OPINION: Panamas state masquerade

hoyporhoy La Prensa,  Sep 16

A GROUP of Panamanian filmmakers is  still waiting for the disbursement of  funds established by law and not paid since 2014.

Four bright public school students were victims of the inability of the state bureaucracy, which was not able to buy their air tickets to attend the Iberoamerican Mathematical Olympiad in Chile.

The almost endless list of situations in which the State and the authorities routinely violate Panamanian talent in the arts, science and sport, is extremely worrying.

Apparently it prefers to  discourage the best of human talent and to squander public funds on unnecessary travel, and a taste for a more showy than effective state investment and  exotic projects like a pink ribbon around India Dormida,

The government exists to provide for needs of the people but   the collective action of the partners is not able to produce  the correct and appropriate public spending priorities to combat poverty and inequality, instead of  paternalistic subsidies masquerading as social policies.