Vice President Touts Success of  Transparent Covid Measures

Transparency, accountability and efficient use of public funds have characterized the government of President Cortizo during the pandemic, said Vice President and Minister of the Presidency,  Jose Gabriel Carrizo   when  delivering his annual report to the Budget Commission of the National Assembly on Wednesday  April 14 .

“Thanks to the efforts of our health personnel and the effective coordination of the National Government, today Panama is one of the countries with the lowest fatality rate due to coronavirus in the world and leads vaccination in the region,” Carrizo said before the eyes of his fellow party members, PRD deputies Benicio Robinson, president of the commission; Crispiano Adames, and Raúl Pineda, among others.

Carrizo, who has been pilloried because of the lack of information that his ministry has provided regarding purchases from the health crisis, described the handling of the pandemic as “successful.” He mentioned that according to the World Bank, the Panama Solidario plan, which has benefited more than 1,300,000 Panamanians, prevented poverty from going from 14.9% to 20.8%.

Panama Solidario is under citizen scrutiny for its opaque management. For example, at the end of March, the Government reported that payments to suppliers of $259 million had been committed to supply the 7 million bags of food that have been distributed. But in Panama Compra, only purchases for $29 million had been reported for that purpose. That is, they have barely accounted for 10% of the $259 million. reports La Prensa.

The Vice President also explained to the deputies why President Cortizo decreed a state of emergency and not an emergency, as a result of Covid-19. He said that the state of emergency was invoked because doing so meant suspending constitutional guarantees. “During the pandemic, all the guarantees have been in force, including the right to property and legal security, which facilitated the arrival of good investments, keys to economic reactivation,” he said.

However, in the Supreme Court of Justice there are more than 10 appeals that seek to have several of the Executive’s decrees declared unconstitutional, which, according to the lawyers who filed them, violate fundamental guarantees.

At the beginning of March it was announced that the Third Administrative Litigation Chamber of that court provisionally suspended article 8 of Executive Decree No. 7 of February 5, 2021, by means of which powers are granted to the Minister of Health, Luis Francisco Sucre, to declare measures to restrict mobility, curfews and any other measure to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic, without the participation of the Executive.