(5 of 5)
Endara's chances of forming a government that does not need to be propped up by U.S. troops and tanks depend heavily on his getting control of the Panamanian military. But it is the U.S. that is picking the leaders of the new Public Forces. And though the Americans are screening former P.D.F. members against "black, gray and white" lists (black representing the deepest degree of involvement with Noriega), they have nonetheless named a former Noriega henchman to command the new militia. He is Roberto Armijo, who helped Noriega squelch a coup last October and participated in the fight against the U.S. invasion.
Some of Endara's lieutenants would prefer to have no army at all. Ricardo Arias Calderon, one of Endara's two Vice Presidents, is known to believe Panama should follow the example of Costa Rica, which does not have a substantial military force; yet Calderon has been prevailed on to say the opposite in recent interviews. The U.S. insists that a professional military is needed to protect the Panama Canal and it must, regrettably, be headed in part by Noriega's followers because hardly any uncorrupted and democratic Panamanian officers with military experience are available. "The danger," says Ambler Moss, a former U.S. Ambassador to Panama, "is that the price of stability is to reestablish the P.D.F. under a different name."
In fact, such a development might produce stability of a distinctly unwelcome variety. Many times previously, the interaction of a weak civilian leadership and a strong military has plunged Panama -- and other U.S. client states in Central America -- into dictatorship. A week after the military triumph against Noriega, the U.S. was discovering again that it is much easier to depose a dictator than to establish a democracy.