Page 26 - Anatomy-of-a-Fraud

CHAPTER I

THE ELECTORAL PROCESS

1. MILITARY MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL

A. “Good jump, Rubén!”

Panama has been under direct or indirect military rule since October 11,
1968. As May 6, 1984, the date set for their much-vaunted free elections, the first in 16
years, drew closer, the General Staff of the National Guard (now known as Defense
Forces) began a series of maneuvers aimed at ensuring that the next president of the
republic would be someone to their liking.

It was originally thought that General Rubén Darío Paredes, who had retired
as Commander in Chief of the National Guard at a flashy military ceremony on August
12, 1983, would be the official candidate. In fact, in his keynote speech at the affair,
General Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Commander in Chief, had made some indirect
references to Paredes’s candidacy, closing his remarks with an ambiguous verbal
accolade: “Good jump, Rubén!”. Many took Noriega’s Delphic pronouncement as
evidence of the National Guard’s formal and public support of its former chief’s
candidacy, already widely known for some months. As a matter of fact, the Labor Party
had nominated Paredes for president five days before his actual retirement. It was
believed that the military had decided to install one of their own, disguised as president,
in the Herons Palace (the official residence of Panamanian presidents).

But Paredes’s candidacy failed to catch on. On September 6, 1984, the man
who had jumped off believing his parachute to be foolproof, crashed against the
pavement and announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. It was exactly 25
days since his former subordinate and comrade in arms had wished him a good jump.

What caused a candidate who believed himself to be invincible to retire so
suddenly from the joust? It was simply that Paredes, who was intimately familiar with
the Guard and had allies among its officers, intended to continue governing from the
presidency, while Noriega was no longer prepared to continue as a subordinate,
particularly as the subordinate of a mere president of the republic. Far be it from
Noriega to break the tradition –established in 1968– that “real power” in Panama
resides with the barracks, a fact that Paredes himself had acknowledged one year
earlier. Thus, over a period of a few weeks, Paredes became a simple citizen, a retired
officer but an extremely wealthy one, a man consumed by a burning desire to seek
revenge. He would make a political come back later, when the Popular Nationalist
Party nominated him for president. But by that time his candidacy was no longer the
officially backed military candidacy but merely an impossible “third force”, an