"Pure and Fair"

Don Florencio Harmodio Arosemena, a mechanical engineer, was elected President of Panama last week, thus perpetuating the regime of the Liberal party.

Latest returns showed that exactly one vote was cast for the rival candidate, Dr. Jorge E. Boyd, put forward by Don Belisario Porras, onetime (1912-16; 1920-24) president and leader of the opposition. Only one opposition vote was cast, because adherents of that party strictly obeyed Don Belisario Porras when he exhorted them to boycott the polls last fortnight after liberal police had seized fifteen opposition leaders, one a retired capitalist, and popped them into jail as "revolutionaries."

The coalition of opposition parties claims to represent 80% of the electorate. Six days prior to the polling date, they cabled to U. S. Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg, the last of several fruitless appeals for U.S. intervention, declaring that in the event of refusal "your excellency's desire for a pure and fair election in Panama is impossible to realize. . . .

"The Government already by frauds and threats of violence controls an enormous majority of the voting certificates which are the basis of the election. We have the voters, but they have the certificates. Government supporters may cast several votes for each voter."