Accelerate expansion of antiretroviral therapy to all people living with HIV: WHO
The key to ending the AIDS epidemic
by the World Health Organization
On World AIDS Day the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that expanding antiretroviral therapy to all people living with HIV is key to ending the AIDS epidemic within a generation.
“The Millennium Development Goal of reversing the HIV epidemic was reached ahead of the 2015 deadline — an incredible achievement that testifies to the power of national action and international solidarity,” declared WHO Director General Margaret Chan.
Expansion of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has resulted in a stark reduction of AIDS-related deaths. At the same time, increasingly effective prevention efforts have reduced numbers of new HIV infections. Since the epidemic’s peak in 2004, the number of deaths has fallen by 42 percent with some 7.8 million lives being saved over the last 15 years, according to a new WHO report. The number of new infections has fallen by 35 percent since the turn of the century.
Over the last 15 years, scale-up of ART has been most dramatic in the Africa Region where now more than 11 million people are receiving HIV treatment, up from 11,000 at the turn of the century. People living with HIV in Africa are now more likely to receive treatment than people living in most other parts of the world. Globally, in June 2015 close to 16 million people out of a total of 37 million people living with HIV were taking ART.
Doubling access to testing and antiretroviral therapy
At the UN General Assembly in September, world leaders endorsed a new set of Sustainable Development Goals and milestones, including a call for ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Reducing the number of new infections by 75 percent and doubling the number of people on ART by 2020 are the first milestones towards achieving this goal.
Trial results published earlier this year have confirmed that people living with HIV who begin antiretroviral therapy soon after acquiring the virus — before the virus has weakened their immune systems — are more likely to stay healthy and less likely to transmit the virus to their partners. Those findings led WHO in September to recommend that everyone living with HIV be offered treatment.
In the effort to help countries implement the “treat all” recommendation, WHO is now presenting an additional set of recommendations on how to expand ART to all in a rapid, focused, and efficient manner.
These recommendations include using innovative testing approaches such as community or self-testing to help increase the number of people who know their HIV status; starting treatment faster in those people who are diagnosed with HIV; bringing ART to the community; and allowing for greater intervals between clinic visits for people who have been stable on ART for some time. They also highlight the importance of improving access to viral load testing and new classes of antiretroviral drugs.
“WHO applauds governments, civil society, and organizations that have made availability of life-saving antiretroviral therapy possible in the most trying circumstances. The new recommendation to expand ART to all people living with HIV is a call to further step up the pace,” said Dr. Winnie Mpanju-Shumbusho, Assistant Director General at WHO.
Preventing new infections
Reducing the number of new HIV infections remains a major focus for the vision of ending AIDS. There is increasing concern about a slow down –or even reversal — in the decrease of new infections in some countries and among some of the most affected population groups. “We must deploy all means to strengthen the HIV prevention response. The health sector can and must play a central role,” added Dr. Mpanju-Shumbusho
Already, over the last five years in Africa some 10 million men have undergone voluntary medical circumcision, a procedure that reduces their risk of acquiring HIV by 60 percent. New approaches to prevention are also emerging, including the use of antiretroviral drugs to help people at substantial risk from acquiring HIV. WHO now recommends this practice, called “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” or PrEP, as an additional option to augment comprehensive prevention for people at heightened risk of HIV infection. Other elements of this package include behavior-change communication, the consistent use of male and female condoms and prevention programs for key populations, including harm reduction for people who use drugs.
The same drugs that keep people living with HIV from becoming sick also prevent transmission of the virus from pregnant women to their infants. Among the 22 countries that account for 90 percent of new HIV infections, eightt have reduced new infections among children by more than 50 percent since 2009, based on 2013 data, and another four are close to that mark.
Ingredients of success
Some low- and middle-income countries have made remarkable progress towards universal access to HIV services: 12 countries have ensured that 60 percent or more of all people living with HIV are aware of their infection and receiving antiretroviral therapy. Key ingredients of the successful HIV response in these countries are national ownership, greater focus of HIV services to reach the most affected locations and populations based on good data, and simplification of prevention and treatment services.
“The sense of urgency that was the norm during the disease’s most-destructive years must not be allowed to abate,” Dr. Mpanju-Shumbusho said. “HIV remains a major health challenge — drawing sharp attention to health system weaknesses and gaps in universal health coverage. Addressing these issues will be critical to meeting the new global targets for AIDS.”
