{"id":370035,"date":"2018-07-19T11:51:06","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T10:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/general-strike-and-ongoing-protests-in-panama-against-electricity-rate-hike\/"},"modified":"2018-07-19T11:51:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T10:51:06","slug":"general-strike-and-ongoing-protests-in-panama-against-electricity-rate-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/general-strike-and-ongoing-protests-in-panama-against-electricity-rate-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"General strike and ongoing protests in Panama against electricity rate hike"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>General strike and ongoing protests in Panama against electricity rate hike<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Andrea Lobo<br \/>\n    <br \/>19 July 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>A general strike brought most of Panama to a halt on Monday as social anger toward planned rate hikes on electricity continues to grow and merge with opposition to social inequality and ongoing attacks against workers\u2019 living standards across different sectors.<\/p>\n<p>Ongoing protests, barricades, and violent clashes with the police since last week forced the conservative Paname\u00f1ista Party government of president Juan Carlos Varela to appeal Monday for \u201csocial peace\u201d and suspend the 8.4 percent increase in electricity prices for households that consume more than 300 kWh.<\/p>\n<p>While claiming that the Congress will debate a supplementary budget of $300 million to cover the $60 million increase in electricity costs, Varela warned \u201cif the fiscal disbursement is not approved \u2026 other areas of the state will be affected.\u201d In other words, the government will ensure the working class pays through a tariff hike, future regressive taxes, social cuts and other attacks against the public sector.<\/p>\n<p>Already, an IMF-dictated fiscal responsibility law being discussed in Congress is expected to reduce the public deficit to 1.5 percent. According to an IMF mission last month, this will require the government \u201ccurb the growth of current expenditures to provide additional room for needed strategic public spending.\u201d One of the explanations of the tariff hike given by the state transmission authority ETESA is that the government needs to cover the costs of a recently-built transmission line. After the construction last October of the country\u2019s third transmission line, president Varela and ETESA both promised lower rates for consumers.<\/p>\n<p>However, both are now referring to the need to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/07\/19\/pana-j19.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 General strike and ongoing protests in Panama against electricity rate hike By Andrea Lobo 19 July 2018 A general strike brought most of Panama to a halt on Monday as social anger toward planned rate hikes on electricity continues to grow and merge with opposition to social inequality and ongoing attacks against workers\u2019 living [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-370035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}