After only four days of reading, meeting and discussing, the Supreme Court of Panama has ruled the Cobre Mine contract is unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the court stated that entire law 406 of October 20, 2023 is unconstitutional.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/top-panama-court-rules-first-quantum-mining-contract-unconstitutional-2023-11-28/
So what does that really mean? (Reuters is usually pretty good but seems to focus on the money more than anything else.)
In the next hours, or a day or two, I expect celebrations, perhaps in the streets. Will that mean that all the streets and roads and highways will now be opened up for travel and trade for good? (Once the partying is over that is.) That is yet to be determined. There are many players in this 37 day long mess. Doctors and nurses joined the protestors for a bit. Teachers seem to continue to block the roads even though they, as of yesterday, will no longer be getting paid. Something like 1 in 5 teachers went back to work. SUNTRACS, the major union for road construction and similar workers seem to have been less in the pictures on the nightly news. But something I did not see coming happened yesterday. The fishermen closed a main entrance into Panama City angry about a new law about where they can harvest it seemed. My Spanish is not as good as it should be. And in the western part of the country, some of the Indigenous protest leaders have said that the road closures will continue until the mine is closed. Some protestors have tried to block workers entering the mine itself. Some have tried to block ship carrying mine products from leaving the port. But the mine company, Canadian First Quantum, has already said they will take this to court.
There has been some violence over the last month. Two teachers were shot and killed by a 70 something dual US/Panamanian citizen lawyer. A gun got pulled out against some other protestors but no shots fired. A couple of people were injured via vehicles trying to drive through road closures. And the national police have used plenty of tear gas. Naturally, tourism is way down.
If you have or had vacation plans for Panama in the near future, stay hopeful. It really depends on where and how you were going to visit. Panama City to Santiago is pretty good. That includes the Pacific beach places like Coronado. Bocas del Toro? I would think about visiting there for a few weeks as the fuel and food supplies have been blocked down to next to nothing for now. But the weather is grand and most of the people will be pretty happy to see you. And they will need the tourist dollars. Remember. Panama uses the US dollar.