Panama is weighing whether to cancel its contract with the Hong Kong-based company that operates ports near the Panama Canal, people with knowledge of the situation said, a potential concession to defuse US President Donald Trump’s threats about countering China’s influence around the key waterway.
The government of Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino is weighing the possibility of canceling the contracts held by Hutchison Ports PPC, a subsidiary of billionaire Li Ka-shing’s (李嘉誠) conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd, said the people, who asked not to be identified given the commercial and political sensitivity of the issue.
They cautioned that no decision has been made, and that the government would proceed in a way intended to avoid lawsuits and follow due process.
Photo: AFP
Panama’s presidential office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Hutchison Ports PPC did not respond to a request for comment.
If such a move goes through, it would mark a major gift to Trump, who says that China has too much control over the canal and has not ruled out seizing it by force. Hutchison Ports PPC operates two of the five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal, one on each side. China has steadily eroded Hong Kong’s autonomy over the past few years.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Panamanian authorities during a visit on Sunday that steps must be taken to curb what he called China’s “unacceptable” influence over the US-built canal, which was ceded to Panama in 1999 under a treaty signed two decades earlier by former US president Jimmy Carter.
Hutchison has run the ports in Panama’s Balboa and Cristobal under a concession that was first signed in 1997 and, in 2021, extended until 2047.
It is not the only action concerning the ports. Two attorneys filed suits against the Hutchison contract on Monday, alleging it violates the country’s constitution. One of the attorneys, Norman Castro, said the concession contains excessive tax breaks and cedes large swaths of land to the port company, contravening the constitution’s guarantee of placing the public good over private interests.
Trump’s threat to take over the waterway has set off a slew of actions targeting the Hong Kong mogul’s port business in the region. Last month, Panamanian authorities sent a team of auditors to Hutchison Ports PPC to conduct what they called an “exhaustive” review to “guarantee the efficient and transparent use of public resources.”
In response to the probe, Hutchinson Ports PPC said it is committed to operating in the country and was fully cooperating with the audit.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS