In the month of July, amid a tense calm in the region, in Panama, one of the least expected places for its political stability, a powerful protest erupted over the increase in fuel, food and medicine prices. The mobilizations paralyzed traffic in several parts of the country for several days, preventing the transport of goods, which led to a shortage of various products.
Massive and heterogeneous support for the protests
Despite the economic impact, three out of four people support the mobilizations, according to an online survey carried out by the International Center for Political and Social Studies, AIP of Panama (Cieps). This support contrasts with data from the latest Latinobarometer report, which states that nine out of ten people would never participate in an unauthorized protest. This contradiction defines the protest as an unexpected and unusual event in the country.
The protests have been carried out by a plurality of actors such as unions and social movements that include doctors, teachers, construction workers, students and indigenous groups. Although the claims are led by the National Alliance for the Rights of Peoples (Anadepo), an organization representing 20 groups of teachers, field workers, fishermen, transport workers and students, other groups such as the National Coordination of Indigenous Peoples (COONAPIP) and the Single Union of Civil Construction Workers (Suntracs) also participate.
These actors constitute a heterogeneous network that brings together different demands, similar to the “crowd” described by Antonio Negri and Michael Hard. Faced with this crowd, the government decided to open several dialogue tables to meet the different demands in different locations. However, the strategy failed and the government had to abandon it.
After three weeks of protests, with the mediation of the church, the parties were able to sit at a single table of dialogue, not without its ups and downs, conflicts and controversies, but trying to restore political normality.
The causes of the protests
The cyclical trigger of the protests was the increase in gasoline, food and medicine prices, but according to data from the Cieps survey, Corruption is the main problem that triggered the protests. More than six in ten people believe this, while the rest think the main reason is the cost of living. In fact, since mid-2020, different surveys have been carried out by Cieps and in all cases corruption figured as the main problem in Panamanian society.
Corruption is currently the great dilemma of Panamanian politics. It can be defined as a process that unifies a plurality of unsatisfied demands, the product of patronage, mismanagement of public funds, scarcity, inequity, inefficiency, “he plays alive“, etc. This diversity of factors comes together under the umbrella of corruption.
The data point to rising prices as “the tip of the iceberg”, but insufficient attention to citizen demands, as well as the clientelistic management of public funds, constitute the basic problems. But there is another big “liability” that has received less attention: the lack of politics.
Since 2017, the World Bank has included Panama in the list of high income countries, surpassing the gross national income per capita of $12,055, a figure that brings it closer to Eastern European countries. Between 2004 and 2018 Panama had an average growth of 7.0% compared to 3.3% in Latin America, this impressive growth has made possible a qualitative and quantitative advance in the country, but it also leaves some “shadows”, such as the inability to reverse the high degree of economic inequality, according to ECLAC dataand the persistence of unequal treatment of different human groups, which translates into 82.4% of people considering that there is discrimination in Panama.
The Panamanian development model has postponed these issues following “economic growth at the expense of politics”, as experts Harry Brown and Clara Inés Luna claim. A model with a successful macroeconomic performance, but which currently finds itself in a very complicated economic environment after the biggest fall in its history to contain the pandemic in 2020, having to face a historic social debt.
The moment of politics arrived abruptly before elites and power groups accustomed to pacts and consensus in a politics that has been characterized as “transitional”. The current model no longer has the capacity to address dissent and antagonism. The irruption of politics and the imperative to transform it into an art of making the necessary possible is one of the great tests that Panamanian society will have. And this will not be resolved with new and creative technical solutions, but with political solutions that address the profound asymmetries suffered by Panamanian citizens.
