Fraud and U.S. Foreign Policy

"THESE people are absolutely shameless!" exclaimed Gerald Ford on Monday, denouncing Panama's election fraud. General Noriega's security forces have publicly torn ballots, closed voting areas and even beaten opposition candidates.

Panamanians, however, have an attitude toward their rigged elections slightly different from ours. The election, for this country with a history of dictatorship, was less a military concession to democracy than a chance for the opposition to organize and voice its discontent.

While opposition candidates claimed true victory and protested vigorously against General Noriega's brutal campaign, they have objected, just as vigorously, to the possiblity of an American military intervention, a possibility that George Bush has refused to rule out.

Deployment of North American military forces could succeed in ousting General Noriega. It would also diminish chances for an autonomous Panamanian democracy and inevitably reinforce Panamanian and all Latin American resentment and mistrust of the United States.

THIS mistrust is not ill-placed, as past U.S. intervention indicates. Nicaragua is attacked presumably for its socialist ideology of land expropriation; Cuba, for its willingness to fight foreign wars; Peru, for its refusal to strangle itself through debt payments. North American imperialist attitudes of the last two decades have shifted to the ideological and economic level.

Panama, however, is a victim of the old-style, territorialist tendencies of U.S. imperialism. After Jimmy Carter signed an agreement scheduling the return of the Panama Canal to Panama in the year 2000, North Americans suddenly discovered a real stake in good relations with this tiny country.

A few months ago, it was accusations of Noriega's involvement with drugrunning that supposedly fueled the State Department's economic sanctions. Now, the election frauds are an excuse for potentially delaying or even cancelling the transfer of Canal rights to their rightful owners. Already, U.S. Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) has decried the treaty's promise to return the Canal to "a madman like Noriega."

A decision to abrogate the Panama Canal treaty would not only outrage all of Latin America, but also remove any lingering doubts about our rightful presence in the Canal. Panama's election fraud will be used as a justification for the breaking of our own laws.

Election fraud is cause for condemnation and potential military action in Panama, but is ignored in countries which, for our own strategic interests, continue to enjoy our military aid. In Uruguay, for example, government threats scare voters from approving investigations of human rights abuses under the military regime of the 1970s; in El Salvador, soldiers drive peasant voters to the polls at gunpoint.

The United States picks and chooses its battles. Election fraud is a political abuse worthy of condemnation; but it is naive to think we have only Panamanian democratic interests in mind.