Almost generic anymore — from a video of a protest against broken promises to the Ngabe that was posted on Twitter. It’s far from just an indigenous thing. It’s not even just a poor people’s thing. As the epidemic appears to diminish, we are left with a lot of people who were ruined, took losses that they could not afford or otherwise saw their standard of living decline, and a very few who took advantage — some of them dumb enough to wave it in everybody’s face. There is generalized annoyance. Electronic changes to the graphic by Eric Jackson.
A growing restlessness
by Miguel Antonio Bernal
The constitutional crisis that we have experienced since October 11, 1968 – more than half a century ago – is today aggravated by the declining socio-economic situation that our population is experiencing. The growing restlessness that is felt will not take long to explode.
Let us remember, today more than yesterday, the teachings of Ferdinand La Salle, when he affirmed that “the problems of constitutional law are not problems of the legal order, they are problems of power.”
I’m obliged to reiterate that: “Due process, respect for fundamental guarantees and Human Rights have been excluded from national life. The political country lives a permanent carnival from farce to farce, while building the stage for the tragedy that serves as a pretext to remain in power, monopolizing everything, destroying any vestige of institutionality and reinforcing the straitjacket that allows them to maintain control: absolute power “
The controllers of political power have not wanted, nor do they want, to understand the urgency of laying the foundations – as soon as possible — to build a democratic constitutional rule of law. Also that this is only achieved when it’s understood and lived as a power constituted and exercised the people.
The permanent refusal of this batch of kleptocrats to democratize power, and their stubborn sectarianism that in the end favors a plutocratic oligarchy, leads them ever more to bind themselves to different criminal organizations. The hundreds of homicides reported under this government show us the high degree of gangland penetration – in the highest spheres of power – of the owners and partners of the joint criminal enterprise that governs.
Under this government, we have begun a future identical to the immediate past. Without governance, without credibility, without trust – nothing they do will bring positive results for most citizens.
The electoral siren songs that come out of the caves of the political parties have already begun to poison the new climbers. Without reference to citizens’ freedoms, they only seek the privileges that come from control of the public treasury. A Constituent Assembly is the way to change that, no matter how much they seek to avoid that fate.
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