I'm John Bachelors with Ernesto Arrujo, former Mr. the Republic of Brazil and Joseph

Uymie, Executive Director, Secure Free Society.

Quickly, Panama has trouble in all directions.

Its president at the moment, who's not running for re-election,

is ill with a rare blood disease.

The drought continues and the shipping in the Panama Canal is extremely backed up and slow and has to

offload some of its cargo in order to get through the canal because there's a shortage of water from the

lake that feeds the canal. In addition, there's a dispute over the large copper mine that is

part of the economy of Panama.

Joseph, just quickly, because it's also involved

in the Darien gap.

Do you measure that Panama is stabilizing

with these troubles, or is it continuing

to decline in a question of a governance?

No, I think it's rapidly declining.

This is very sad to see because Panama was one of the upstart countries in Latin American,

Central America in particular.

It was once growing at 10% per year, about a decade ago.

I got hit by the pandemic like most countries do, especially smaller countries that are

dependent on tourism. But really what I'm looking at with Panama is kind of like

a multi-dimensional asymmetric attack because you're seeing it on the political level with the protest

You're seated on the security level with the mass migration and drugs

...