Down with the persecution of SUNTRACS and CONUSI! Freedom for Marco Andrade and Genaro López! For unity of action against the Mulino regime!

By Carlos Ernesto Guevara Villar, attorney. Panamanian Section of the International Socialist League

The government of José Raúl Mulino is not just another government within Panama’s bourgeois institutional framework: it is the most stark expression of a pro-business, pro-Yankee, and pro-Zionist regime, bound hand and foot to international financial institutions and transnational capital. From the very first day of his term, he launched a systematic offensive against the labor and popular movements, establishing himself as a quasi-fascist regime whose raison d’état centers on the political, economic, and judicial persecution of the most militant leaders of the mass movement and independent social activists. To carry out this task, Mulino has placed officials in whom he has complete confidence at the head of other branches of government, transforming institutions that should be guarantors of rights into instruments of punishment.

This explains why 298 educators have been removed from their positions without pay simply for exercising their right to strike in defense of the people, and to date have received no response through either administrative or judicial channels. On the contrary, the actions of the higher courts—which have systematically conspired to overturn the injunctions granted in their favor by circuit judges nationwide—smell more and more of corruption every day. We are not dealing with an independent judiciary, but rather with yet another cog in the regime’s repressive machinery.

Even worse is the spectacle of entities such as IPACOOP and MITRADEL, bent on liquidating the SUNTRACS cooperative, dissolve the union, and launch audits that—with the backing of a Public Prosecutor’s Office led by Mulino’s personal attorney—serve as fodder for fabricating cases within an accusatory criminal justice system that is neither democratic nor protective of due process, but rather the clearest expression of class-based justice: a system designed to punish the poor while offering ways out and alternatives to white-collar criminals, the children of the bourgeoisie, and corrupt politicians. A veritable disciplinary crusade has been launched against historic leaders of SUNTRACS, and its message to the rest of the mass movement is clear and brutal: anyone who fights will suffer the same fate.

This repressive offensive cannot be understood in isolation from the austerity plan that the regime is pushing against working people. The reform of the social security and pension systems imposed by Law 462 was the first major blow, and the defeat suffered by the mass movement in that struggle has emboldened the regime both to intensify its austerity measures and to step up judicial persecution against all kinds of social activists. This offensive is now going so far as to publicly disregard existing legal norms and judicial rulings from the highest court that prohibit mining, while also attempting to ignore the existence of a current mining moratorium, seeking to render meaningless the gains won through popular mobilization and once again pave the way for the interests of transnational capital.

The immediate outlook is no less bleak: new austerity measures are being announced regarding water, taxes, higher education, mass layoffs in the public sector, and a tightening of criminal laws against social activists. All these measures share the same class-based objective: to balance the state’s budget in order to service the debt owed to international organizations, shifting the burden of that debt onto the shoulders of the country’s most impoverished sectors, while ensuring that the profits of transnational capital and the local bourgeoisie remain intact.

Today, in the face of the new criminal case being brought against our SUNTRACS comrades, Marco Andrade and Genaro López, it is imperative that we overcome fragmentation and the logic of isolated protests. Indignation alone is not enough, nor is trust in the bourgeoisie’s own courts: what is needed is the genuine, grassroots-driven construction of a united front of struggle comprising all workers’, popular, teachers’, student, and human rights organizations—a front capable of confronting, through united action, judicial persecution and the criminalization of social protest. Only the independent mobilization of working people—democratically organized through their own unions, committees, and assemblies, without placing their trust in the judicial apparatus of the bosses’ state—can halt this offensive. The International Socialist League, Panama Section, calls on all sister organizations and the workers of Panama to close ranks in defense of every leader, every educator, and every social activist who is being persecuted, understanding that the defense of one is the defense of all, and that only through class independence and internationalist solidarity can this regime—which serves imperialism and capital—be defeated.

Panama, June 27, 2026.

IF THEY TOUCH ONE OF US, THEY TOUCH US ALL! A GOVERNMENT THAT REPRESSES ITS PEOPLE IS A GOVERNMENT DOOMED TO FALL!

IMMEDIATE ACQUITTAL FOR MARCO ANDRADE AND GENARO LÓPEZ! STOP THE JUDICIAL PERSECUTION AGAINST SUNTRACS AND CONUSI! FOR A UNITED WORKERS’ AND PEOPLE’S FRONT AGAINST AUSTERITY AND REPRESSION!