Election Day

Revolvers banged noisily, men scuffled in the streets, gay young Negroes beat out tropical rhythms on car fenders. Someone cut the telegraph wire to the interior. It was Sunday and Voting Day; in the first of six major elections in Latin America this year, Panama was choosing a President and a congress. Some 300,000 Spanish-descended hotbloods, dusty-footed Indian women and black West Indians lined up to deposit ballots marked (to aid the illiterate) with party symbols: a bell, a horseman, an ear of corn. Then, as a double precaution against double voting, each digged his fingers in a pot of indelible ink and presented his forearm to let one square inch of hair be shaved off.

Through the day, at a campaign headquarters in an open-air beer garden, pistol-packing radio announcers claimed victory for a jowly man in a sweat-soaked sport shirt who stomped up & down among the tables: Candidate Jose Antonio Remon, once commander and still boss of Panama's only armed force, the 3,300-man National Police. Actually, because Panamanians count votes at their leisure (after the last election they took three months), "Chichi" Remon would not know the exact tally for weeks. But behind Chichi were his cops, the government, control of most of the vote-counting, a razzle-dazzle campaign and even a respectable number of willing voters. With that setup, it was hard to see how he could lose.

On a Twisted Isthmus . . . In population the land Chichi runs is one of the world's smallest nations. In area, it is also tiny, stretching for just 450 miles along the narrow isthmus linking the Americas --an isthmus so curiously twisted that from Panama City the sun is seen to rise out of the Pacific. The land's best known feature, the canal, runs through the ten-mile-wide, U.S.-controlled Canal Zone which splits the republic. In the bisected nation, politics are fought out in a manner as twisted as the land's geography. Since the last election four years ago, Panama has had five Presidents. The voters picked one; the rest were hired or fired by Reluctant Strong Man Remon.

It was just a year ago that Chichi had to throw out one of his presidential stand-ins. Arnulfo Arias, Panama's Messianic champion demagogue, had begun to feel that being President made him boss; he plotted to extend his term. Remon's cops laid siege to the palace, got Arnulfo's surrender after 18 persons were killed. Chichi put a malleable dairyman into office, and began to listen to urgent advice from his wife Cecilia to run for President himself.

. . . A Cousinly Campaign. The republic's nine major parties split, regrouped and came back with five backing Chichi and four supporting Sugar Producer Roberto ("Nino") Chiari, who, as it happens, is Chichi's cousin. "Ceci" Remon made herself Chichi's campaign manager, stumping the country making speeches and giving away cooking pots, packets of seed and bottles of medicine, all bearing plugs for Remon. Chiari warned voters against a military man; Remon countered that a highly respected general name of Eisenhower was running for President in a country to the north.

This week the little land's long vote-count began. Chichi was confident. "I'm no gambler," said he, "but I'll bet Nino $10,000 on this election and spot him 5,000 votes."

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