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Adolfo “Chichi” De Obarrio, right, with the Martinellis. The modus operandi for most of the former president’s peculations was to make no-bid direct contracts with favored companies at inflated prices, with De Obarro — Ricardo Martinelli’s personal secretary — collecting 10 to 15 percent in kickbacks and distributing those illicit proceeds among the corrupt public officials and Martinelli business circle individuals involved in the transactions and the Cambio Democratico campaign fund. De Obarrio and both Martinellis have fled Panama. Photo by the Presidencia, way back when.
Some 235 pending cases, hundreds of millions in seized assets and dozens in jail, under house arrest or on the run
by Eric Jackson
Panama, like many other Civil Code legal system jurisdictions, allows lawyers to come into court and file motions on behalf of fugitives. And so it was that at a November 23 hearing on a kickback and theft case related to dried foods for school lunch programs, an attorney for the former president’s fugitive personal secretary and bag man Chichi De Obarrio moved to change the warrant to throw he guy in jail if he gets caught to house arrest. The judge summarily denied that motion but will take a month to decide whether to bind De Obarrio over for trial along with eight other people in that case. Defendants in that matter include former comptroller general Gioconda Torres de Bianchini, former education minister Lucy Molinar and public works minister Federico Suaréz, plus a cast of lesser characters, most of them former public officials. If Chichi gets locked up over the school lunch program, he will be shuttling between the jail and various courtrooms on several other cases as well.
Meanwhile the former comptroller general, along with former agriculture ministers Emilio Kieswetter and Oscar Osorio, head a cast of 11 characters named by the tax prosecutor as having stolen at least $22.6 in a Tonosi irrigation scheme that was never built and which it appears was never intended to be built. The diversion of money from that scheme, criminal prosecutors allege, involved the Banco Universal and its former leading light Felipe “Pipo” Virzi, fugitive businessmen Gabriel Btesh and Ricky Calvo, plus the Financial Pacific brokerage house. Virzi is under house arrest here, the whereabouts of Calvo, like De Obarrio, are a mystery, while by a number of reports that have not been officially confirmed Btesh is in Israel. The Financial Pacific case against Martinelli is just getting underway in the Supreme Court and with the time limit on investigations now removed it may branch off into the Tonosi matter. Co-defendants who are not legislators can’t be brought into the high court case against Martinelli, but information from that investigation may be shared with ordinary prosecutors for criminal cases arising from the same schemes and with tax prosecutors.
Overlapping both the Tonosi and Financial Pacific cases are the tax and criminal investigations into the Cobranzas del Istmo privatized tax collection scheme. In the Financial Pacific matter the insider trading investigation against Martinelli appears to be farther along than various other probes against many other players in that money laundering mill for criminals of several nations. Allegations about attempts to cover up crimes at Financial Pacific touch the Supreme Court’s presiding magistrate, José Ayú Prado and could end up in a murder case as Securities Market Superintendency senior analyst Vernon Ramos, who was handling an administrative investigation, disappeared three years ago. In the Cobranzas del Istmo case three separate criminal matters were consolidated into one case on November 21, but the Martinelli part of that probe will be separate, new suspects may be added to the ordinary criminal case and the tax prosecutor’s shoe has yet to drop.
In early October Attorney General Kenia Porcell said that her office had 234 corruption investigations underway, with 31 people being held in preventive detention and some $140 million in assets seized or frozen. But this did not count those processed by the Supreme Court, the legislature or the tax prosecutors. Since then a few of those who were in jail have been granted bail and a few more people have been jailed, there have been more asset seizures or freezes by various agencies and tax cases have been brought.
A lot of rogues’ gallery charts that have appeared in various media are not so helpful, as the presumptions about control and causation are not defined as in, say, a governmental organization chart. The more realistic way to make any such chart would be of concentric circles with overlapping segments but Ricardo Martinelli at the center. There is a reasonably good chance that a December 11 hearing will lead to a request for INTERPOL help in Martinelli’s arrest and extradition to Panama.
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Problem? What problem? This is the November canal expansion update that Canal Affairs Minister Roberto Roy, Panama Canal administrator Jorge Luis Quijano and the scandal-plagued ACP board of directors insist on showing instead of giving the public and press access to the documents about the catastrophic concrete failures in the new locks. Video by the Panama Canal Authority.
