Leader of powerful Panamanian union scales embassy wall, requests asylum from Bolivia

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PANAMA CITY (AP) — A leader of Panama’s most powerful union, a driving force for weeks of street protests against social security reforms, climbed an embassy wall and requested political asylum from Bolivia on Wednesday.

Hours later, Panamanian prosecutors announced that arrest orders had been issued in relation to a three-year investigation into the national construction workers union that he led. Prosecutors did not name the targets of the investigation.

Panama’s Foreign Relations Ministry confirmed that Saúl Méndez, the union’s secretary general, had requested asylum.

Bolivia’s business attache in Panama, Carlos Javier Suárez Cornejo, said Méndez was given temporary protection while they evaluated his case.

A day earlier, the government of President José Raúl Mulino announced that the union’s legal status had been canceled because it did not have necessary internal controls, among them to prevent money laundering.

Another of the union’s leaders, Jaime Caballero, was arrested a week earlier for alleged money laundering.

The union has been a central force in a month of street protests that sometimes blocked major highways. The demands have included scrapping reforms to Panama’s social security system and opposition to a security agreement giving U.S. soldiers and contractors access to some facilities in Panama.

Marches continued Wednesday, but roadblocks that had snarled traffic were gone.

Mulino has said the reforms were necessary to keep the social security system solvent and denied that the agreement with the United States infringes on Panama’s sovereignty.