Published TuPolítica.com , La Estrella de Panama and Expressions No 118
Through political participation, citizens seeking access to government power to direct public policy of the state over society in a certain direction with a specific vision of the world. According to our constitution, political parties are an essential instrument for such participation, but by no means the only possible and necessary to express the pluralism of ideas in its dynamic power determine the will of a people, following last and now, only legitimate, established public authorities.
From a deformation in the exercise of legislative power by the authorities traditional political and economic, have been effectively shut down the avenues of participation for a large percentage of citizens who do not share the ideal or practice of the existing parties, although formal legal avenues remain disconnected from reality culturally deficient (patronage) system Panamanian political social.
Thus continues the contradiction between the needs of all citizens, party positions and actions of government, which leads to the final denial of the right to effective participation, or controlled exercise on job Prefabricated and undifferentiated in every election to set the image of a representative democratic system in which the representation is questionable for this level for the forced and poorly distributed representation, which finally dissociates objectively our form of government of democratic principles.
Restrictions on the right to participate politically sink inequalities in educational, health and historical discrimination of all kinds, although in the immediate are located around the ban on independent candidates for the Presidency , legal barriers to materials other elected positions and forces shaping inland alternatives that would permit effective participation in the political system, are the living example of a political-economic system that seeks to sustain itself by grabbing the access to power by way subordinate to their particular interests in the guise of the rule of law, without forums for dialogue and independent citizen oversight.
Such kidnapping of political activity and institutions is an attack on democratic development and is a breach of the duty of every State to respect, promote and guarantee the exercise of human rights in general, and specifically the rights civil and political under conditions of equality enshrined in the highest standards of domestic and international law that should govern our social fact.
In the cases described, the electoral law has clearly surpassed the constitution or has been regulated to preclude the advent of democracy broad, deep and free. In turn, judges should remember that our constitutional provision, apart from its home services, the particularity of its amendments and the urgent need for transformation, remains in force and shall apply, paradoxically, as an element of social change and democratic development through peaceful ways.
