"Contract between Government and Minera Panamá raises social protests", 11 September

...The ongoing debates in the Panamanian Parliament on the contract signed between the Government and Minera Panamá sparked new demonstrations from social organizations that demand its rejection by the lawmakers.

The deliberations at the Commerce and Economic Affairs Commission were moved to the capital after a consultation in the towns of Donoso and Omar Torrijos (Colón province) and in La Pintada (Coclé province), where the subsidiary of the Canadian transnational company First Quantum Minerals (FQM) is located, amid a growing wave of protests against the agreement.

Members of the Single National Union of Construction and Similar Industry Workers (SUNTRACS) surrounded the FQM facilities and demanded that the pact be annulled because it harms national sovereignty.

Yamir Córdoba, one of the leaders of the trade union, noted that they will be careful to ensure that the legislators do not have the audacity to take the project to a second debate, because otherwise the protests will intensify on the streets. On Wednesday, the groups that make up the Pueblo Unidos por la Vida alliance will stage a rally in front of the headquarters of the Presidency of the Republic. Vigils and cultural rallies outside the Parliament will also be held throughout this week to denounce the damage to nature caused by open-pit metal mining.

The protesters will also go to the Canadian Embassy in Panama to repudiate the agreement, and if there is a second debate, there will be a national march like the one held on September 5, which ended with repressive actions by the Police to disperse the demonstrators, many of whom were students...