Panama Down and Dirty

Once again, Panama's strongman, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, was on the counterattack last week, mainly on the propaganda front. His targets included not only the civilian opposition that has waged a two-month struggle to loosen his grip on power but also the U.S. embassy.

Noriega's major move was a police raid on the offices of the National Civic Crusade, the coalition of 107 community organizations that has staged daily street demonstrations in the capital. Plainclothes government agents burst into the Crusade offices in downtown Panama City and hauled off boxes of documents. Then, at a dramatic midnight news conference, Attorney General Carlos Villalaz announced that the papers outlined a plot to dissolve the 67- member legislature and hand over power to a civilian junta. Authorities issued arrest warrants for six Crusade leaders, accusing them of conspiracy to overthrow the government. The sextet went into hiding.

The government also announced that Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera -- who kicked off the cycle of protest on June 7 when he accused Noriega of corruption, electoral fraud and murder -- had signed two depositions withdrawing his allegations. Diaz has been in jail since a Panamanian army raid on his house on July 27. Speculation was that Diaz signed the documents as the price for exile in Venezuela.

Then it was the turn of the U.S., which cut off all aid to the Noriega regime on July 22. In a bid to tie Washington directly to the alleged opposition conspiracy, the progovernment Panamanian newspaper Critica charged that U.S. Ambassador Arthur Davis had arrived at the Crusade offices around the time of the police raid. The U.S. embassy called the allegation a "lie."

In Washington, Secretary of State George Shultz declared that the freeze on aid to Panama would continue until the "emergence of civilian, democratic control." A bipartisan group of Senators that included conservative Jesse % Helms and liberal Edward Kennedy announced they would sponsor legislation to continue the aid freeze indefinitely. In Miami, U.S. drug-enforcement agents began looking into new allegations that Noriega has taken payoffs from drug traffickers.

Late in the week tens of thousands of protesters, all clad in white, the color of the opposition, took to the streets of Panama City in the largest antigovernment rally since June. The demonstration was largely peaceful, and police left the protesters alone. For the time being, Noriega seemed to prefer propaganda ploys to outright repression.