Panama The General Strikes Back

By John Greenwald

Every year around this time, the spring skies over Panama darken regularly with rumors of rain. A few drops usually fall, but the downpour that would ease the stifling 90 degrees heat never comes. To frustrated Panamanians, the weather this year provides a striking parallel to the political crisis that grips their country. Just as they long for rain, citizens yearn for the departure of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. But while Noriega faces a relentless combination of economic woes and widespread unrest, he still clings to power. Like the seemingly imminent rain, he stubbornly refuses to fall.

The general did far more than simply hang on last week. In a show of force, his troops manhandled selected opposition leaders and foreign journalists. Within days, a Washington-backed general strike began to crumble, easing the pressure on Noriega to leave and making it clear to all that he remained in charge. Conceded Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter- American Affairs and chief architect of the White House campaign to oust Noriega: "I guessed wrong. I thought he'd be gone by now."

As tensions mounted, White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater implied that the U.S. was reviewing its military options to oust Noriega. Washington announced it would dispatch 1,300 additional troops to Panama this week to bolster security for American facilities and citizens along the Panama Canal. The force will complement a 10,000-troop garrison stationed at U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Panama. But Wayne Smith, a U.S. diplomat in Latin America from 1979 to 1982 and now a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, warned against using U.S. force to topple the general. Said he: "I can't think of anything more counterproductive than an American intervention in Panama."

Noriega showed his defiance throughout the week. Hours after his troops arrested and beat protesters at a Panama City rally, soldiers and police burst into the lobby of the Marriott Caesar Park Hotel and seized 20 opposition leaders, who had scheduled a news conference, and twelve foreign journalists, including five Americans. Many were beaten as they were led away. Ignoring Roman Catholic Church leaders who urged him to resign, Noriega later told a conference of delegates from Latin American and Caribbean countries that he and the region were victims of U.S. aggression.

Panama's three largest supermarket chains helped Noriega's cause by bowing to government pressure and reopening stores that had been shut for ten days by the general strike. Meanwhile, several U.S. companies, including Texaco and Eastern Air Lines, paid nearly $3 million in taxes and fees to Panama's cash- starved treasury. The firms said the payments were part of the normal course of business. The money temporarily relieved a financial squeeze that had grown severe since Washington froze some $50 million in Panamanian funds in the U.S last month. To prevent companies from easing Noriega's fiscal woes any further, the Administration belatedly asked U.S. firms to put future payments into an escrow account.

Administration officials now fear that what they expected to be a textbook study in swiftly dislodging a tyrant will turn into a bloody, drawn-out struggle. "The assumption was that despite all his defects, he cared about the welfare of Panama," says a State Department official. "Well, Noriega cares exclusively about Noriega, and he will use every means at his disposal to hold on."

Though Noriega quelled a mutiny within the 16,000-member Panama Defense Forces last month, U.S. policymakers wistfully hope that some of the general's comrades will try again. "Only Noriega's guys can quickly put things right," says a U.S. official. Waiting for another coup, however, may prove to be just as frustrating as waiting for those April showers.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington and John Moody/Panama City