Odebrecht’s perfume

by Miguel Antonio Bernal

The stench that the rot of corruption produces in Panamanian public institutions reaches levels never sniffed in our country in recent decades.

Thanks to impunity and the ineptitude of top officials, our country sails upon dangerous waters. It allows us to presage a sinking under the waves of violence to be generated. This is the product of policies that break down the functions of the Public Ministry and cover up the actions of the mega-criminal enterprise Odebrecht, the offspring of the Attorney General’s office and its leadership.

Patrick Suskind, in his novel “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” brilliantly tells us pf the life of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who lived in France in the eighteenth century and was “one of the most genial and abominable men of an era in which the abominable and genial men were not scarce.”

The German writer tells us that at the time of his story “there was a stench in the cities hardly conceivable for modern man. The streets stank of manure, the interior courtyards stank of urine, the stairwells of rotting wood and rat droppings. kitchens with rotten cabbage and mutton fat. The unventilated rooms stank of moldy dust, the bedrooms, greasy sheets, damp duvets, and the sweet, sweet smell of the urinals … Men and women stank of sweat and dirty clothes, in their mouths infected teeth stank, breaths smelled like onions and bodies, when they were no longer young, with stale cheese, sour milk and rumors of evil … “

Jean Baptiste Grenouille produced a rare perfume that subjugated the will of the one who smelled it. Thanks to his marvel he obtained the favor of high society and control over the powerful. In our times Odebrecht has emulated Suskind’s character, has managed, with its bribes, to seduce our authorities and turn them into concealers of the stench of their crimes against our country.

~ ~ ~

These announcements are interactive. Click on them for more information.