After a promising start, the Dutch farmers’ protests against measures to reduce pollution and overall shittiness are already on the decline. Today they caused a couple of traffic jams somewhere in the interior of the country, it lasted for a few hours, and that was it. Are they giving up? It certainly seems that way.
Or does it? It also was revealed today that the Dutch government, a bunch of inept neoliberals mired in corruption scandals, is planning to do what inept governments always do in times of trouble: throw money at the problem. Hundreds of millions of euros, to be precise, to give the farmers a deal that artists, teachers, nurses, bar owners and others who got screwed over during the corona pandemic can only dream of.
So much winning
And yet, the farmers protests were interesting enough when they started. The strategy of bringing the government to its knees by blocking major infrastructure was initially executed well, and the farmers weren’t shy of showing up with their monster vehicles at the house of the minister responsible for their anger, causing a total shit panic among the bourgeois parliamentary bunch of the governing coalition. The Dutch police, sympathetic to the cause, did very little to stop the mayhem — a sharp contrast with the violence they readily use when, say, a dozen or so climate activists occupy a small intersection in The Hague. The protests then gained support from the lunatic conspiracy crowd that had earlier protested against corona measures.
The latter might very well have been the kiss of death for the farmers. Fascist politicians, missing the good old covid times and having discovered that shilling for Vladimir Putin doesn’t go over well with an overwhelmingly pro-Ukraine Dutch population, saw an opportunity to control the narrative again. Any narrative. The government plan, they told their wacko followers, was to take the land away from the farmers to use it to build houses for asylum seekers. Under the guise of measures to combat climate change, the evil intention was to replace the population with immigrants, fascist leaders like Gideon van Meijeren maintained. To stop this from happening, violence would be acceptable, even encouraged, he added.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek, a fringe fascist babble-barbie from the same school of conspiracy thought, meanwhile managed to get herself on the infamous Tucker Carlson show at the blowjobs-for-real-jobs Fox News cable TV station in the US, where she launched into an unprecedented stream of drivel about the fantasy secret communist agenda of the Dutch neoliberal government.
Thing is, the Dutch generally don’t like this nonsense. From the moment the rightwing extremists entered the fray, support for the farmers’ cause has been dwindling and with that the protests themselves. Some farmers will get money, others will pay a heavy price for never paying attention to climate change and teaming up with fascists and nazis. The political arm of the mafia-like agro-industrial complex, a legislator called Caroline van der Plas who infamously compared farmers with Ukranian war victims, will no doubt claim victory.
Panama protesta
Things are, of course, completely different in Panama. The people of the Central American country are in the streets, massively, to protest against the high cost of living, against corruption, against a government that spends an enormous amount of money on pay checks for people who never do any work. The governing party, the PRD, is a remnant from the military dictatorship and has over the decades become a smooth running corruption machine. The previous president that this party produced, Martin Torrijos, was elected despite the fact that he couldn’t string three coherent sentences together and had been involved in a narco kidnap on behalf of Noriega — the population just was fed up with his predecessor, the klepto-queen Mireya Moscoso. After Torrijos came Ricardo Martinelli, independent and a supermarket mogul and mobster, whose kids are now in jail in the US because they laundered bribes for their dad. So now with Nito Cortizo, the current president from the PRD payola machine, the circle is complete.
But Cortizo and his gang could not foresee the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, both of which destroyed the culture of respect for authority and the informal economy that is the engine of Panama’s society. While the PRD was partying, people suffered. And then, fed up, they shut down the country. Literally, the highways are blocked in several places, today there was talk of blockades on all access roads to the airport. There are massive marches everywhere, some of which turn into riots and others into carnival. And these Panamanians are winning, without tractors and without fascists.
Cortizo announced that prices of some products would be frozen. Like, canned tuna, rice and sardines. And chicken. And then some other things that nobody eats. The day after that announcement, the protests intensified. One demand: cut the botella, the inflated government payroll with friends and family getting a salary without doing any work. Like PRD oligarch Susana Richa de Torrijos, who at the age of 97 and despite considerable personal wealth, supposedly shows up every day at work at the Ministry of Education to work as an “advisor” for $4,000 per month. Just one example out of a long list of profiteers and corruptos who steal money that could be used for education, health care, and social services.
“Okay,” said Cortizo, “I’ll cut the planilla.”
“Don’t fire the cleaners and the nurses,” said the protesters, knowingly, “fire the profiteers.” And then they launched a crowdsourced effort to comb through the government payroll and find those thieves.
This is all unprecedented. Protests in Panama can be tense and violent and forceful, but they usually don’t last this long and they aren’t this massive — I can say this because I covered many of them. That people are on social media going through the government finances, checking names on the payroll, was up until recently something unimaginable.
President Nito Cortizo has now asked for help from the Catholic Church to mediate. People on social media wonder why they should talk with pedophiles and rapists who are consistently let off the hook in a country where la ley es pa’ pendejos.
One thing Cortizo can not do is to throw money at the problem — the money has all been stolen.
Will the Panamanians win? I hope so. Regardless, they are already an example for the Dutch, with their farmers revolution of the Lamborghinis. On social media, Panamanians share enthusiastically videos from protesters in Sri Lanka swimming in the pool of the presidential residence after having chased the president out of the country. An example, I suppose.
Might you come back to Panama to cover this story on the ground? We need you back now more than ever. It feels like we are in Cuba in June of 1953. Will the Panamanian people tire of protesting and give up or does this keep going, who knows? but nobody is more suited to report on this in the English language.