In a message to the nation, the secretary general of this group, Saúl Méndez, claimed that the executive’s position was the result of popular pressure to reject the agreement with the subsidiary of the Canadian transnational corporation First Quantum, but was still inadequate.
Withdrawing the project does not mean that we have rejected the contract. It is obvious that the maneuver is to tell the population that four aspects of this text that are recommended for review – airspace concession, the power to expropriate land, tax relief and not the transformation into a framework law – are the problem solved.
“It is a composition that we are not happy with,” noted the union leader and former 2019 presidential candidate.
The groups are demanding that the Supreme Court ruling that declared the bill unconstitutional in 2017 be fulfilled, but the current internal corruption in complicity with the executive branch is causing it to fail in its duties, he added.
As part of the new measures, he announced that social organizations will file a criminal complaint against the Attorney General Javier Caraballo for neglect of official duty.
They will also challenge the owners of the foreign transnational and mining company who, with the consent of the authorities, are stealing from the Panamanian people.
In this sense, he said that another demand was to impose the mining moratorium, that is, he insisted that the activities of First Quantum and the plunder and theft of the country’s minerals should stop, in addition to the environmental damage, which creates this illegal activity.
In addition, we call for a public, democratic, televised debate to be held so that the population has access to all the necessary information and can then decide in the election whether Panama should become a mining country or not.
In view of the impositions and maneuvers, the people must be vigilant in order to thwart this text on the streets, he emphasized.
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