PANAMA: Appalling Accusation

At 2 in the morning, Panama’s National Assembly met in its small, sweltering chamber and listened transfixed while a methodical clerk droned through long pages of sworn testimony. Most of the country’s people, torn from sleep by the high drama, heard the evidence on their radios. When the clerk finished, Panamanians struggled to grasp an appalling accusation. According to the confessed triggerman, the highest plotter in last fortnight’s race-track assassination of President Jose Antonio (“Chichi”) Remón was none other than José Ramón Guizado, Remón’s Vice President and legally installed successor as President of Panama.

A chance lead provided by the young daughter of a Secret Police detective had cracked the murder plot. Her boy friend, she told her father, had smuggled back from Guatemala a submachine gun, of the type that killed Remón. Prosecuting Attorney Francisco Alvarado arrested the youth. The boy named Lawyer Ruben Miro, who had paid him $150 for the weapon. Miró confessed that he had killed Remón and three of his friends who were having a postrace party in the presidential box (TIME, Jan. 17).

The Road to Riches. The lawyer’s explanation was shocking and simple. He had run through his wife’s fortune by heavy gambling losses. He needed money urgently, and he proposed to get it by the shortest and easiest road to riches: high government office.

He had gone to Guizado, he testified, and offered a deal: Miró would liquidate Remón, making Guizado President, if Guizado would promise Miró the key job of Minister of Government and Justice.

There, by dispensing favors, Miró could grow wealthy. Guizado accepted, said Miro; the Vice President, a wealthy contractor, had recently suffered business reverses and needed to rebuild his own bankroll.

“I Am a Prisoner.” Soon after Miró had finished his confession, steel-helmeted guardsmen ringed Guizado’s hilltop house overlooking the capital. “I am under the impression that I am a prisoner,” said the worried Guizado, talking on the telephone.

Later, officially learning of the charges against him, he demanded a leave of absence, calling the accusation “senseless.” Instead, the Assembly heard the testimony, impeached Guizado, and sent him to jail to await trial.

Before 8 in the morning, Vice President Ricardo (Dickie) Arias,* 42, had been sworn in, Panama’s third President in 13 days. Although his first move was to name a tough brother of Chichi Remon to the all-important Ministry of Government and Justice, Dickie Arias faces dismaying political troubles. But his choice of sports, at least, was reassuring; a topflight golfer, he seldom goes to the races.

* No kin to ex-President Arnulfo Arias, a bitter foe of Remón who was arrested immediately after the assassination and this week released (along with U.S. Citizen Martin Irving Lipstein, an innocent caught in the initial police roundup).