Thousands march in Odebrecht protest
WHILE Panama’s citizens seem to have closed their eyes and ears to the Odebrecht bribery scandal, or shrugged it off as “business as usual,” thousands of people marched Sunday in the Dominican city of Santiago to demand that the operations of the Brazilian company cease immediately and officials who received bribes be punished.
One of the organizers of the protest, Altagracia Kubinyi, explained that demonstrators are also demanding an audit to determine if the construction company financed President Danilo Medina’s election campaigns in 2012 and 2016.
Images from the CDN television metwork showed a crowd of greenclad protesters marching across
Santiago’s iconic Del Sol Avenue, 150 kilometers north of the capital.
“We march for our children,” read on one of the banners, while other signs asked for jail time for officials.
Kubinyi read a fivepoint manifesto in which organizers of the protest demanded the immediate suspension of
Odebrecht’s works and the installation of an independent body to investigate the alleged bribes the company paid in the country to obtain government contracts.
The demonstration in Santiago was the second mass march against Odebrecht in the country this year. The first was in Santo Domingo.
In Panama Odebrecht continues work on Metro Line and the new terminal at Tocumen International which President Varela wants completed ahead of the Pope’s visit for the International Youth assembly in early 2019
