Panama reactivates its diplomacy, stakes out new international mission

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (EFE) Panama’s Foreign Minister, Erika Mouynes, has the firm intention of cleaning up and strengthening her country’s international position, for which, among other measures, she has reactivated direct diplomacy even during the pandemic, with a series of trips that will take her to Ecuador, Spain, Belgium, and Costa Rica.

With Panama “in a very positive situation in terms of the prognosis” of the pandemic, Mouynes explained in an interview with EFE that she is preparing to make her first trips since she took office as foreign minister on December 2, 2020, in the midst of the second wave of Covid-19 infections in her country.

The Panamanian minister wants to offer the international community a country of “safe investments” committed to “financial transparency”, the “defense of the environment,” and “calm mediation” in regional conflicts and problems such as migration.

PANAMA MISSION

To this end, she has baptized her diplomatic plan with the name of “Mission Panama”, which embodies a team aimed at cleaning up, strengthening, and adjusting the country’s international image to reality “through a strategy of forums, media, and public relations”.

“We are looking to change the harmful dynamics of a narrative that we have been dragging along, really through no fault of our own”, in which Panama has been identified as a country “where fraudulent companies set up shop”.

Mouynes’ administration seeks to “break with that image and show a very different Panama, extremely committed to the highest standards of transparency.”

“From an objective point of view”, based on the analysis of international financial organizations and entities specialized in the matter, Panama does not figure among the countries that harbor this type of companies; “not even 1 percent of the companies established in Panama are offshore,” the Chancellor assured.

“We are a country that seeks good and respected investments, managed transparently,” she explained.

Mouynes is also engaged in the task of having Panama recognized as a world leader in defense of the environment, being one of only three carbon negative countries in the world.

Another area in which Panama seeks to play a leading international role is in the solutions to migration in Latin America, which has become a place where thousands of extra-continental people are stranded in transit from South America to the United States.

In the first place, said the Panamanian Foreign Minister, “we have to bring all the actors to the table, from the United States, which is the main target of these people, but also the countries of South America that receive these migrations and let them leave” to the north.

“Our second line of work is directly with Colombia,” said Mouynes, explaining that Panama has not so far achieved the same collaboration with that country as with its other neighbor, Costa Rica, in terms of migrant transit.

INTERNATIONAL TOUR

“After almost a year (..) in which we have not been allowed to travel, we resume travel and direct encounter, which are so necessary”, said Mouynes, with a “first trip” to Ecuador to attend the inauguration of the new president of that country, Guillermo Lasso, next May 24.

“We are already articulating”, she advanced, meetings with all the foreign ministers, not only of the region”, which will be “precious meetings” after so many months of confinement limited to “telephone conversations”.

In the first days of June, Mouynes will travel to Costa Rica to attend a summit of the Central American Integration System (SICA), to which the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has been invited.

Later in the same month, the Panamanian minister announced that she will go to Spain, where “we have a political dialogue agreement pending signature” and where “we seek to strengthen ties”.

“From there,” she continued, “we are going to Brussels to meet with the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Spaniard Josep Borrell.”

The objective of this visit is to “strengthen our strategic position with partners such as the European Union” and to strengthen Panama’s participation as a Latin American headquarters of the Copernicus Program of the European Space Agency (ESA) for satellite observation of the Earth.

PANDEMIC UNDER CONTROL

Regarding the current pandemic situation, the Panamanian Chancellor was pleased that in her country, “cases” of Covid-19 and deaths “have decreased considerably” as a response to “a comprehensive strategy of hospital care, traceability, and constant (detection) tests”. “We are in a very positive situation in terms of prognosis, especially because we already have the vaccines.”

“We have turned the pandemic around, and today, with clear numbers, we are heading towards economic recovery,” she asserted.

Source: efe