Editorials: Deadlock in the legislature; and The Oval Office laughingstock
Laughing at the pompous? It's often a good idea.
National Assembly photo. How will they maintain this level of function without all the deputy underassistants?
The National Assembly can’t agree on committees
While Lucy Molinar crows about beating down the teachers and the business lobbies that wrote and promoted the Seguro Social “reforms” celebrate the criminal charges against SUNTRACS leaders, they don’t actually have too many victories to consolidate. Nowhere is this more evident than by a legislature that for two weeks after its inaugural session could not agree on committee assignments.
The fugitive sticky-fingers ex-President Martinelli tries to run things from exile in Colombia, probably to President Petro’s annoyance.
Was the latter assured that Colombia was but a stop on the way to another refuge? Martinelli is wanted for pervert crimes in Spain, thus all across the European Union. His Italian citizenship may not help at all, especially since several members of the Spanish Guardia Civil were convicted for helping him to stalk — electronically and otherwise — a former mistress in Mallorca. But still, Ricky set it up for his personal mafia lawyer who looks something like Miss Piggy to run the legislature.
They couldn’t muster the votes. The long-time big boss man of the PRD jumped out of his temporary alliance with Mulino and Martinelli, putting his son and suplente into his seat for the next year and leaving the party caucus’s leadership to the shameless and divisive Colon demagogue Bolota Salazar.
The factions that put together the 37 votes to beat the Martinelistas and the PRD proceeded to their own internal splits and squabbles, but not in such a way as to reverse the verdict on the assembly’s presidency. By popular outcry and agreement among those 37 deputies and a few others who went the other way, the legislature’s payroll is about to be slashed. That includes a lot of committee staffers, some of whom actually worked there.
It boils down to a dispute with pecuniary value to the politicians and their entourages. Surprise, surprise! They can’t agree on who takes how much of a loss, fragmented as they and the general Panamanian population are.
Vamos founder Juan Diego Vásquez finds it a convenient time to fly off to get an Ivy League LLM. Notwithstanding a couple of withdrawals from that caucus and an insane recall campaign in Arraijan, nobody seems ready to sell out to Don Ricky.
Let new leaders come to the fore, and parasites be shed. We are probably not into the moral revolution that Panama needs, but there are capable people ready to carry on.
Uh huh.
Gotta laugh about The Donald’s Epstein woes
It’s a good time to tell dirty jokes. It’s a good time to laugh as the reputations of Trump loyalists go down in flames.
Has American society become that mean?
We always did have that streak in us, but in the USA and among the nine million or so US citizens living abroad.
Will things and people calm down? That’s bound to happen, but first let’s stop screaming and regain a sense of humor. Then let’s go register and vote en masse to remove the irritants.
We've had our primary. And the people have spoken.
Adriano Espaillat
Bear in mind…
It's going to come true like you knew it, but it's not going to feel like you think.
Rosie O'Donnell
We are all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
Charles Bukowski
The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.
Bella Abzug
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