My, my, what wimpishness it all comes down to – Team Martinelli, nailed on Odebrecht bribes, now pleads through newspapers it bought with stolen government funds and on Twitter that the PRD government that came before Don Ricky also took from the Brazilians. This is probably true, but it’s no excuse.
Time to confiscate stolen media
The plan is to stall until the courts find a way to declare everything barred by the statutes of limitation, claim that this proves innocence, buy a way back into power and then prosecute everyone who publishes the truth for telling lies about Ricardo Martinelli.
A smash-and-grab culture that has a death grip on the PRD, disarray in all of the other political circles – at least at the moment – could make it happen the year after next.
The most obnoxious alternatives to that are being put forward:
*Fewer elected legislators, making it far more expensive to run for public office, giving the rich and those funded by the rich the only chance.
* Xenophobia and religious bigotry, blaming everything on the foreigners or the queers instead of dealing with the politically systemic and culturally embedded corruption that we have here.
* Now that the government has been looted to the brink of bankruptcy, privatizing everything.
Panama needs a revolution, starting not from Marxist texts or violent Hollywood fiction, but from deep introspection among millions of individuals, and a firm decision that we as human beings and as a nation don’t want to live this way anymore.
Arguments about whether we should take this path or that one? Those are freedoms essential to an informed democracy. Scurrilous arguments via a media empire created from stolen public funds? That’s licentious criminal behavior, and it’s being used to mobilize public wrath against proper legal proceedings to right the wrongs by which Martinelli acquired the EPASA newspapers.
As a basic matter of national defense, El Panama America, La Critica and Dia a Dia – the whole EPASA business that was purchased with stolen money laundered through the New Business “factoring company” – needs to be nationalized and should be reorganized and continued as public property.
What to do, other than hand it to a new crowd of predators from the political caste, is a difficult problem to consider. Such knotty problems should not be allowed to excuse the continuing act of corruption that Martinelli’s media empire is.
After Trump won the GOP primaries, his party is in deep trouble and splintering.
GOP meltdown happening before our eyes – but not to be taken for granted
The MAGA world is crumbling, but it won’t go down without a fight, a shout, a whimper and a slew of attack ads. There are a couple of months of furious campaigning on both sides, but American citizens who live in Panama should be getting our absentee ballots ordered. The conspiracy theorists would leave it up to Q to decide, but it’s the voters who must decide. Register and vote.
Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
Bill Watterson
Bear in mind…
I come to ask you to help to win this fight. If we win it, this hardest of all fights, then, to be sure, in the future it is going to be made easier for women all over the world to win their fight when their time comes.
Emmeline Pankhurst
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to see realized. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Nelson Mandela
People say to me all the time, “You have no fear.” I tell them, “No, that’s not true. I’m scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I’m a courageous person because I’m a scared person.”
Ronda Rousey
Contact us by email at fund4thepanamanews@gmail.com
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
These links are interactive — click on the boxes
