Noriega Crony a Factor for Democracy : Panama: Mario Rognoni is now the political opposition. He provides the checks and balances.

Mario Rognoni is the outcast of Panamanian politics, heir to the legacy of disgraced strongman Manuel A. Noriega. Yet he is a key to the establishment of democracy here.

At first glance, it would seem otherwise: All but a handful of the people seem to disapprove of Rognoni’s--and Noriega’s--Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD, as it is known after its initials in Spanish. Two of the most respected figures in the party want nothing to do with Rognoni, and he wants nothing to do with its only organized element, the Communists.

To make matters worse, many of Rognoni’s allies are either in jail or likely to go there soon.

Still, as bad as things are, Rognoni, a Cabinet minister under Noriega and one of his closest friends and supporters, represents an important element in making Panamanian democracy work: He is the political opposition; he provides the checks and balances.

“You can’t have a real democracy without an opposition,” one diplomat said, “and for better or worse, right now the only opposition is Rognoni and what remains of the PRD.”

From the time the party was founded by Omar Torrijos, Noriega’s predecessor as strongman, it was the armed forces’ handmaiden and political front. It fixed elections, controlled patronage and served as the channel for the massive corruption that made many military officers and party members rich.

Rognoni, a Georgia Tech graduate, was an integral part of the PRD. As minister of commerce, he oversaw many of the corrupt practices that required payoffs from business people.

Fluent in English, he became Noriega’s spokesman with the American news media. It was Rognoni who defended Noriega and assailed his critics in interviews with celebrated TV personalities.

Yet Rognoni, who witnessed and even arranged much of the corruption, remained somehow clean, at least relatively so. He lives in a modest home in a modest neighborhood of Panama City. His engineering firm has its headquarters in a nondescript building, and his office appears to have been furnished with pieces from Goodwill Industries.

The only sign of opulence is a swimming pool at his house--a pool he said he paid for with dollars Noriega gave him to influence voters in last May’s national election.

When he found the opposition to Noriega’s political slate so overwhelming that he could not buy enough votes to make a difference, Rognoni said, he gave some of the money to his helpers and used the rest to build the swimming pool.

But the payoff seems to have ended there. When Rognoni was arrested by U.S. troops shortly after the Dec. 20 invasion, nothing incriminating was found and he was released after four days without being charged.

“The only thing they found was my Rolex watch,” Rognoni said. “And they kept that.”

Not all of his colleagues have been so fortunate. More than 125 Democratic Revolutionary Party figures have spent time in U.S. military custody or in Panamanian jails thus far.

But neither Rognoni’s arrest nor that of the others has changed his position. He told an interviewer: “Noriega was my friend; I have to maintain my personal loyalty.”

For now, that loyalty does not bode well politically. A recent poll showed that only 2% of the electorate said they would vote for the PRD.

But even though Rognoni and the PRD are down, they are not hopelessly out--not even in the minds of the U.S. officials who opposed Noriega.

“The best chance for an opposition is the PRD,” one U.S. official said. “It has seats in the Congress, and it still has the skeleton of an organization.”

In fact, the U.S.-installed government here certified six PRD members’ election to the 57-member Congress in last May’s balloting that Noriega nullified after it became clear that his party had been crushed. Rognoni is one of the six.

This may not seem like much, but there are factors, unique to Panama, that make the PRD’s path a bit easier. Among these is the possibility that members of the present government, for all intents and purposes a coalition of political enemies, eventually will align themselves with the PRD.

“The motto for this country is ‘Let’s make a deal,’ ” one diplomatic source said. “This is a country of deal-makers, and they will find a way to accommodate themselves. They have in the past, and they will in the future. The mere fact that Noriega was a dictator didn’t preclude making a deal, and it won’t again.”

The military, a shattered remnant of what it was, is still at the center of political thinking in Panama, even though President Guillermo Endara has vowed to keep the armed forces out of politics. For Fernando Manfredo, a PDR member and acting head of the Panama Canal Commission, and even more so for Rognoni, the military will continue to be a force.

For now, “with the government leader over the leader of the army . . . the army has no role politically,” Rognoni said. But he refuses to accept the dismantling of the military, as called for by Endara.

Before he can find a place for the military in a Rognoni government, however, Rognoni must deal with dissident elements in his own party. Manfredo, probably the most popular and respected PRD figure, said in an interview that he will have nothing to do with the organization if Rognoni has a part.

The same sentiment was expressed by Perez Billardes, another party figure who broke with Noriega and is accepted by the establishment as a legitimate political figure.

The radical left is still the largest and most cohesive element of the PRD, and it opposes Rognoni. According to one political observer: “The left is Rognoni’s biggest problem. He has to get rid of it if he wants control.”

For Rognoni, the challenge is a new one.

“In the past,” he said, “we simply purged our foes. Now we have to purge them democratically.”