Time to Get Rolling

At his inauguration last week, Panama's President Marco Aurelio Robles, 58, had only to look around to see what he is up against. Across the street from the Legislative Palace, where he took the oath of office, stood the burned-out husk of the Pan American Airways Building, destroyed in last January's Canal Zone riots. On rooftops around the palace, troops with rifles at the ready guarded against a rumored assassination attempt. Inside, a handful of opposition Congressmen managed to delay the inauguration two hours with a noisy parliamentary argument. Yet Robles brimmed with confidence. "I have never in my life felt stronger," he said. "There is not power enough in the country to stop me now."

Cabinet of Surprises. During the next four years, Panama's 33rd President in 60 years will need all the fortitude he can muster. The country's treasury is $20 million in the red, unemployment is approaching 20% , and Panama's relations with the U.S. -- though certainly improved from last January -- are still delicate. Robles himself lacks a firm power base. He has no personal following, very little money. The middle-class candidate of a fragile coalition, he was primarily sponsored by outgoing President Roberto Chiari, who was widely criticized for his mishandling of the January riots. Robles, for all his disadvantages, is known as an energetic politician, with a good record as Chiari's Minister of Government and Justice since 1960. When it comes to reforms, he seems to mean what he says.

Robles proved as much with his Cabinet appointments. Rather than dole out plums to party hacks, he picked competent administrators--most of them nonpolitical, all antiCommunist. None was more surprising than Robles' young chief tax collector, Rodrigo Nunez, 28, a University of Chicago Ph.D. in economics who started work two months ago with a novel approach: he intends to collect the taxes that Panamanians have never paid. Nunez has started auditing the books of the country's 30 biggest companies, has instituted 138 lawsuits in Panama City alone. "Most un-Panamanian, un-Latin and unbelievable," gasped one critic.

Bid for Aid. With such fiscal reforms if he can keep them up, President Robles hopes to rebuild U.S. confidence in Panama and encourage the aid he needs to press on with Alianza programs expanding agriculture, building more schools, homes and roads. The first step in regaining U.S. confidence would be to settle the current canal treaty differences and agree on a plan for a new, sea-level canal to replace the 50-year-old lock system. Both sides privately describe the discussions as "excellent."

In Panama, well-intentioned Presidents seem always destined either for assassination, like General Jose Antonio Remon (1952-55) or simply to be broken, like Chiari. Robles' ambitious ideas are bound to annoy the country's far right, and his evident desire to get along with the U.S. is sure to enrage the ultranationalists and far leftists who still talk revolution. "I give us 18 months to get things rolling," says a Robles Cabinet minister. "If we have not car ried out our pledges by that time, the government will fall."

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