The “Alianza Pueblo Unido por la Vida” (United People for Life Alliance) filed a criminal complaint for contempt in the National Assembly against Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo for reaching a deal with the Canadian transnational First Quantum Company, which was detrimental to sovereignty, the movement leaders said.

Likewise, the appeal concerns the Magistrate Maria Eugenia Lopez, current head of the Supreme Court of Justice, for her complicit position since such institution in 2017 stated the concession agreement as unconstitutional, which was in force without the corresponding bidding process.

Legal actions had been backed in the streets by the time members of Panama’s National Workers’ Trade Union blocked the capital’s main streets in rejection of the aforementioned deal that violates labor law regulations and damages the environment.

In addition, professors belonging to the School of Economics at the University of Panama issued a communiqué, in which they requested the Executive to set a moratorium on open-pit metallic mining.

Cortizo was compelled to grant journalists that an alternative to solve the conflict could be to withdraw the project from the Legislative, following the different rejecting expressions to call off the mining deal.

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