OPINION : We will recover  — if they let us

According to the Constitution, Panama is a Republic and we are all citizens with rights. In practice, the Government believes that it grants us privileges. Through decrees, it decides when it is legal to take children to the park, exercise outdoors or even work. And it is not about anything, but the appropriation of the most sacred of life in freedom. Faced with the health crisis, the government of President Laurentino Cortizo decides in a whimsical way and without further argument or logic how to live. To complicate the situation, the Executive, which should be controlled and limited by the checks and balances established by the Constitution, rides like a horseman without any control or questioning, more than that of the citizens who, already tired of so much arbitrariness, take to the streets to protest, at the risk of being beaten or sanctioned for exercising their civil rights. Abuses, inconsistencies, arbitrariness, antics and irregularities perpetrated by a group of wolves calling themselves authority abound. The humiliations to the population and the announcements that end up being inconclusive and full of contradictions only increase the frustration. Economic uncertainty is at its highest since 1989. True, life goes on and we will recover as we have before, if they let us.-LA PRENSA. Aug. 19