Panama Opposes Ecological Initiative
Machine translation from the original, not yet reviewed by the author.
Original in Spanish
The worldwide scorn brought on by our government’s support for the barbaric cause of whaling, given at Japan’s request when Panama has no dog in that fight, was not enough.
Nor was the ridicule our government brought on itself by becoming the last to join the Coalition, at the request of the United States, a week after the other countries had stated their position on the war in Iraq without the authorization of the United Nations. Considering that Panama has—thank God—no army, and does not effectively fight the Colombian irregulars who terrorize the people of Darién every day, many suggested that our government was after the economic benefits of this support.
The government of Panama has managed once again to embarrass us internationally. Once again, the accommodating back of our homegrown political class has bent before the interests of foreign powers, instead of acting on the basis of what is right.
As El Mundo reports today, referring to a protest by the NGO World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Panama has supported, together with Liberia, a proposal by Russia to block an initiative to protect sensitive maritime zones of the Canary and Galápagos Islands and the Baltic Sea, which was to be examined at a meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London next week. This measure is necessary to prevent the repetition of environmental disasters such as the one caused by the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige, which left a toll of three hundred thousand dead birds and a cleanup cost estimated at five billion euros.
Who is surprised that it should be Panama and Liberia, the two biggest issuers of flags of convenience in the world, who lend their support to so deplorable a cause? What else can one expect from governments used to selling their country’s flag every day to foreign ships? And so, once again, the government of Panama offers its complicit support to gang up against a just ecological measure, pursuing the petty economic benefits it derives from pleasing foreign powers.