Can Quijano and Roy keep their jobs in the face of
disaster via corny information control games?
by Eric Jackson
Seven unions that represent Panama Canal workers have demanded that the Panama Canal Authority allow them to have an independent auditor review the books and documents of the Panama Canal Authority with respect to the canal expansion project. The authority, which has not shown the GUPC consortium’s report that it said was due in September after grave flaws appeared in a Cocoli Locks sill in August, has also concealed such documents as the Panama Technological University (UTP) investigators’ findings about the problem. In a press statement berating its employees for wanting to see the public records, the ACP defined itself as transparent and “subject to rigorous control” because the ACP submitted 36 reports to the National Assembly over the years of the expansion project, because the authority maintains a website and because bond rating agencies based in New York have given its commercial paper high ratings.
Facts observable by people outside of the authority’s control, however, have the ACP on the defensive. First, Minister of Canal Affairs Roberto Roy and canal administrator Jorge Luis Quijano are attempting to shield themselves from any blame by having nothing to say about the crisis. Second, Roy’s and Quijano’s underlings are generally allowing the GUPC construction consortium, which is demanding nearly double the contracted price for designing and building the new locks, to define what the problem is and how they will fix it. Meanwhile, civil engineers and people with experience in large-scale construction are saying that GUPC’s statements about the nature of the problem are grossly inadequate starting from their failure to admit defective concrete pours, and that the drilling of holes into the concrete structures and the insertion of rebar and cement into the holes is a substandard repair that’s unlikely to meet the specification of locks that last for 100 years.
The locks sill with the waterfall? The rebar already in that structure has been soaked and will rust. When it rusts the metal will expand, crumbling the concrete around it. The proper solution is not rocket science. It’s just expensive and time-consuming. The defective concrete work must be torn out and redone.
There is a problem with redoing the bad concrete work. It may bankrupt Constructora Urbana SA (CUSA), a Panamanian junior partner in the GUPC consortium. It would probably be the last straw that destroys Spain’s heavily government-subsidized Sacyr Vallehermoso, which could take down the decrepit Spanish economy with it. (Is the desperate information delay here also a bid to save the conservative Spanish government, which faces the voters in December 20 national elections? Perhaps.) Redoing the concrete would also be a major blow to Italy’s Salini Impregilo, which is in much better financial shape than Sacyr.
CUSA being put out of business would defeat the scheme that gave rise to the present problem. That company is owned by the family of former canal administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta, who had been CEO of it before coming to work for the canal. The GUPC bid was a grossly unrealistic lowball and many people said so at the time. But there was no conflict of interest, the ACP declared, because Alemán Zubieta said that a few months before the bidding he had sold his shares in the CUSA family business.
November 25 through 30 was an auspicious time for ACP public relations manipulations. November 28 is the anniversary of Panama’s independence from Spain, making November 30 a legal holiday and November 27 a widespread unofficial day off as people went “Black Friday2 shopping or left for the Interior to make a four-day weekend. In the United States November 26 was Thanksgiving, a lot of people were traveling on the 25th to get to family gatherings, most people didn’t have to work on the 27th and the 28th and 29th were a weekend. This was precisely the time when the ACP announced to Reuters that its April canal expansion completion date might not be met, and when GUPC, apparently allowed to speak on behalf of the ACP, announced to Cuba’s Prensa Latina news agency that the repairs were being done according to the GUPC’s less expensive scheme and should be done in January. Not only was information released when it was known that fewer interested people would be paying attention, but using a Cuban news agency is a good way of getting a story picked up by the world’s corporate news organizations.
There does, however, seem to be some bad news lurking out there for the ACP to minimize. A source had previously told La Estrella that there is another crack in another sill in the Cocoli Locks. Now The Panama News is told by a source whose version can’t readily be verified that there are concrete problems with the Atlantic Side locks as well. A lot of games might be played. In Panama false stories that would tend to make a party look bad sometimes get spread by such parties themselves in order to block or discredit critical journalism. Sources are sometimes wrong. Were the ACP to act like the public entity that it is instead of pretending to be a family business with secret records, these things could be readily checked.
Most likely the canal expansion story is going to get worse before it gets better. What we saw over the holidays was probably the ACP using crude techniques to manage news that will look bad. Most likely there will be a prolonged effort to conceal the most damning documents about the ACP – GUPC relationship. (After all, the 2009 contract itself has never been fully released to the public.) But we shall see. The size of problems already known to the public would make it hard to continue the sort of information management we have seen, if that is the plan.
