FOR A LIVING WAGE INCREASE FOR THE PANAMANIAN WORKING CLASS!

Carlos Ernesto Guevara Villar – International Socialist League

The working class faces a double offensive: on the one hand, the dictatorial and pro-business regime of José Raúl Mulino, faithful executor of big capital, the International Financial Institutions and US imperialism; and, on the other hand, the open betrayal of the yellow bureaucracy of CONATO, which betrays our demands behind the back of the workers’ movement. The enemy does not only sit in the Palacio de las Garzas:but also in the union chairs of CONATO, converted into the bosses offices.

The CONATO does not represent the workers’ interests. Its leadership, largely unknown, with no real base support among the masses and with a history of surrender to the bosses and the regimes in power, justifies with servile language the wage poverty and repeats the lie that “the country was destroyed by the pandemic”.

It was not the pandemic that destroyed the country: it was the governments answering to capital, including that of Mulino, promoting a social war against workers in the public and private sectors. Meanwhile, the union bureaucracy, together with the regime, has lent itself to illegally take over guilds, unions, federations and confederations, including CONATO, enabling countless legal processes and political persecution against the protesting leaderships. Their objective is silencing any dissident voice.

The false leaders of CONATO, formerly disguised as leftists, march to the rhythm of the owners of the country. They have kept silent in the face of anti-worker reforms historically, which has resulted in deadly results for the movement; they boycotted independent organization during the anti-mining struggle; they did not call for a general strike in the recent struggle against Law 462, mining and the memorandums with the US. Today, they seek to negociate behind the backs of the working class an increase in the minimum wage to compensate for their situation of misery, contrary to the situation of the bosses who enjoy economic prosperity.

We affirm our revolutionary stand: the union bureaucracy is not part of the workers movement, it is its terminal illness, its syphilis. Not only the employer is the class enemy, but also those who from within slow down, divide and demobilize to guarantee the social peace of capital.

Before the CONATO squanders the possibility of a real wage increase, we call for workers’ unity from below, through coordinators in the workplaces, independent unions and popular assemblies, to reorganize, as we have been insisting, the struggle with class independence. We are in a stage in which, without regroupment, we will continue to act defensively. We must educate the masses so that they identify who the class enemies are and we can face all together the plan of austerity that advances day after day by leaps and bounds.

Only a genuine, class-conscious and revolutionary workers’ leadership will be able to confront the pro-business Mulino regime, the Creole bourgeoisie, the IFIs and U.S. imperialism.

There will be no workers’ emancipation as long as the leadership remains in the hands of sold-out bureaucrats.

No peace with the bosses, no truce with the traitors!
Out with the yellow bureaucracy of the CONATO!
Class unity and self-organization from the grassroots!
For an independent and socialist workers’ movement!
For a workers’ government and democratic control of the economy!
The liberation of the working class will be done by the working class itself!