Because Panama has a government of the far right with Karl Rove flunkies on its payroll, its members are in a state of constant mortal fear for anything that reeks of being left. And it's not just labor union SUNTRACS protesting in the streets that makes them shit their pants and display uncoordinated political spasms, like first locking up protesters, then not charging them with anything, then fining them $15 for disturbing order, then prosecuting them again for what they have already been fined for - after all of which it turned out that some of those arrested weren't protesters at all, but included for example a man who was on his way to the hospital because his wife was giving birth to their baby.
Yes, that's how berserk the Martinelli pandilla gets when they see red flags.
About a month ago, the head of Panama's environmental authority ANAM, Javier Arias, launched an attack on Bolivia's president Evo Morales for organizing a climate summit where not just the usual experts but anyone could participate. Leftist! This is not what we want in our country!
Then last week we had minister of commerce and industry Roberto Henriquez, another one of those bright bulbs on the Martinelli lamp, worriedly claiming on Telemetro that, gasp, the extreme left wants to take over the country. Mind you, this was just about workers disagreeing with a tax reform and teachers disagreeing with educational reform.
And today, Shlomo Salmon, our minister of tourism whose activities are normally limited to having crowds celebrating carnival pepper sprayed because they could probably at one point become violent some time in the future, came out on Telemetro warning against the PRD moving to the left. Is it the job of a tourism minister to occupy himself with making public observations about the political course of a party of which he isn't even a member?
In other words, don't all these people who worry about the left actually have work to do?