The shadows of the dictatorship
The PRD has returned to govern and, in less than a year, its blazons and tricks look intact. The party born in the shadow of that cheating dictatorship and accustomed to silencing its critics, returns to the fray.
La Prensa knew the gorillas well then, as they dared to remove the shackles of that journalism tainted by the military boot in order to give Panamanians a voice. Democracy has given the dictatorship party other opportunities.
However, some leaders have never assimilated the rules of democracy, those that demand probity, accountability and respect for criticism from their leaders. La Prensa turns 40. Neither in dictatorship nor in democracy has there been a government that has not been supervised. We have not ceased a single day in striving to carry out the critical role that corresponds to us and the investigative journalism that an informed society deserves.
To the hackneyed “Good Government”, the one that was sold to us like that of a renewed and transformed PRD, his ministers betrayed him, his deputies reflect him, his gloomy connections undress him and now his former president betrays him. The list of investigations and corruption scandals uncovered during the Ernesto Pérez Balladares administration is too long for this space. To those who led the majority of the investigations that were carried out during his period, which included donations of drug traffickers, irregular concessions, lighthouses and buoys at the entrance to the Canal, Interests in privatized companies and casinos, as well as the shameful discretionary games, were not easy for him, and his persecution against the award-winning investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti remains a symbol.
The former president is a representative figure of that PRD that filled the Supreme Court of Justice with co-supporters, including the husband of his secretary, who insisted on changing the Constitution to perpetuate himself in power and that his last act was to sanction a law so that La PrensaI could never operate an open television channel.
The action obtained by the former president has society as a victim, not this newspaper, but freedom of information, which all citizens need to be informed. Thus we have reached this crossroads, in which the Homeland has been caught by a pandemic while being assaulted by a new generation of rogues. And it is now when the claims of two former presidents meet again. One attacks and the other congratulates. One warns and the other executes. They move at the same rhythm with which in the past they worked together, they fought, they were mortal enemies to end up uniting purposes, with such enviable coordination that it is hard to believe in coincidences. Like Tomasi’s cat leopardism, the one that tells the Sicilian trick of making us believe that things change when what you want is for them to stay the same, the PRD has deceived us again. And, as the novel describes, the supposed mortal enemies end up agreeing to continue to command, it is part of the camouflage.
This newspaper, along with the other independent journalists and a handful of seasoned citizens, fights hard against the abuses of power, against the miserable plunder to which this country has been subjected and against the immense vice of greed. They won’t shut us up! He fights hard against the abuses of power, against the miserable plunder to which this country has been subjected and against the immense vice of greed. They won’t shut us up! He fights hard against the abuses of power, against the miserable plunder to which this country has been subjected and against the immense vice of greed. They won’t shut us up! – LA PRENSA, Jul.6
