Panama: Government Launches Offensive Against Labor and Social Rights

teleSUR English

The government of José Raúl Mulino in Panama is moving forward with an offensive against fundamental rights: attacking unions, cutting pensions to benefit the elites, promoting regressive labor reform, militarizing the territory, and imposing extractive projects. These measures are not isolated events, but rather links in a right-wing strategy to consolidate an authoritarian regime aligned with US interests in the region.   #Panama #LaborRights #FairPensions #NoToMilitarization #teleSUREnglish

Transcript

00:00In Panama, the Mulino administration has launched an offensive against labor and social rights

00:05attacking unions and coding pensions to favor the economic elites.

00:09Our colleague Rekha Chandiramani with the details.

00:15The right-wing government's onslaught against unions, the deterioration of pensions,

00:19the virtual reform of the labor code, the militarization of the country,

00:24and the imposition of extractivist projects are not isolated.

00:28There are links in a right-wing chain that seeks to solidify a pro-United States right-wing act in the region.

00:36It is clear that there is a wave of extreme right that is advancing beyond the neoconservatism of the 90s,

00:46where what proposed was only a change in the economic paradigm.

00:52Here there is also a cultural, political and social battle

00:55that is trying to reverse the progress and social policies.

00:58Mulino's government possesses an advance in the region

01:01because there are those who emulate him in the political discourse

01:04Trump, Milley, Chavez in Costa Rica,

01:07who has the same political position as Novoa in Ecuador.

01:10Costa Rica, who has the same political position, Novoa in Ecuador.

01:14As in Pinochet's Chile, today the script is repeated, privatize everything, dismantle rights, and silence resistance.

01:24The Social Security Fund was created in 1941.

01:32In 1979, Panama enters the new liberal economic policy.

01:39From then on, the philosophy is to dismantle labor rights, pensions, housing, health, education, recreation, and the environment.

01:51Dismantle rights.

01:53Desmantle rights.

01:54Panama is today the testing ground where the United States and its allies are testing the militarization of Latin America

02:04with a discourse of cooperation that hides a new colonial distribution armies protecting mining companies,

02:09criminalization of protests, and a government that legitimizes plundering.

02:12Even so, with the resistance of the Panamanian people, who as a collective political subject have awakened in recent years.

02:23This small country that faces a violent onslaught by the U.S. empire

02:29and that seeks above all to make Panama the central axis of U.S. international neo-fascism here in Panama.

02:35We are standing up for the country.

02:38We are in a movement of fatherland or death, and we will win.

02:42I believe in the youth, even though they are stigmatized.

02:50It is they, above all they,

02:52who have given the most wonderful and hopeful example that Panama can be different,

02:59and that we can have a society that we truly deserve,

03:03and not continue to be a brothel of the United States.

03:06Panamanian youth not only set the tone in recent years, but also changed the rules of the game.

03:17In the last elections, they won seats in the assembly,

03:19and in the streets, they stopped the copper mega mining project.

03:22Today, they are the living proof that another Panama is possible.

03:25Another Panama is possible.

03:27For Telesur, from Ciudad of Panama, Reca Chandiramani.

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