Torrijos bemoans current PRD leadership and the spread of corruption

Former President, Martin Torrijos a member of the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) has raised strong questions about the current leadership of the political group and the current situation in the country

In a statement,  to La Estrella, he indicated that “the Torrijistas should never have tolerated the crisis of the political, social, and economic system that we have been experiencing for some time in Panama. ”With our omissions and our actions we allowed the degradation of politics and the spread of corruption and clientelism that has done immense damage to the country and to Panamanian families.”

He stressed that for years he has seen the spectacle of how leaders and rulers distance themselves from the needs of the people to satisfy their own ambitions and interests.

“Today there is a total divorce between the collective aspirations and the behavior of their leaders, to the extreme that the majority of Panamanians do not feel represented by the people who received their vote and therefore their trust.

“In this sense, it is “evident that democracy has been weakened, is kidnapped, restricted and in the PRD on the verge of disappearing.”

He added that Panamanians are seeing the figures of the country’s economic growth without feeling part of them; what they feel and see is how wealth is concentrated in a few and that money reaches them less each day.

“They feel that their needs are unsatisfied, poorly attended to, or are y postponed and ignored”.

“It seems that we are not concerned that decency is moving away from political activity and that organized crime is becoming enthroned in all spheres of our society. How is it possible that seventeen years have passed since my administration reformed the law of the Social Security Fund without anyone since then have had the courage to undertake its update? How is it possible that if we were able to unite around the recovery and expansion of the canal and to design a project for the country through the National Concertation, we now have  division and fragmentation that prevents us from looking optimistically to the future and is rather leading us to regress?” He added that the parties are not only what their statutes say, but they also are the conduct of their leaders and their bases, and they are the role they play before the needs and aspirations of the citizens of an entire country. “Today there is a disconnect between those who lead the PRD and the members that make it up, and, even worse, between the leadership and the society that observes, values ​​and judges it every day.”

“It is time for us Toriijistas to stop looking the other way as if if everything was fine here. It is time to recognize our mistakes and correct them. It is time to dedicate ourselves to the task of reconciling the country, to build a society where there none are excluded, to resume the direction we have lost. It is time to recover Panama and expand the future of Panamanians”.