Through his website, former president Ernesto Pérez Balladares, left his impressions given in an interview in infoanalysis, on the closure of commercial operations of the copper project, due to breach of the agreed commitments by the company in charge of the operation. In his opinion, what is appropriate now is to “renegotiate that contract and not with First Quantum Minerals. We must disassociate ourselves from the foreign States that are involved in this company. I think we have to look for an operator with which we can have a different relationship,” said the former president.
The origin
Pérez Balladares explained that this contract originated during his administration, in 1997, when nobody thought that we could be a mining country. It was a concession granted to the Panamanian Richard Pfeiffer, who has historically been linked to this activity. “It was a contract that contemplated more exploration than mining… there was no mining experience in Panama and we did not even know if we had metallic minerals or not”; hence, only 2% of the profits were considered.
Subsequently, Mr. Pfeiffer sold the concession to another company, which in turn sold it to First Quantum. “Now it is known that First Quantum has at least 40% ownership by foreign governments, which is unconstitutionally unacceptable in Panama,” explained Dr. Pérez Balladares, who also mentioned China, Singapore and Korea as the countries that would have shares in that company.
the unacceptable
He emphasized that the time to renegotiate the conditions that his government established in 1997 was when the administration of Juan Carlos Varela extended the contract in 2016. “But it was not done. On December 30, at 2:55 in the afternoon, as if very quietly, it was renewed for 20 more years, when a halt should have been made to change the conditions to something that was truly favorable to Panama. At that time there was already a very large investment made, there were all the favorable elements for us… very different from 97 that there was nothing”, said Pérez Balladares who, in addition, during the commercial break, expressed behind the scenes: “they put a goal then!”.
the cantinflada
In the opinion of the former president, the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice with which the decree-law that endorses the operation of Minera Panama was declared unconstitutional was a great damage to the country. He recalled that it was based on the alleged breach of a decree of the year 69 and expressed: “I am not a lawyer, but I do not understand why a ruling is made in this way, affecting national interests, much more than protecting them. The worst thing is that it was not even published and they worked on a contract that did not exist… what we did was what the Mining Code allowed us to do”, he clarified.
international demands
Concerned about the legal consequences of the Executive’s decision against First Quantum Minerals, Pérez Balladares pointed out that “not doing it is worse. Panama has a lot of experience in winning international arbitrations. We have won all the arbitrations in which we have been a party; for example, with the expansion of the canal. We have all the evidence to go to arbitration and win it because the relationship we have is not fair and it is also unconstitutional”.
backstage
Although for the ex-president it is an insult to the dignity of Panama that an agreement was accepted and “drag your feet until today not to sign it”, he considers that it was perfectly possible to investigate a little more about what were the causes of denying what agreed January 2022. He speculated that the negotiations taking place here could negatively impact First Quantum’s interests in Zambia, where they are trying to renew a mining contract with a new government that is demanding far more than they had. He also thinks it’s possible that copper price projections had some impact on the contention.
Regarding the question of whether or not the government of Nito Cortizo hastened announcing some progress in the negotiations, Dr. Pérez Balladares said that “it may be that they anticipated hope within the bad climate of bad news resulting from this pandemic and what has happened to us in recent years»; but he also recalled that a document of intent on the improvements that were wanted to materialize in favor of Panama was already on the table.
The debate
The circumstances now, more than 20 years later, are very different. We know that we have a very large mineral wealth, not only there but in other parts of the country. Society has a decision to make: do we want to leave it buried? Do we want to exploit it? How are we going to do it? Should we do it in a way that ultimately respects ecology? » There is a cost for creating that wealth and then comes the issue how these benefits are going to be distributed for the Panamanian people”. These are the issues that we have to discuss, said Pérez Balladares.
The former president also certified the content of a letter handwritten by his mentor, General Omar Torrijos, which is currently circulating on social networks. He pointed out that he was referring to the negotiations that took place with Río Tinto Zinc in Cerro Colorado and the different mining areas that they found with that company in Africa and other places, in which there was no positive economic impact for the communities.
In the opinion of Pérez Balladares, today more than ever Panama must seek an association mechanism for the exploitation of mining that is productive from the human point of view. He acknowledges that, in that regard, what First Quantum Minerals has done “is not negative.” An economic area has been developed that benefits at least 40,000 inhabitants and there are 7,000 workers who have been trained. “In 1997 we didn’t have miners, now there are”; but that does not mean that they want to do better and more, he concluded.
Other themes
The participation of Dr. Pérez Balladares in Infoanalisis served to explore other topics of national interest; among them the actions of the political opposition, the economic management of the current government and the internal situation of the PRD. In this regard, he once again said that “I have no affinity with the current leadership” of the party. That is why he rules out participating in any way in the events that are to come.
