Panama's first woman president, Mireya Moscoso, will be sworn in at Panama City's new national stadium Wednesday before a group of seven Latin American heads of state and a crowd of 25,000 supporters.
Few doubt that Moscoso, the opposition party leader who defeated the candidate of the majority Democratic Revolutionary party in the presidential election on May 2, has cause to celebrate. As the head of the populist Arnulfista party founded by her late husband -- three times ousted strongman Arnulfo Arias -- she will lead Panama into the new millennium at a key moment in its history.A ceremony at noon on December 31 will mark the hand-over of the Panama canal to Panamanian authorities and the final withdrawal of U.S. troops, in fulfillment of a treaty negotiated in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter of the United States and the then Panamanian military leader Gen. Omar Torrijos.
"The canal is pivotal for the development of the inter-oceanic region and the rest of the country," Moscoso told voters during campaigning, while promising to respect the strategic waterway's administrative autonomy after the U.S. withdrawal.
The controversial U.S. presence in Panama began in 1903 when President Theodore Roosevelt sent a gunboat to support Panamanian secession from Colombia. The new country's constitution granted U.S. control of the canal linking the Caribbean sea and the Pacific ocean, begun and then abandoned by the French in the 1880s, and the right to intervene "in any part of Panama to re-establish public peace and constitutional order."
U.S.-Panamanian relations reached their nadir in 1989 with the invasion to topple Gen. Manuel Noriega. An estimated 350 Panamanians and 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in Operation Just Cause, which was condemned by the Organization of American States. Noriega is serving a 40-year sentence in Miami for drug trafficking.
The U.S. currently pays an annual toll of more than $100 million to the Panamanian government for use of the 50-mile canal but until 1977 retained sole operational control. In December the waterway will be run by Panamanians.