With Coup Foiled, Noriega Turns to Weeding Out Foes : NEWS ANALYSIS

As Radio Exitosa broadcast that rebel officers had ousted Gen. Manuel A. Noriega last week, cheers erupted from the Ministry of Health. Jubilant Treasury employees began to celebrate, and workers at the National Casinos headquarters took the dictator’s portrait off the wall.

“There were content faces in all of the ministries,” said Justice Minister Olmedo Miranda. “When our enemies thought the movement had triumphed, they showed their euphoria.”

Such open expressions of contempt for Noriega were unprecedented within the state bureaucracy. But with the failure of the bloody uprising, they served the general well by exposing his enemies in the civilian ranks of government as well as those in the armed forces.

Afterward, Radio Exitosa was sacked by armed thugs and taken off the air for having broadcast the rebel communique. Noriega ordered up a list of his enemies in the civil service and a decree making it easier to fire them. At least 37 of the rebels have been jailed and their leaders killed.

Although the attempted coup left the 51-year-old general more politically isolated than ever, it may have weakened his foes even more. With his new battle cry--”Blows for the indecisive, bullets for our enemies and bucks for our friends”--he is clearly on the offensive.

A major and three captains of the Panama Defense Forces led about 200 soldiers in the assault on their commander’s headquarters last Tuesday morning, while U.S. troops at a nearby base blocked access roads to the besieged compound. Amid fierce mortar and gunfire, the rebels held the building with Noriega inside for five hours before loyalist troops retook it. Ten rebels were reported killed, and five fled to a nearby U.S. military base.

The Bush Administration has come under fire from Congress for not sending American troops to seize Noriega during the uprising. U.S. officials say they still hope that the Panamanian people and dissidents in the Defense Forces will rise up on their own.

But that is not likely to happen soon, according to diplomats, opposition leaders and ordinary Panamanians. Some Panamanians are waiting for the United States to invade. Leaders of opposition parties are exiled or on the run. And now, opponents within the bureaucracy are about to be removed.

A package of decrees aimed at inflicting economic hardship on foes of Noriega would eliminate job security for Panama’s 146,000 civil servants, allowing officials to fire anyone who fails to express “loyalty and patriotism” to the government.

Schoolteachers Targeted

The decrees would abolish the personnel board that now appoints public schoolteachers, whose large union is one of the last organized bastions of anti-Noriega activism.

Opponents of the general who control much of Panama’s steel and pharmaceutical industries would be hurt by a measure to lower barriers on the imports of those goods from foreign competitors.

The decrees also would toughen penalties for crimes against the state, set up a military justice system to try dissidents and place even tighter restrictions on the state-supervised broadcast media.

Party leaders drafted the proposals after Noriega, in a speech Thursday, urged public employees to become “prosecutors” of their co-workers and to inform on anyone showing disrespect.

The proposals are to be sent to a Noriega-appointed government council.

“We cannot have conspirators protected by the law,” Justice Minister Miranda said. “We cannot allow ourselves to have internal enemies in addition to our external enemies. We need that room for our friends.”

About 35% of Panama’s work force is employed by the government. As is the case in the rest of society, many civil servants--a vast majority, according to opposition leaders--have come to regard Noriega as the cause of Panama’s dramatic economic decline.

But one government official insisted that malcontents in the ministries are “an immense minority.”

Back Against the Wall

By targeting teachers, bureaucrats, doctors and businessmen in his latest crackdown, Noriega is lashing out at many sectors at once, like a man with his back against the wall. This would seem politically dangerous, except that even Noriega’s foes within the Defense Forces appear to have been neutralized.

Three officers from Noriega’s high command were among those arrested: Intelligence chief Col. Guillermo J. Wong, operations chief Col. Julio Ow Young and Lt. Col. Armando Palacios, a liaison officer with U.S. forces based in Panama.

It is unclear whether these top officers were jailed for failing to detect coup plotting or for complicity in it, but they remain in custody.

The weakness of Noriega’s enemies, however, does not guarantee him strength. Dissent in the Defense Forces appears to have been broader than was first assumed.

The leader of the uprising, Maj. Moises Giroldi Vega, headed the Urraca Battalion, which provided security for Noriega’s headquarters. But also among the dead are a captain and a sergeant from the so-called Doberman squad of riot police and a captain of Battalion 2000, one of the units that came to Noriega’s rescue.

Rebels Probably Executed

It is widely believed that the 10 rebels killed were executed after the headquarters battle rather than during combat. Diplomats and opposition politicians note that the government first reported no deaths on the day of the uprising, then changed its story the next day.

They also point to the fact that nine of the dead were officers and to the small likelihood that any fighting in which they might have been killed could have occurred after Noriega talked his captors into freeing him, as he said he did. U.S. officials said that Noriega promised freedom to his captors, then double-crossed them.

If there were executions, they would be the first ever within the Defense Forces, breaking an unwritten code of internal power politics. All high-level officers who took part in a March 16, 1988, coup attempt, the only other revolt against Noriega in his six years as commander in chief, were jailed.

“The reaction was brutal this time,” said a diplomat with close ties to the military. “The rest of the troops and officers are in a state of shock.”

Execution would be a double-edged sword for Noriega. On the one hand, soldiers might be less willing to participate in coup plotting, knowing that they could pay with their lives. But if the general’s subordinates ever do rise up again, they might be less likely to negotiate with him.

What must be unsettling for Noriega is that Giroldi was a key figure in suppressing the previous attempted coup.

“Noriega must have to sleep with both eyes open,” said exiled opposition leader Roberto Eisenmann in Miami.

No Civilian Role

The opposition parties apparently had no role in Tuesday’s coup attempt. In fact, the plotters declared their support for Noriega’s provisional president, Francisco Rodriguez, rather than for opposition leader Guillermo Endara, the apparent winner of last May’s presidential election.

Noriega, however, ties his political opposition with the coup plotters. After the failed uprising, Endara was evicted from the headquarters of the Authentic Liberal Party, where he was staging a hunger strike, and other national opposition leaders slipped into hiding. Nine opposition union and business leaders in the town of Chitre were arrested Saturday.

“We are sure the U.S. government was involved in the coup attempt,” Justice Minister Miranda said. “The U.S. government recognizes Endara (as winner of presidential elections). At 4 a.m. (before Tuesday’s shooting began), Endara made a move from where he was. They were waiting to take power.”

Mario Rognioni, a senior Noriega adviser, defines opposition parties such as Endara’s as “seditious” and “traitors,” even though they are legal.