Automatically translated by AI.
Carlos Ernesto Guevara Villar
International Socialist League
(Panama Section)
The dismissal without pay of 298 teachers is not an administrative procedure or a procedural error: it is a deliberate political reprisal against teachers who exercised their constitutional right to strike. After the participation of more than 20,000 teachers in the national strike in defense of social security and pensions, the state apparatus responded by activating a selective disciplinary scaffolding to punish and punish. They turned social protest into an “administrative offense”, violating the right to strike, due process and the principle of legality. Even judicial instances have recognized that the decisions that originated these processes violated basic constitutional guarantees, confirming what we have denounced from the very beginning: these separations were born vitiated by absolute nullity.
But what is at stake goes beyond a file. This attack is part of the adjustment plans that imperialist capitalism imposes throughout the region to unload its crisis on the backs of the working class. Faced with the exhaustion of their model, the economic and financial elites demand cuts, regressive reforms, reduction of social spending and disciplining of the sectors that resist. Public education and the combative teachers stand in the way. That is why they seek to break the organization, sow fear and divide the teachers’ movement between “separate” and “acting”. We will not allow it.
Out of thousands who participated in the strike, they chose 298 to impose the most burdensome measure on them. This selectivity reveals their true objective: to send an exemplary message to discourage future struggles. Disciplinary power was used not to protect public service, but to punish social protest. When the State acts in this way, it does not defend legality; it defends the interests of capital and of those who want the workers to pay for the crisis.
In the face of this offensive, we raise an urgent call for the unbreakable unity of all the teachers’ unions, without distinction of currents; for unity among the separated teachers and those who continue to work today; for coordination with unions, students, parents and the entire popular movement. The attack against 298 is an attack against all teachers and against public education.
Legal remedies are not enough, although they are necessary. Rights are defended with organization and mobilization. Let us promote general assemblies in all educational centers, unitary coordinators, national days of protest and a staggered plan of action until we win our demands. Let us make it felt in the streets that the teachers’ union will not surrender or divide.
We demand the immediate reinstatement of the 298 teachers, the full payment of their lost salaries, the definitive archiving of all disciplinary proceedings and unrestricted respect for the constitutional right to strike. The Constitution is not negotiable. Salaries are not punished. Protest is not a crime.
Panama, February 7, 2026
If they touch one, we all respond!
If they attack 298, thousands rise up!
Only unity, conscious struggle and sustained mobilization will be able to defeat this offensive and open the way to a public education at the service of the working people, not of the adjustment plans of imperialist capitalism in crisis!
Unity, organization and struggle until victory!
