Published El Pais (Costa Rica), Rebellion, Adital , and Amauta Magazine portal Ajintem
The data collected in various media, reports from human rights ombudsman and national non-governmental organizations (CEASPA HREV) confirm the existence of human rights violations by the State of Panama during the fighting due to the existence and content of Act 30 of 2010: the right to life, integrity, non-discrimination, equality, liberty and personal security, physical and mental health, privacy, honor, reputation, effective remedy for violations of human rights and fair trial, protection family and me dren under age, prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading.
However, the assessment of the magnitude of damage to the Panamanian company, along with the threats and opportunities arising from the situation in the medium and long term, the local as part of regional and global stage, requires consideration of human rights violations in the days prior to police intervention and the potential consequences for the rule of law and the democratic system.
Based on a strict interpretation of representative democracy by constituted bodies was severely restricted the right to participate in matters of civic interest, which requires effective advance the right to clear, relevant and accessible in a timely manner, to give content to freedom of thought, opinion and expression by which they carry out, whether individually or by specifying the rights to assemble and associate in the defense of common interests .
The evidence is public knowledge by government policy to disqualify any individual or organization with divergent view to the presidential line (from "thugs of shit" to "ignorant Indians, drunks and drug addicts), the secrecy maintained on the origin and content of the draft in the Cabinet and the presentation before the full National Assembly, the lack of discussion in the first debate and courtesy of purely formal room in the second debate, the lack of interest in the case against the third debate and penalties by the Executive.
Once promulgated in Official Gazette, the debate about the new law focuses on three areas: labor issues, particularly on the issue of union dues and the effects of the strike, the environmental issue, setting the option guides to good environmental practices for projects to be submitted to a process of environmental impact assessment, and the subject of criminal proceedings, to prohibit the detention and temporary suspension from office units of the security forces in cases of suspected crimes by reason of excessive or unjustified use of force in the exercise of the functions or performance of duty, ordered his assignment to administrative duties during the process and the execution of the sentence in facilities the police.
Here it is worth an explanation of the global historical moment: for the maintenance of capitalism, its beneficiaries seek to extend the logic of reproduction reaching the last areas of life on the planet, generating conflicts over land ownership, water, minerals, genetic resources and traditional knowledge. Another area of \u200b\u200baccumulation is in reducing the cost of eliminating labor rights or benefits of employees in some way, their participation in social work product.
Reduced labor and environmental standards (also educational, recalling the draft "curriculum transformation") and therefore is not something casual, and it is worth noting that the division of Our America competing in small downwards not help us.
The predictability of a conflict scenario explains the presence of the subject of criminal proceedings is not new, but in addition to Law 14 of 2010, the deficiencies in the investigations criminal, the lack of independence of prosecutors and the judiciary, meets the objectives of covering the violent repression of social protest in a cloak of legality and refinement of a framework of impunity, to those in the running, putting members institution over citizenship and stripping it of its protective function.
In case something goes wrong, always subject to the arbitrariness of presidential pardons and issued for common crimes, even before the verdict, in flagrant contradiction with the constitutional provision. The consolidation of such a legal framework is in fact a threat to life, integrity and freedom of individuals the country and demonstrates the willingness to use forcible means, exhausted the formal democratic procedures as a method of social control.
Reducing the effects of the strike until they find unrealistic, leading to the weakening of the union as an institution by undermining the ultimate instrument to force the negotiation of better living conditions for workers. Knowing the role of counterweight to unions historically have had in the struggle for economic, social and cultural rights of the general public in a highly unequal society that seeks democratic, clearly intended to override resistance the imposition of a totalitarian system identified with logic and market interests.
Weak environmental institutions has been increasingly attacked the dispersion of skills, changes in environmental impact studies, now setting the discretion in the hands of the company to qualify for indefinite guides open to the inadequacy and ambiguity from Executive. A predation agents who do not understand sustainability and is interested in the rights, now he is also bothered by law, the requirements, the mere formalities, and calling from one side of the door, answer themselves on the other hand, changing much rule gets in the rate of profit.
At this point it is necessary to reaffirm that any human society is built on nature, and any further possibility, including the existence of rights is determined ultimately by the physical constraints of the systems of life, profoundly affected today by social and economic organizations based on the ideology of development and growth. In other words, investing dominant visions of the doctrine of human rights, genuine equality of civil and political rights after the effective enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, which are based on respect for material the rights of nature (from an anthropocentric, human right to a healthy environment).
The conflict around the Law 30 of 2010 is still present, has not ended with the Agreements of Changuinola and scenes of dialogue. The outcome, whatever it is, beyond the law itself, time, space and the actors involved, to reconsider the historical context in which it occurs. But at this point we should note the path that leads to the government of Ricardo Martinelli with all its features, including how to produce the Law 30.
The current regime coming to power after the use of a populist discourse based on the concept changes on the image of a successful businessman, but their existence as a political alternative arises from the progressive deterioration of living conditions of the middle and lower classes in Panamanian society from the subordination of social policies to neoliberal economic policy part of all governments in the traditional political parties (PRD, Panamanian) from before the fall of the military dictatorship, ie more than 25 years.
The ways in which governance develops and from which there are products like Act 30, among others, found almost no support in the development of democratic institutions participatory and decentralized after the fall of the military dictatorship after the December 1989 invasion, which has been implemented effectively constituted an obstacle to the use of state resources to maintain the patronage base of political parties .
Within a year of Government Ricardo Martinelli can be characterized by a deepening of the historically excessive concentration of power around the presidency, there was a change in governance from authoritarian to democratic forms, inserting the situation of conflict in a larger process where the intensity of the mobilization social, among other factors, may lead to the return to a formally democratic system with relevant restrictions and decisive participation, the establishment of a civilian dictatorship, or a deepening participatory democracy. That is, they debate the immediate future of the human right to good governance, democracy, pluralistic, participatory consultation and also of course, the full range of human rights and the rule of law.
This triad of theoretical options can be interpreted as a local reflection of a global conflict for hegemony between two legal aspects of Western modernity: transnational corporate law as the supreme regulator of life on the planet in terms of a logic of profit and accumulation, present in the first two options referred to differences of degree and form, but not in essence, keeping a single political economic paradigm is not viable in the medium term whose biggest hurdle is to be unsustainable as well as being grossly unfair, or human rights law with its emancipatory potential, even with the need for assessments and overrides to adjust the dominant principle of universality and equality with cultural specificity and the right to the difference in a dialogue with the cultural identities that emerge from the political social scene after being hidden for centuries behind the modern myth of the monocultural nation-state.
At a time of global systemic crisis, such a definition could mean, if it is the moment awareness and responsibility to not run out in the circumstantial, the possibility of moving to some degree or at least to have less resistance to ruptures possible forms of development appropriate to diverse natural and cultural realities, or simply stagnate, not to advance, so seen, fixing the scales, focusing on areas of action and strengthening relationships, each is a tiny but infinitely valuable point of conflict between globalization of violence and globalization of solidarity, freedom, justice and peace.
