without conflicts” in 16 months, suffered the two biggest mobilizations of his history. The increase in protests is not unrelated to the long quarantines due to COVID-19, one of the strictest in the region, which affected the GDP decline of 17.9%. According to the IDB report The social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Panama and an analysis of the effectiveness of cash transfer programs, poverty increased in the country by 12.5%, and extreme poverty increased by 6.8% in 2020; The middle class collapsed, shrinking by almost 11%, while the Gini index rose by 3.8 points, leaving it at 54.1. However, apart from the socioeconomic effects, something seems to have broken in the social order during the quarantine: like an earthquake of sorts, the measures taken to counter the pandemic exacerbated other flaws, such as the suspicion of mismanagement of public funds. in II Cieps research on citizenship and rights (2021) corruption has become the main problem of the country. The pandemic had a destabilizing effect on the Panamanian social order, making it difficult for its normal reproduction and making it difficult for certain inertias and functioning to continue.

In July 2022, due to rising prices, protests broke out across the country and large alliances of professionals, teachers, doctors, construction workers, indigenous people and anonymous citizens were built. But in the case of the October 2023 protests, even wealthier sectors joined these alliances, holding protests in neighborhoods with high socioeconomic levels, like Clayton. And not only do these unexpected break-ins occur, but even unions such as doctors and lawyers held rallies against the mining contract, giving the mobilization a transversal nature. At the same time, the role of young people who led many marches and demonstrations is significant. In public opinion studies, Panamanian youth show a high degree of non-engagement towards democracy, institutions and traditional mechanisms of political participation, but on the other hand, they express a high degree of environmental awareness, prioritizing it to a greater extent than the rest of the population. age groups, nature protection above economic growth, taking into account that this awareness is high in all age groups, according to data from III Cieps research on citizenship and rights.

Apart from the greater transversality of the protests, the presence of new actors or the prominent role of young people, the main difference between the mobilizations of July 2022 and those of October 2023 is that in the first case the goal was affirmative-positive, with a demand for measures such as fuel reduction, basic baskets and energy, the requirement to respect mandatory investments in education, improving the availability of medicines, among other measures. In contrast to these, the new protests are characterized by opposition, denial of the mining contract, opposition to extractivism, challenge to the way of management that follows false interests; that is, they contain a large Not. This type of denial hinders the operation of permanent individual and isolated arrangements that were the protagonists of conflict resolution formulas, a transactional logic that has entered into crisis and is not operational, since it is not capable of solving a collective solution and the general demands of the population.

Before the pandemic, Panama had a successful economic model in terms of growth based on the expansion of the canal and the externalities it generated, but after the expansion was completed, after the death the goose that laid the golden eggs, what should be the next model? Strong protests indicate that the population does not want mining, but if extractivism is not a model that will respond to the demand for sustainable economic development, attention is needed to historical social debts and the imperative of transparent governance, without false interests and that generates trust, then one of the most important questions that Panamanian society must answer, especially in the run-up to the 2024 general elections, which would be an alternative. (OR)