Noriega’s Soldiers Suppress a Coup by Panama Police Chief

The Panama City police chief led an unsuccessful coup attempt against military strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today, a defense spokesman said, touching off widespread anti-government demonstrations in the streets.

Hours after repeated government denials of a coup attempt, Defense Forces spokesman Maj. Eduardo Lopez Grimaldo said a group of army and police officers led “an attempt to seize and control the Defense Forces headquarters.”

He identified the ringleader as Col. Leonidas Macias, the Panama City police chief and a member of the Defense Forces general staff.

The formal Defense Forces statement said troops loyal to Noriega put down the uprising without bloodshed. It said Macias, three army majors and one army captain were “among those detained” but did not report the total number of military and police personnel who participated.

Shooting heard inside Noriega’s headquarters at dawn sparked widespread rumors that the military strongman had been toppled by his own men.

The military initially claimed the shooting was a training exercise. Later, it said the shots came from a policeman who had gone berserk.

Noriega walked out of his Defense Forces headquarters four hours after the coup attempt, saying he still was in control and describing the shots as “kisses for the journalists.”

Asked about his government’s lack of cash needed to pay government workers because of a U.S. freeze on Panamanian assets, Noriega said, “Tell the gringos to give it (the money) back. They stole it from us.”

As reports of the shooting swept through the capital, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets, barricading all of the main avenues with garbage and rocks and setting afire several buildings and vehicles. Youths armed with machetes and rocks guarded roadblocks.

Protesters began celebrating the assumed downfall of the embattled general, the de facto leader of a cash-short government that has been unable to pay all civil servants in the last week.

“Noreiga must go!” they shouted. “Down with Noriega! Down with the son of a bitch!”

Officials and residents described the spontaneous demonstration as the biggest anti-government rally in the nation’s history.

The rapidly escalating unrest among Panama’s 2.2 million people exploded with the government’s inability to pay more than 100,000 civil servants this week.

More than $55 million in Panamanian assets and monthly payments for the Panama Canal have been frozen in the United States since two U.S. courts indicted Noriega on drug trafficking charges last month.

The U.S. Southern Command ordered its 10,000 military personnel and their 13,000 dependents to stay out of public places, raising their warning status from “Bravo” to “Charlie.” Status Bravo, initiated 18 hours earlier, limits personnel movements because of possible civil disturbances.

In Washington, U.S. sources said the street barricades made it difficult for the American military to reach their bases.