The government of Juan Carlos Varela lacks the comprehensive policies needed to tackle critical situations currently facing the country. The life of more than one Panamanian has been lost as a result.
The government’s ineffective response to type A (N1H1) flu epidemic is a case in point. 22 Panamanians have already lost their life, and vaccines aimed at containing the spread of the contagion are nowhere to be found. To cap it all, the health minister, Javier Terrientes, handed in his resignation in the middle of this crisis. Many blame the incompetence of ministerial heads for the escalating crisis.
However, this is not the first time that a government minister resigns in the middle of an acute crisis.
Only weeks ago, the former security minister, Rodolfo Aguilera, handed in his resignation just as the country was facing an unprecedented wave of crime and violence.
The president’s cack-handed response was to place a former military man, Alexis Bethancourt, as the interim security minister. According to multiple experts, the issue would boil down to the president's inability to place effective people at the head of a key ministry, just as violence is spreading across the country and has taken more than one innocent life.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The population’s desperate calls for better transport and access to drinking water have been falling on deaf ears. President Varela’s electoral promises have done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Panamanians.
According to union leader Fernando Cebamanos “the administration has plainly shown its inability to govern”. Mr. Cebamanos denounces the government's ineffective response not only to the current public health crisis, but also to the Panama papers scandal and to economic disruption caused by the U.S. Treasury department's move to place businessman Abdul Waked on its Clinton list.
Spokesperson for the Cambio Democratico (CD) party, Candice Williams, points to the lower common denominator of this government: “whatever they do, they are always improvising and are always slow”. “The president must understand that if the health minister resigns in the middle of a public health crisis, this will have consequences not only for the outgoing minister”, she denounced.
Ms. Williams went on to add that “the president is more and more isolated: fewer and fewer players want to play on his team, and his deputies and the interim ministers are proving ineffective. Panama is going through a terrible time".
The government has also been criticiszd for focusing on the judicial persecution of opponents rather than on policies benefiting the everyday life of ordinary Panamanians. The politicized actions of the judiciary have left it discredited in the eyes of the population.
According to former Supreme Court justice Esmeralda de Troitiño, “for the justice system to work, we first have to ensure the probity and professionalism of people working in it – this is especially the case for the Supreme Court justices, who must be independent and not subject to the interests of economic lobbies".
