25
application to events having occurred since December 4, 1990. None of the articles
of the Law established the requirement of a previous trial, since what was sought
was the immediate dismissal of a group of workers. He did not participate in the
preparation of Resolution N° 10 of January 23, 1991, of the Cabinet Council.
Minister Ricardo Arias-Calderón sent him the draft bill, which was approved by the
Cabinet Council, with instructions to the effect that he regard it as a priority issue
and that he express an immediate opinion with respect thereto. He went to the
office of the Minister and delivered his opinion verbally, having pointed out that his
first impression was that such bill was going to be unconstitutional in some respects,
and that it violated human rights since it intended to define conducts having been
displayed as of December 4 or 5, and a summary administrative conflicts proceeding
was established for all of the workers, whether they were or not protected by a
special law. The Minister told him that the problem was that the President wanted
that bill to be discussed and passed that afternoon, since he was going to forward it
immediately to the legislative body in order for it to become a law. The Minister did
not take into consideration the legal reasons for which the Law should not be passed,
since it was felt that it was a strictly political situation, a decision of the Christian
Democratic Party.
Law 25 grants the public servants affected access to an
administrative and judicial revision of their cases. In Panama, the Supreme Court is
the entity responsible for the control of constitutionality, that is, for determining
judicially the existence of a defect of unconstitutionality in a law.
b.
Statement of José Mauad-Doré, General
National Telecommunications Institute
Manager
of
the
In November, 1990 more than 3,900 workers were under his sphere of authority.
Approximately in the month of October, 1990, a general request was set forth and
submitted to the National Government by the Co-ordinating Organisation of State
Enterprise Workers Unions. He knows about the promotional labour union activities
carried out by the workers of INTEL, that is, the December 4, 1990, march, and the
December 5, 1990, work stoppage. There were labour union delegates at the INTEL
work sites who, according to reports by the administrative heads, were convoked,
together with the workers union leaders, to meetings for motivation, encouragement
and organisation of the march that took place on the 4th, and the work stoppage
that had been scheduled for the following day.
Said meetings took place
approximately over the 10 days that preceded the December 4 march. He attended
some of these meetings. The work stoppage organisers and promoters expressed to
him that the reasons for the work stoppage were, in general, certain aspects of the
political situation of the country which affected their condition as workers or citizens,
and that these were not legal objections or legal type arguments, but instead a
proposal of a rather national nature. At these meetings he suggested two things:
that to participate in a march was a right that every citizen had, but that for the
purposes of INTEL it had to take place after 4 o’clock in the afternoon, which was
quitting time for the workers, and that the convocation to the work stoppage on the
5th bore no relationship to any problem in which the institution may have been
involved. On December 5, 1990, in the early hours of the morning, a partial work
stoppage took place at INTEL. The latter included personnel whose shift started at 7
o’clock in the morning and administrative office personnel whose shift started at 8
o’clock in the morning; these were hours of service to the public, which was affected
as a consequence of said convocation. Approximately at 9 o’clock in the morning of
the 5th, INTEL workers had gathered outside the work sites. Approximately as of 8
thirty and 9 o’clock in the morning, some executives and he approached these
groups of workers to ask them to return to their jobs; some did so as of 9 in the