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What Must Be Done in Panama
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14535 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1988 |
2,422 Words |
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William Ratliff
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The vast majority of Panamanians are fed up with their government, though their efforts so far to effect a change have been ineffective and sometimes even counterproductive. The target of popular antagonism is not so much the official government of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (DRP) under President Eric Arturo Delvalle, which has little actual power, but the de facto power of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the commander in chief of the Panama Defense Force (PDF). A poll of the metropolitan population of Panama in August 1987 found more than three-quarters of the people want the 20,000-member PDF to get out of politics and Noriega to give up his position in the force. The evidence is piling up that Noriega and some of his colleagues in the PDF are polarizing the people and driving this once-peaceful land toward the kind of violence that has become endemic in several nearby Central American countries. And the United States is contributing to this process.
Since the United States played a leading role in setting up and training the PDF, and has major interests in the outcome of the crisis--particularly since opportunist Noriega is turning ever more to the Left for support--the United States has a special obligation to encourage Noriega to put the PDF on an apolitical track.
Scores of Panamanian democrats who have spoken out for a functioning democracy have been branded terrorists; at times, the entire National Civic Crusade, which was formed last summer and represents the national movement against Noriega, has been labeled subversive. Thousands of Panamanians have been intimidated or arrested, hundreds wounded, dozens molested or tortured, and a score exiled or killed. The opposition press was closed down for several months, and last October one of the capital's top department stores--a hotbed of Crusade support--mysteriously burned to a charred hulk.
Most of these activist Panamanians have been accused, directly or indirectly, of conspiring with "U.S. imperialism" to overthrow Noriega and renege on the canal treaties, ratified by the U.S. Congress 10 years ago this month. In December 1987, a Panamanian official even charged that the United States and members of the Crusade had plotted the assassination of Noriega. U.S. citizens have been arrested without cause, and U.S. Embassy officials held in defiance of diplomatic immunity.
Before the current crisis began, Panama was one of the most prosperous countries in the region, despite serious economic problems, and had prospects for an even brighter future. But if domestic deterioration continues and recent international orientations--toward Cuba, Libya, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union--expand, there will be increasing poverty and conflict in store for Panamanians. Furthermore, these developments will pose enormous strategic challenges for the United States, which up until now has relied heavily on the canal in its global defense strategy but may not be able to do so in the future.
Roots of crisis
The roots of the current crisis are both ancient and recent. For centuries, Panama's role in the world has been determined by its geography. The narrow isthmus has been used for transporting goods between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans since before Columbus. Cortés was the first to suggest constructing a waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
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