OPINION: Panama mayor living in a time capsule

The mayor of Panama City seems to live in a capsule that prevents him from having contact with reality. The inhabitants of the most populated district of the country have seen the erratic and capricious ideas of this official, who only knows how to devise pharaonic projects, whose practical use has no impact on the serious problems that the district suffers. The latest nonsense of the mayor is to build a new seafood market in the coastal strip, limiting the few areas destined for public recreation in the capital and, specifically, in the coastal strip. Aside from the fact that a new market is not necessary, the $40 million that he wants to allocate to this project could well be put to better use, to expand the reduced supply of public space that the inhabitants of the district so desperately need, besieged by aggressive urban development, thanks to the generosity of the City Hall, which, ironically, does not stop approving zoning changes for iron and concrete masses, increasingly reducing public space. The worst thing is that the mayor doesn’t seem to let himself be advised; he eagerly seeks to bury his political future with projects alien to the basic needs of his constituents. – LA PRENSA, Feb. 21