Public safety

Bloc leader responds to U.S. Ambassador

Partido Panameñista bloc leader José Blandón dismissed U.S. ambassador to Panama Barbara Stephenson’s denial that she either commented or endorsed the government’s recent security reforms.

“I think that regardless of what the ambassador may have said, it is clear that the security initiatives being implemented by the Panmanian government are moving us in the direction of remilitarizing the country, and are in line with what the Plan Mérida being promoted by the United States,” he said.

Julio Yao, president of the civil liberties group Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Serpaj), said it was obvious that Washington supports the new security policies, because since the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, the country has not taken any actions without the permission of the U.S. government.

According to Yao, the country’s national security plan had been co-opted by the U.S. government’s own controversial security reforms, which had been drafted in the years following September 11.

Yao said that Serpaj believes that the U.S. security reforms intend to expand the country’s scope of influence to include intelligence agencies in Latin American countries, a plan that has its origins in the new doctrine of national security for the 21st century.

This new doctrine, Yao said, is what also drives the Plan Puebla Panamá, Plan Colombia and Plan Mérida, the three plans conceived by U.S. and Latin American countries to beef up security in those countries, especially with the aim of combating drug trafficking.