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As politicians discuss climate policy in Paris, citizens
in Panama and many other places demand action
photos by Citizens Climate Lobby – Panama
November 29 was a day of global protest about the inability of politicians to reach effective international agreements about ways to slow and eventually stop humanity’s contribution to climate change. In a Paris that’s nervous after terrorists attacks there were restrictions on public gatherings, while in Washington a group of senators beholden to the US oil and coal industries moved to block any agreement that might be reached at the COP-21 summit. The global debate is also complicated by widespread corruption and land grabbing arising from such “green economy” schemes as carbon bond trading. But the ways to reduce the world’s climate footprint are well enough known and shown to be practical and affordable, with the only real question that remains being how to resolve or resist the claims of various economic interest groups that see their power threatened. None of this stopped the demonstrations in more than 2,400 places around the world.
Here in Panama a relatively new group, a local chapter of the international Citizens Climate Lobby, weighed in on the issue in a capital city largely depopulated during a long holiday weekend. The lobby’s attention was to things local as well as planetary, such as concerns about the destruction of Panama City’s forested areas in an urban sprawl that makes the city even more automobile-dependent.
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“Rumbo a San Carlos” — 11” X 14” — painted from a shot I took at Santa Clara.
George Scribner’s notes and new paintings
I wrote an article about the Panama Canal Expansion paintings I’ve been doing for the December issue of International Artist Magazine. The article begins on page 46 and covers my painting process over the last eight years, including painting on site and completing the finished pieces in Los Angeles. Hope you enjoy. https://www.internationalartist.com/issues/ezine/num/106
“Rubén Blades” — 9″ x 12” — SOLD — I grew up with Rubén in Panama and over the years have kept in touch. When I was directing the animated feature Oliver and Company, he graciously let us use one of his songs in the film. This painting is a small thanks.
Workshops
Ventura, CA I’ll be doing a one day Painting the Figure in the Landscape workshop at the Buenaventura Art association in Ventura, Sunday April 24. Contact me for more information, thanks.
Montrose, CA I’ll also be doing Intermediate to Advanced painting workshop at BMAI in Montrose in January 2016. Just contact me if you have any interest. The class is limited to five.
Panama City, Panama I’m planning on a workshop in Panama City in late January. Dates to be determined.
“Mr. and Mrs. Bjorg” — 16” X 20” — painted on commission.“Southbound at Miraflores Locks” — 9” X 12”
Calendars
We still have 2016 calendars (and prints) available for sale. The calendar is a collection of some of the paintings I’ve done this year. They are $25 and are available at georgescribnerart.com. All proceeds go to the send my grandchildren to college fund!
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Alepo, en Siria no lejos de la frontera con Turquía. Foto por VOA.
Telenovela turca
por Kevin Harrington-Shelton
La historia no es sino un poema cíclico, inscrito en la memoria de los hombres
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Con una vía acuática de interés global, ha de preocuparnos mucho el trasfondo del caos actual en Turquía –donde también controlan parecidos embudos logísticos. El derecho internacional es la única defensa –para micro-estados como Panamá– contra el “Gran Juego” que viene depredando el Medio Oriente desde 1850.
Comenzando por la autodeterminación que tanto predica Occidente. Allá demasiados países no son sino kaleidoscópios étnicos. Y Panamá es parecido a Siria, quien invitó a Rusia a apuntalar al gobierno Assad mediante los bombardeos que nos aproximaron al abismo nuclear. Porque el Tratado Torrijos Carter es –mediante la Cláusula DeConcini que “sólo ún panameño ratificó”– una invitación abierta para intervenir aquí en Panamá (Para eso son los ejercicios militares combinados que los usuarios latinoamericanos de “nuestro” Canal hacen anualmente.)
En Siria el daño a no-combatientes viola toda convención de guerra. Como también lo hace la venganza que programa la OTAN porque –esta vez– las víctimas fueron civiles europeos.
La noción de control de daños bélicos halló su mentís aquí en Panamá. “Revuelvo la mirada y a veces siento espanto”, cuando recuerdo como en la Invasión de 1989 topé con una columna de tanques norteamericanos que no sabía leer su mapa — y confundía el Parque Urracá con el Parque Gallegos/Torrijos/Club de Golf. Esto, en tiempos de GPS y considerando los 100 años en la Zona del Canal que debieron conocer pulgada por pulgada al menos nuestra ciudad capital, recuerda lo dicho por Alberto Einstein: “Si no podrías explicárselo a un niño de seis años, tu mismo no entiendes el problema.” Y hoy los drones eliminan toda moral.
