Getting Rid of Noriega Now a Panama Project

For 2 1/2 years the Reagan Administration has been trying to get rid of Panama’s strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, using threats, tricks, legal maneuvers, bribes and incantations. None of them worked; U.S. policy-makers stumbled into a political swamp while Noriega laughed.

Today President George Bush is looking for a better way and Noriega is fighting to stay on top. The May 7 election, rigged and annulled, has changed the picture. Getting rid of the general is no longer Washington’s assumed responsibility. That has been accepted, as it should be, by the Panamanian opposition. Other Latin American democracies understand; they know what has happened. While Noriega’s swift downfall is by no means assured, neither is his political survival as certain as it has been.

Rigged or flagrantly stolen elections have not been rare in Latin America but in this one Noriega revealed that he had lost touch with reality, a most dangerous lapse for a dictator. He thought he could win--or come close enough to adjust the result easily. Confidently, he held his election in a gold fish bowl with the world watching. Hundreds of observers from dozens of countries moved around freely. Among them was former President Jimmy Carter, who spoke to Noriega the day before the election and heard no hint about the possibility of defeat.

Election day was a festive occasion. Families flocked to the polls, uninhibited in cheering opposition candidates, waiting for hours to vote. There were irregularities--polling places late in opening, shortages of opposition ballots and multiple voting by soldiers and government supporters. But essentially small stuff. From the observers’ accounts, only after the ballots were counted in the local polling places, and the results showed Noriega’s crushing defeat, did the climax come.

At that point, Carter reported later, the local tally sheets were seized and replaced with counterfeits. Carter went to the top electoral tribunal the next day to watch the national vote count and was coldly turned away. Forbidden to hold a press conference, he met reporters in a crowded hotel corridor to voice disgust. Noriega had affronted Panama’s best friend in the United States. The general clearly intends to stay in power, whatever the cost, and he must think that he can.

Noriega’s power base is the military--15,000 soldiers and police of the Panama Defense Forces, the PDF, plus 10,000 irregulars of the so-called Dignity Battalions. He treats them well. Not only is the treasury in his hands, he also cuts the military in on profitable deals--down to the PDF sergeants, who have the food concession at a popular beach resort. Having dealt with several rebellions in recent years, Noriega has meanwhile weeded out dissident officers, down to the rank of major.

Yet outsiders widely assume that if Noriega is to be forced out, it must be by-- or with the help of--the military. Bush has openly appealed to the army to overthrow the general. The Panamanian opposition offers an arrangement with the PDF, preserving its proper role in a democratic society. To move down that road, however, the soldiers must first conclude that Noriega’s future is not, after all, their future.

The failed election may be a first push in that direction. The general, who has out-maneuvered the Yanquis and who held his ground against massive protest demonstrations, including the general strike of 1988, has lost his touch. Caught red-handed before the world, he has inevitably also lost face. The Socialist International had already withdrawn observer status from Noriega’s Revolutionary Democratic Party. The Group of Eight Latin American states dealing with the Central America problem has excluded Panama. Not that isolation is, in itself, so damaging. Paraguay’s dictator Alfredo Stroessner spent most of his 35 years in power as an international pariah. He was thrown out by a general only this year.

Panama is in serious economic trouble and now has nowhere to turn for effective help. The regime is incompetent as well as corrupt, unable to command popular support. A thinking soldier may well begin to wonder about his future.

The United States shares responsibility for Noriega’s rise. Seven administrations dealt with him, welcoming his intelligence information and praising him for cooperating in drug enforcements. They helped him build the PDF as a stabilizing element in turbulent Central America and, ultimately, to defend the Panama Canal. Then the Reagan Administration turned him into a powerful adversary, shaking Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick while demanding his departure.

Reagan proclaimed a national emergency to impose selective economic sanctions on Panama. Meanwhile, leaving the Panamanian opposition in the dark and undercutting Latin American efforts, Washington negotiated privately with Noriega for months, even offering to quash narcotics and money-laundering indictments against him if he would retire with dignity. The general cast himself in the role of dauntless patriot, defying and outwitting Yanqui imperialism.

Bush has clearly dropped the quick victory, go-it-alone approach. The level of rhetoric is down--no threats of further sanctions, intervention or abrogating the treaties to turn the Canal over to Panama at noon, Dec. 31, 1999. Bush has called for solidarity with Latin American democracies, all equally appalled by May 7 and the brutality that followed. The Organization of American States meeting in Washington last week expressed indignation against Noriega but divided on taking a strong stand, let alone action. Action is too much to expect so soon. Washington must regain the confidence it has squandered.

The United States has a leading part to play, having historical ties with the people of Panama stronger than those with any other Latin American country. And it has an abiding interest in an open Canal. But so does Japan, now Panama’s second-largest trading partner. Japan, so far so quiet, must be persuaded to join in showing active disapproval, disabusing Noriega’s expectation that he will surmount this crisis too.

Inevitably, the main burden falls on the Panamanian opposition. For them, May 7 was a watershed. Solid evidence that they have enthusiastic national supportt gives them fresh standing in their own eyes and in the aroused community. They have stood up under bloody attack and have refused invitations since May 7 to compromise and form a “unity government” with the Noriega camp. The Catholic Church has expressed support for them--and condemnation of the general--more clearly than ever before. Church political influence should not be overestimated in Panama but its moral verdict carries weight.

Noriega will now, of course, use talent and stick to hold his operation together, playing for time, trying to blur the issues. In this new phase, U.S. policy should be carefully modulated--firm, consistent, unprovocative, taking its cue from the Panamanian opposition. At the same time, it should encourage the men and women who have just beaten the machine to formulate a clear social and political program, helping them without trying to steer.

The goal must be an independent, democratic nation promising a stability that ensures the world’s free use of the Panama Canal into the 21st Century.