PANAMA INVALIDATES ELECTION

PANAMA CITY, MAY 10 -- Panama's Electoral Tribunal tonight nullified Sunday's elections after a day of violence in which troops and paramilitary agents commanded by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega attacked the opposition's presidential candidate and his running mates. "The nullification of the elections of May 7, 1989 in their totality is declared," said Yolanda Pulice de Rodriguez, the president of the Noriega-controlled Electoral Tribunal, in a nationally televised announcement. The announcement said the elections were being nullified because of alleged interference in Panama's electoral process by foreign observers, "whose purpose was to promote the idea of electoral fraud." The statement did not refer specifically to today's events, saying only that the decision to nullify the presidential, legislative and local elections would "contribute to returning tranquility to the country." It was not immediately clear whether the annullment means outright military rule without the trappings of civilian government, or is a prelude to negotiations with the opposition. No mention was made of holding new elections or of a transition to a new government. The announcement said a full report on the nullification would be issued shortly. U.S. Ambassador Arthur Davis tonight condemned the annullment as a "cowardly act" by Noriega that would "only prolong the suffering" of Panamanians. In a statement, he repeated U.S. calls for recognition of the opposition's victory. The dramatic turn of events came after troops and paramilitary forces commanded by Noriega beat opposition presidential candidate Guillermo Endara and his running mates with clubs and iron bars and shot two of their bodyguards in breaking up a motorcade held to protest election fraud. One of the bodyguards, Manuel Alexis Guerra, 22, was killed, diplomats said tonight. The other, Humberto Montenegro, was seriously wounded by a bullet in the chest, they said. The two had been trying to protect Guillermo Ford, the opposition's candidate for second vice president. Ford was savagely beaten and arrested by police, witnesses and opposition sources said. His whereabouts were unknown tonight. {A spokesman for the Defense Forces, Capt. Eduardo Lim Yueng, told the Associated Press that bodyguards of the candidates shot four soldiers at the scene.} Endara, 52, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Alliance of Civic Opposition in Sunday's election, was knocked unconscious when a paramilitary agent wearing a T-shirt of Noriega's so-called "Dignity Battalions" clubbed him on the forehead with an iron bar, witnesses said. Riot troops initially stood by, then joined more than two dozen paramilitary men in the attack. Birdshot and tear gas were fired at crowds that lined the streets to cheer the opposition ticket. After the attack, at the Santa Ana Plaza in the old quarter of Panama City, Endara, bleeding profusely, was taken to a hospital. He received six stitches and was released. In the meantime, his office was ransacked by paramilitary men armed with clubs and shotguns, witnesses said. Endara was carried from his hotel on a stretcher back to the hospital tonight, and doctors said his head injury may be more serious than it appeared earlier. Ricardo Arias Calderon, 56, the opposition's candidate for first vice president, and Ford, 52, were beaten with pipes and iron bars. Bleeding from the head and with his shirt soaked in blood, Ford was shoved into a police car and driven away to an unknown destination, a British journalist who witnessed the incident said. Arias told reporters tonight that, in addition to killing Guerra, Noriega's forces had wounded at least 23 persons today. Two U.S. Embassy military attaches who were watching demonstrations in another part of the city were arrested by armed men in civilian clothes and held for five hours at the National Department of Investigations before they were released unharmed, an embassy spokesman said. He quoted one of the two Army majors as saying the plainclothesmen he saw were "out of control." In view of the violence, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Davis ordered about 100 dependents of embassy personnel to move onto U.S. military bases Thursday morning. "I blame Manuel Antonio Noriega for this and for everything bad in the Republic of Panama," Endara said in the Paitilla Hospital after the attack. "I hope he leaves soon." He called on opposition supporters to maintain their spirit and "not give an inch" in their fight against Noriega. "Day by day, we will continue the struggle, and I'm sure we will win," Endara said. He said he had been attacked by Dignity Battalions but that "they are not battalions and they have no dignity." Noriega established the groups of his civilian supporters last year, ostensibly to help resist a feared U.S. invasion. Military observers here believe that the hard core of the groups consists of members of the Panama Defense Forces, which Noriega commands. As the opposition caravan was winding through Panama City, troops in riot gear used tear gas, water cannons and shotguns to disperse crowds that had turned out to cheer the opposition leaders as they passed. The crowds shouted "Justice" and "Down with the pineapple," a nickname for the acne-scarred Noriega. During one such demonstration on the Via Espana, Endara's press secretary, Louis Martinz, was abducted by four armed men in civilian clothes as he waved a Panamanian flag, witnesses said. The witnesses said the men threw the flag on the ground, struck Martinz in the head with a rifle butt and drove him away in a battered station wagon. His whereabouts this evening remained unknown. Government and military officials denied they were holding him. The nullification of the elections, the attacks on the opposition and the repression of the largely spontaneous street demonstrations came despite appeals by President Bush, former president Jimmy Carter and other leaders that Noriega's government respect the will of the Panamanian people in Sunday's vote. The Roman Catholic Church and international election observers have backed the opposition's contention that it won the elections by a 3-to-1 margin. But until tonight, Noriega's regime slowly released results that observers said were based on fake tally sheets. These returns showed Noriega's handpicked presidential candidate, Carlos Duque, leading Endara by a 2-to-1 margin. Duque, 59, a longtime Noriega business associate, declared victory Sunday night. After midnight, troops and paramilitary forces raided several vote-counting centers and seized or destroyed original tally sheets. Today's protests started when Endara drove down Via Espana in a caravan of honking cars, drawing thousands of Panamanians into the streets to protest the election fraud. At one point, troops in combat gear tried unsuccessfully to stop Endara's motorcade, and water trucks sprayed it with a mixture of water and tear gas. The dark-blue trucks, called "Pitufos," or Smurfs, because the cartoon character is painted on their sides, rolled up and down Via Espana after the caravan passed, spraying the mixture and sending the crowds fleeing in panic. Youths set up a number of street barricades, but were dispersed by troops firing shotguns into the air. Some of the troops were armed with automatic weapons, including Soviet-designed AK47 rifles. "Noriega is at war with his people and against democracy," said Jose Monares, a Chilean election observer, as he watched the patrolling troops. More than 250 foreigners came to Panama to observe the elections, including a 19-member international delegation headed by Carter and a 21-member U.S. presidential mission led by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) Angered by the reporting of observers and journalists about the election fraud, the government today ordered the expulsions of several correspondents, including Charles Jako of the Cable News Network and Michael Drudge of the Voice of America. Tuesday night, two truckloads of heavily armed riot police known as "Dobermans" and plainclothesmen driving unmarked cars arrested Kenneth Freed of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Lane of Newsweek, Philip Bennett of the Boston Globe and me as we were driving to dinner in a rented car. No explanation was given. Freed and I were handcuffed and driven by two of the plainclothesmen to a police station and later to a military office near Noriega's Command Headquarters. We were joined there later by Lane and Bennett, then told that the whole incident had been a "misunderstanding" and released after about an hour.