(Prensa Latina) Social and alternative electronic media in Panama expressed indignation on Monday, after threats made by Mauricio Claver-Carone, the special advisor for Latin America of US President Donald Trump, regarding the possible hiring of Cuban physicians.
A few hours after Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo informed that negotiations with Cuba were under way to send some medical brigades to the country, Claver-Carone publicly announced an immediate high-level visit headed by US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien.
‘The US questioning Cuba’s collaboration is a disrespectful interference in our international relations. I would like the US or other countries also to offer to collaborate with Panama in this health crisis,’ the rector of the University of Panama, Eduardo Flores, wrote on Twitter.
Another statement was made by former Panamanian Ambassador in Washington Eloy Alfaro, who twitted, ‘We are criticizing the Cuban doctors who may come to support us. And I wonder, where are the gringo doctors who support us?’
A strong message was sent over the weekend by the Panama Social Forum, which in one of its final documents condemned the US interference because ‘we are not a protectorate, a colony or an Associated State of the United States’.
The document expressed suspicion that a month before the swear-in ceremony of the new Panamanian president, the country was included in the gray list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), attached to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is dominated by the United States.
Meanwhile, Claver-Carone’s recent approach is that one of the public objectives of the visit is to collaborate with Panama to overcome the FATF’s remarks, which local analysts have described as the carrot to force the government with the stick to act according to the imperial interests.
The campaign against Cuba’s international medical cooperation has been described as slanderous by Cuban authorities, who assure that it is the pretext to tighten the blockade against the Caribbean island amid the Covid-19 pandemic, while trying to divert public opinion’s attention from the US Government’s bad management of the health crisis.
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