Nuestro Canal ya sufrió un susto nuclear, cuando la Crisis de los Misiles en Cuba (1962). Por suerte no llegó a peores, pero se tuvieron ensayos de protección civil y aprovisionamiento de víveres hasta que los diplomáticos re-establecieran la normalidad. Su solución involucró una faceta del caso actual. Entonces, Moscú acordó retirar sus ojivas nucleares de Cuba, si Washington hacía a otro tanto para sus propios misiles en Turquía. Coincidentalmente, en la misma base aérea ubicada a 10 millas de donde se dio la Cumbre Económica G-20.
Durante el resto de la Guerra Fría, el manto de secretismo en torno a esta base de Incirlik promovió que Estados Unidos (Israel) se hicieran de la vista gorda sobre los desmanes turcos en la región, los que no comenzaron anteayer. Secretismo que se extendió a todo el resto de la cercana URSS musulmana, y que finalmente se destapó al desmembrarse el sur de aquel imperio.
Quizás la suprema ironía en la actual guerra civil musulmana sea que se da precisamente en la región dónde se formuló el Cristianismo. Porque a pocos años tras la Pasión de Cristo las persecuciones en Jerusalén obligaron a sus discípulos a asentarse en esa región al norte de Siria. Y fue puntualmente en Antioquia donde se gestó la fórmula para admitir a los no-hebreos a la nueva fe (en base a los Mandamientos de Noé) y de Antioquia también partió San Pablo en sus viajes para propagar la nueva religión incluyente.
(Como dato curioso, de la vecina ciudad Alepo –que tanto figura en lamentables titulares– provino a Panamá gran parte de la comunidad hebrea que hoy convive con nosotros.)
Quienes comemos tres veces al día tenemos una obligación hacia quienes no comen, y la mejor forma de cumplirla es perseverando en una vocación profética en promoción de un Estado de derecho que funcione como debe — suficientemente informado.
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Independence from Spain: Varela closes out the November holidays
photos by the Presidencia
In 1821, Panama chose the course of what looked like the least violence at the time. Rebel armies under José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins were running the Spanish crown out of most of southern South America, while the Spaniards had been rudely shocked after they thought they had Simón Bolivar’s army scattered in the Venezuelan wilderness when the rebels showed up behind Bogota to liberate what is now Colombia. There may have been somre royalists who liked the idea of Panama being the base for a Spanish re-invasion of South America but the pragmatic and unwarlike Panamanians decided on November 28, 1821 to formally cut the ties with Spain and join Bolívar’s Gran Colombia instead. Those loyal to Spain were allowed to board ships and depart Panama in peace.
Now, 194 years later with the ties to Colombia having been cut along the way, President Juan Carlos Varela did a day of ceremonies, speeches and parades starting in Boquete, then after a helicopter ride went to more parades in La Chorrera. The speeches were not about glory and martyrdom on the battlefield but things like better air service for Chiriqui province and civic and family values in La Chorrera.
Greeting the Ngabe community in Boquete.
In La Chorrera the independent marching bands were the main attractions.
Marching by the reviewing stand.
This is Panama — of course there will be polleras in the parade.
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Activists demand detainees’ release, closure of the prison and base. Photo by Witness Against Torture.
US human rights advocates
protest at Guantanamo
by Witness Against Torture
As people in the United States enjoyed Thanksgiving with their families, 14 human rights activists with Witness Against Torture were in Cuba protesting the ongoing operation of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. At an encampment outside the base, the delegation demands that the prison close and that it not simply be moved to North America by holding men without charge or trial in federal prisons. The group returns November 30 from Guantanamo to Havana, where it will request a meeting with the US ambassador.
Forced-feeding, not feasting at Guantanamo
On Thanksgiving Day, the delegation held a vigil outside the base under the banner “Forced-Feeding, Not Feasting at Guantanamo.” The vigil highlighted the continued forced-feeding of hunger striking prisoners, as well as the separation of the detained men from their families. The US activists are fasting in solidarity with the prisoners.
“While most people in the US are enjoying meals with their families,” says Marie Shebeck, a social worker in Chicago, Illinois, “I am fasting at the site of one of our country’s greatest shames. If the detained men can’t have a homecoming, we must bring our humanity to them.”
With its vigil, WAT seeks to bridge the distance between their encampment and men like Tariq Ba Odah, detained without charge since 2002. Tariq weighs 74 pounds after years of hunger striking. “Our actions are a simple act of solidarity,” says Chris Knestrick from Cleveland, Ohio. “We are here to say: We know you are suffering; we have come to stand with you.”
