‘Trump is lying’: Panama’s president refutes claims that US will take back canal

Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino on Wednesday accused his US counterpart Donald Trump of “lying” about Washington taking back the Panama Canal.

“Once again, President Trump is lying. The Panama Canal is not in the process of recovery,” Mulino wrote on X.

“I reject, on behalf of Panama and all Panamanians, this new affront to the truth and to our dignity as a nation,” Mulino added, after Trump said that his administration had started to take back the vital waterway.

“To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it,” Trump said in a speech to Congress Tuesday. “We’re taking it back.”

‘Purely commercial’ transaction

Under mounting pressure from Washington, Hong Kong firm Hutchison said Tuesday it had agreed to sell its lucrative Panama Canal ports to a US-led consortium.

CK Hutchison Holdings said it would offload a 90-percent stake in the Panama Ports Company (PPC) and sell a slew of other non-Chinese ports to a group led by asset manager BlackRock.

In a filing, CK Hutchison Holding said Tuesday that it would sell all shares in Hutchison Port Holdings and in Hutchison Port Group Holdings to the BlackRock consortium in a deal valued at nearly $23 billion, including $5 billion in debt.

The deal has to be approved by Panama’s government.

The US built the canal in the early 1900s as it looked for ways to facilitate the transit of commercial and military vessels between its coasts. Washington relinquished control of the waterway to Panama on December 31, 1999, under a treaty signed in 1977 by then US president, Jimmy Carter. Trump has claimed that Carter “foolishly” gave the canal away.

Frank Sixt, co-managing director of CK Hutchison, said in a statement that the transaction was “the result of a rapid, discrete but competitive process in which numerous bids and expressions of interest were received”.

“I would like to stress that the transaction is purely commercial in nature and wholly unrelated to recent political news reports concerning the Panama Ports,” Sixt said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

France24