From: ww@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Date: 31 Dec 92 20:55 PST
Subject: Panama:Puppet Govt on Shaky Legs
Nf-ID: #N:T4HowB6w165w@nyxfer.uucp:-979210971:000:3878
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!ww    Dec 31 20:55:00 1992


Subject: Panama:Puppet Govt on Shaky Legs
From: nyxfer!ww (Workers World Service)


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


Puppet Government in Panama on shaky legs

By Carl Glenn

Three years after the U.S. invasion of Panama, the government 
sworn in on a U.S. military base is at the point of collapse.

"The recent chain of events is the fracturing of an illegitimate 
government of rich, thieving racists ruling under conditions of 
military occupation," leading Panamanian human rights activist 
Olga Mejia told Workers World. "It is the natural result of a 
government that is loyal to the Pentagon and the U.S. State 
Department instead of the people of Panama."

On Dec. 28, Panamanian Attorney General Rogelio Cruz was reported
to be under arrest, charged with complicity in the cocaine 
market. Cruz, however, confirmed the widespread belief in Panama 
that this was a pre-emptive strike.

After his arrest made a statement implicating top government 
officials--including Treasury Director Ruben Carles, Panama City 
Mayor Omaira Correa, Supreme Court judges, directors of the 
customs office and the Panamanian FBI--in corruption and 
influence peddling.

A week earlier First Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon 
resigned suddenly, declaring, "The country is progressively 
sinking into a serious crisis of confidence and dissatisfaction."

Arias Calderon, President Guillermo Endara and Second Vice 
President Billy Ford were all sworn into office on a U.S. 
military base moments after the U.S. invasion began on Dec. 20, 
1989. Thousands of Panamanians, most of them civilians, were 
killed in the invasion.

Panamanians prompted Arias Calderon's resignation with their 
crushing rejection of a series of government proposals in a Nov. 
15 referendum. The principal constitutional change they rejected 
would have legally forbidden Panama to organize a national army.

During the 1989 invasion, the U.S. military crushed and then 
dismantled the Panamanian armed forces. In 1968 these armed 
forces had overthrown the government that represented the rich 
landowners and instituted a series of reforms benefiting the most
oppressed and exploited segments of Panamanian society.

That military government, led by Gen. Omar Torrijos, also took a 
series of measures to defend Panama's independence and 
sovereignty.

Gen. Manuel Noriega succeeded Torrijos after his death. In the 
period preceding the U.S. invasion, Noriega refused White House 
coercion to participate in an invasion of Sandinista Nicaragua.

The people of Panama, suffering unprecedented levels of poverty, 
challenged the Endara government's credibility in a series of 
strikes and demonstrations after the Nov. 15 referendum. At a 
Dec. 15 news conference Guillermo Fernandez, the president of the
Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, commented that 
while Panama's ruling families are getting richer faster than the
wealthy in other Latin American countries, Panama's poverty rate 
is soaring.

Fernandez said, "Absolute poverty now affects more than 54 
percent of the Panamanian population, whereas the comparative 
figure in July 1989 was 44 percent."

He attributed the rise in porverty to the effects of the 1989 
U.S. invasion, and to the U.S. economic embargo imposed on the 
country two years earlier. The Inter Press news service reported 
that Fernandez called for "political stability" in the country in
order to attract foreign capital.

                               -30-

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)



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