27 court of law once the governmental recourse had been exhausted. He participated only in one administrative conflicts remedy before the Third Section of the Supreme Court; he did not participate in any penal proceedings. He does not remember whether there were any dismissals between December 5 and 14, 1990. The workers of INTEL were under a work contract. c. Statement of Rogelio Cruz-Ríos, Attorney General of the Nation from December 1990 to November 1991 According to the Constitution of Panama, the Attorney General of the Nation is the Head of the Prosecutorial Agency, whose main duty is to investigate offences, pursue offenders and transmit later the case to the judicial branch to be finally solved. The Cabinet Council is comprised of the President of the Republic, the two Vice Presidents, and the State Ministers. Said Council appoints the Attorney General of the Nation, such appointment being subject to approval by the Legislative Assembly. At the time of the December 4 and 5, 1990, events the Panamanian Government had been in power for one year after more than 20 years of military dictatorship. Within such a context, certain labour, union, and specifically public servant groups whose activities were governed by the Labour Code, submitted a number of petitions to the National Government, which were rejected. This group of labour unions and workers announced a march for December 4, 1990. In the course of such march, colonel Eduardo Herrera-Hassán, who had been the Third Chief of the National Police, and who was under detention, escaped together with other former members of the military, thanks to the complicity of National Police personnel. Following this they took the National Police headquarters. In the morning of December 5, 1990, colonel Herrera-Hassán led a public march with weapons through the streets of Panama City, supposedly to address the Legislative Assembly, where he intended to speak to the country. Very few persons took part in the march, basically armed military or formerly military personnel. No workers took part in it. Colonel Herrera-Hassán’s movement was discovered early in the morning of the 5th, approximately at nine thirty, when U.S. Army forces arrested the colonel and turned him over to the Panamanian authorities. It became publicly known that, being aware that the Executive Branch intended to associate them with colonel Herrera-Hassán’s movement, the workers suspended the work stoppage that they had scheduled. This double situation, the petition and the workers’ march, on the one hand, and the escape of colonel Herrera-Hassán, on the other, generated a crisis situation that the National Government did not know how to handle at that moment; perhaps it should have decreed a state of urgency but it did not do so. As Attorney General of the Nation he felt that the worker’s movement did not endanger or affect either the march of democratic institutions or public security. The Constitution governed mechanisms to cope with situations of urgency or public order disturbance, which were not used. The Government rushed into the adoption of certain measures, basically Law 25. He was requested, in his capacity as Attorney General of the Nation, to accuse the union leaders of felonious participation together with colonel Eduardo Herrera-Hassán; however, he did not formulate the accusation since he found no elements of judgment that would enable him to tie together the union leaders with the felonious acts under investigation. Messengers from the official domain told him that what he had to do was to put the union leaders in prison and that the problem would be solved this way. Something that has to be taken into consideration is the fact that these were strong, powerful unions that President Endara-Galimany’s administration regarded as political opponents. The purpose of Law 25 was simply to cause them to disappear. The Government proceeded to pass quickly the cited Law 25, which, in his opinion, was absolutely unconstitutional. Said