MEDIA WATCH: Panamas Cosa Nostra

MEDIA WATCH:  The Veins of Nature

SOME INDIGENOUS people believe that the rivers are the veins of nature. But for the ex-president of Panama they were an inexhaustible source of business, in which public funds were mixed with private benefits.

In the basin of the river San Pablo there are 10 hydroelectric projects, of which 8 are suspected of having links with the former president. The circle was perfect: the funds from taxes of Panamanians and collected by Cobranzas del Istmo, S.A, served to finance the company that received the concessions granted by his own government, and that at the same time the state company, whose board he appointed, built, with our taxes, a substation to connect him to the national grid. Once the system was integrated it would receive juicy subsidies and incentives to make it even more profitable. For the Mafia, the “Cosa Nostra” term, our thing, opposed the “Res Publica” that means the good of all. This is just one example of how a family took control of the State. Their “cosa nostra” was all the country. It is time to return to be a Republic.Hoyporhoy La Prensa Oct. 20