LatinNews Daily - 14 August 2025

*Panama’s supreme court (CSJ) has suspended the application of a controversial agreement whereby justices would be able to retire on 100% of their salaries. The agreement, which was approved by the CSJ in July 2024 but published in the national gazette on 8 August, has caused major uproar from various sectors. The position of the justices looked increasingly untenable after the government led by President José Raúl Mulino came out against it. On 12 August Panama’s finance minister, Felipe Chapman, told the press that he had written to the CSJ telling it to reconsider, warning that it was sending out the wrong message to the public, as well as local and international markets, at a time when the government was under pressure to address the fiscal deficit. Panama’s comptroller general, Anel Flores, had also announced plans to file legal action against the agreement which was criticised by the private sector as well as civil-society groups such as Fundación para el Desarrollo de la Libertad Ciudadana (FDLC), the local branch of international NGO Transparency International (TI). Private sector representatives such as Juan Arias, the president of the country’s main business lobby Cámara de Comercio, Industrias y Agricultura de Panamá (CCIAP), and Ernesto Cedeño Alvarado, an opposition legislator and constitutional lawyer, nonetheless complain that the decision to suspend the agreement doesn’t go far enough and the agreement should be eliminated altogether; Cedeño had previously said that the agreement represents an “usurpation” of the legislature’s functions.

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