Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100047
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: PANAMA CITY LENGTH: Long
Panamanian officials who cried ``Yankee Go Home'' in their youthful student days now hope the United States will leave behind some troops - and the jobs, revenue and image of stability they generate - when Panama assumes control of the waterway at midnight Dec. 31, 1999.
As a local news magazine, Vistazo, pointed out, the timeworn anti-American chant is being replaced by ``Yankee Stay Home'' - home, that is, in Panama.
The unlikely lobbyist for the proposal is President Ernesto Perez Balladares, a protege of the nationalist strongman, Gen. Omar Torrijos, who signed the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty with President Jimmy Carter that outlined the gradual end of U.S. control of the 52-mile waterway.
The motive for the idea, U.S. and Panamanian officials say, is simple economics. At a time of massive unemployment, Panama stands to lose 22,000 jobs and $380 million in wages and sales, which is more than 8 percent of the national economy, by U.S. military estimates.
In addition, as Panama strives to reinvent itself as the Singapore of Latin America, Perez Balladares believes that a limited U.S. military presence would bolster the confidence of Pacific Rim investors whose cash, business and jobs he courted during a recent swing through Asia.
Panamanian leaders, after years of painting the U.S. bases as the Yankee thorn in the side of Panamanian sovereignty, are publicly broaching the issue - which Perez Balladares and President Clinton touched on during a September meeting in Washington - with sheepish caution.
``We are aware that this is a very sensitive matter,'' said Foreign Minister Gabriel Lewis Galindo.
Ironically, most Panamanians are already convinced. A September poll by a domestic marketing firm indicated that 70 percent of the population wanted some U.S. troops to remain. A 1993 Gallup poll reported that eight of 10 Panamanians favor keeping the U.S. bases open.
Politicians, however, are reluctant to appear to embrace the historically charged icon of Uncle Sam. Former President Guillermo Endara, installed by the 1989 U.S. invasion, ruled out formally inviting any U.S. troops to remain for fear of seeming unpatriotic.
Putting the question to a national plebiscite, an idea many favor, would help spare embarrassment for the governing Revolutionary Democratic Party, a Torrijista party used in the 1980s as a power base by a less popular strongman, Manuel Antonio Noriega. Party leader Gerardo Gonzalez plans to vote "no."
``After all the humiliations this country endured for years as a semi-colony, Panama's sovereign image must be upheld,'' Gonzalez said. ``There will always be the temptation to return to meddling in the internal affairs of the country.''
Nationalists have agitated to cast out the U.S. military almost from the day U.S. rights were granted to the canal ``in perpetuity'' by a 1903 treaty negotiated by a Frenchman that bore no Panamanian signatures.
Resentment was compounded by unequal U.S.-Panamanian pay scales and a Canal Zone administered by American courts and police.
``It has always been a political issue,'' said Gilberto Guardia, the first Panamanian administrator of the canal. ``The canal cuts this country in half. It would be as if land on both sides of the Mississippi was controlled by the French in perpetuity.''
Upon signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977, Torrijos summoned Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Panama for festivities. After a week of whiskey and champagne toasts, Torrijos, intoxicated by more than just nationalist fervor, ``began to cry like a little boy'' with joy, Garcia Marquez recalled.
``If that treaty had not been signed there would have been catastrophic historic consequences,'' Garcia Marquez said in a recent interview with Spanish television. ``Torrijos was prepared to destroy the canal. Latin America would not have permitted noncompliance.''
Torrijos, who died in a 1981 plane crash, is still viewed as a national hero by many of his countrymen. But most Panamanians and Americans agree that times have changed.
``The '60s and early '70s was the adolescent period, the teen-age years. We were perceived to be the colonial power. Many Panamanians viewed Panama as a colony,'' said Col. Richard O'Connor, director of the treaty implementation center at the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Panama. ``Today, I think the relationship is on more even footing. We're equal partners.''
Mutual goodwill is not likely to settle the issue, U.S. officials say.
Panamanians appear to be unaware how difficult it will be to persuade the U.S. Congress to keep bases in Panama open at a time when budgetary belt-tightening is forcing the closure of military bases throughout the United States, U.S. officials say.
The United States already has decided to move the Southern Command headquarters, which is in charge of all U.S. troops in Latin America, from Panama to Miami by mid-1988.
There are still 8,000 U.S. troops in Panama, and all are scheduled to depart by the time the United States is to relinquish control of the 553-square-mile Canal Zone in 1999.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the commander of the Southern Command, said there is ``no vital U.S. interest'' in remaining in Panama, although senior officers say Panama is an excellent staging ground for jungle training and anti-drug missions. Some Pentagon officials in Washington also have said they ideally would like to keep Howard Air Force Base, the only large U.S. air base in Central or South America.
``Having a forward operating base down here is very important. It is clearly in our interest to remain here,'' said Brig. Gen. Thomas Keck. ``But it's really up to the two governments to decide.''
by CNB