“There is real power in showing compassion to Guantanamo prisoners,” says Omar Farah, an attorney representing Tariq Ba Odah. “I saw firsthand when I visited him a week ago the impact of his learning that there are people beyond the prison wires who bear witness to his torment.”
Time is up: close Guantanamo now
Witness Against Torture, which visited the detention camp in 2005, is returning after 10 years. “We are impatient. That is the understatement of the century,” says Frank Lopez, an educator from New York City. “Obama promised to close Guantanamo in 2008, calling it a moral outrage. But there are still 47 prisoners who have been cleared for release. It’s great that Shaker Aamer and a couple others have been freed recently. But whole prison must shut down.”
The protestors carry a stern message for President Obama and for those in Congress who have stood in the way of the prison’s closure. “Failing to close Guantanamo will be a terrible stain on Obama’s legacy,” says Jeremy Varon, a Professor of History in New York City. “Those lawmakers who worked to keep scores of innocent men imprisoned will be judged harshly by history.”
Close, don’t move Guantanamo
The Obama administration is developing a plan to move the men in Guantanamo to prisons in the Unite States, while detaining some indefinitely without charge or trial. “Simply moving Guantanamo is no solution,” says Helen Schietinger of Washington, DC. “That would mean holding on to the barbaric practice of indefinite detention. Besides, the entire domestic system of ‘correctional’ institutions is a travesty, poisoned by racism. We need to overhaul the US justice system, not add Guantanamo to it.”
Say no to Islamophobia
In the wake of attacks in Paris, Lebanon and Mali, Islamophobia rages in the US, evident in anti-Muslim violence and the bigoted statements of presidential candidates and others in positions of power. Witness Against Torture denounces this surge of xenophobia and hatred. “Our presence at Guantanamo is more important than ever,” says Jerica Arents, a professor from Chicago. “Guantanamo is the bitter legacy of the devastating US reaction to 9/11, which has meant the unjust detention and torture of Muslim men. This is a disgrace we can’t repeat.”
Many faiths, one message
Two Muslim Americans are on the trip. “It’s important for me to come to Guantanamo,” says Maha Hilal, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, “to protest a ‘war on terror’ that has so callously and indiscriminately targeted Muslims. My identity as a Muslim obliges me to pursue justice, while my identity as a US citizen demands that I challenge my government’s role in the dehumanization and torture of Muslim prisoners.”
The delegation includes Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists. Many members are affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement, whose founder Dorothy Day was praised by Pope Francis during his US visit. “Jesus teaches us that what we do to the least of us, we do to him,” says Frida Berrigan of New London, Connecticut. “As Pope Francis’s radical call for compassionate action breathes new life into the Catholic church, we are putting that call into practice by reaching out to the men in Guantanamo.”
US military out of Cuba
Witness Against Torture began this trip by participating in the International Seminar for Peace and Abolition of Foreign Military Bases on November 23-25. The conference was held in Guantanamo Province, where the US has controlled a huge swath of territory for more than a century. Witness Against Torture is calling as well for the closure of the entire US Naval base in Cuba. “The military base itself is an unwelcome symbol of US power, which houses a torture chamber,” says Enmanuel Candelario, an artist from the New York. “No country should endure this breach of its sovereignty.”
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La defensa de la Caja de Seguro Social, amenazada por nuevas reformas neoliberales.
Trabajadores marchan en defensa de la Caja de Seguro Social
por Olmedo Beluche
El viernes 27 de noviembre de 2015, centenares de trabajadores marcharon en la ciudad de Panamá por un amplio programa de demandas populares, pero cuyo punto central era la defensa de la Caja de Seguro Social, amenazada por nuevas reformas neoliberales. Los trabajadores gritaban consignas contra el aumento de la edad de jubilación y de las cuotas, y exigían la expulsión delos corruptos de la administración de la institución.
Encabezados por fuertes columnas de la Federación Auténtica de Trabajadores (FAT) y del sindicato de la empresa Coca Cola y de la Cervecería Nacional (SITRAFCOREBGASCELIS), la marcha llegó hasta la Plaza 5 de Mayo donde se realizó un mitin en el cual, además de la defensa de la seguridad social, se escucharon pronunciamientos por un aumento general de salarios, en defensa de la educación pública y contra la privatización del IDAAN.
Los gremios y asistentes también exigieron del gobierno de Juan C. Varela que cumpla su compromiso y declare el 20 de Diciembre como Día de Duelo Nacional. En el plano político, se sostuvo que la única salida al régimen corrupto y antipopular actual es una Asamblea Nacional Constituyente originaria.
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