Friend in Need

For three days this week Dwight Eisenhower, President of the most powerful republic in the world, played host to the President of Panama, one of the world's smallest. In the same C-54, the Sacred Cow, that flew Roosevelt to Yalta, Jose Antonio Remon and his attractive wife Cecilia reached Washington with only a few hours to spare before a presidential dinner in their honor. They were to spend the night in the White House, then move across Pennsylvania Avenue to Blair House and a round of wreath-laying, receptions and a return banquet for Ike. Next stop: New York, where President Remon, a superheated baseball fan, hopes to look in on the World Series.

Timely Roundup. Like Ike, "Chichi" Remon, 45, is a professional soldier. But since Panama had no army, he had to go abroad for his education, graduating as a cavalry officer from Mexico's Military College. Back in Panama, he entered the National Police (the nation's only armed force) as a captain. At U.S. invitation, he later attended the famed old cavalry school at Fort Riley, Kans., where he became a crack shot and a good friend of the U.S. Pearl Harbor time found Chichi in a position to do his friends of the north a good turn; before midnight on Dec. 7, 1941 he had smoothly rounded up every German and Japanese resident of Panama--a timely precaution against sabotage of the Panama Canal.

By 1947, Colonel Remon was police chief and Panama's strong man and President-maker. Eager for a little order in his country's mercurial politics, but reluctant to become President, he patiently tried four men in the office. Finally he decided to run himself, campaigned hard last year, and won easily in a fair vote.

Higher Taxes. So far, Chichi Remon has managed to be Panama's best President in years. Panamanians, accustomed to seeing the public treasury drained in one way or another by elected officials, now tell themselves incredulously that he is "really trying to do something for Panama." He raised income taxes, previously a joke, by 50% in the higher brackets--and forbade the government to do business with anyone who could not produce a tax receipt. Now he has tackled the delicate job of rewriting Panama's relationship to the U.S., whose flag flies over the Canal Zone.

This unique relationship was laid down in a treaty dating back to the 1903 revolution which freed Panama from Colombia. Panama remained possessor and theoretical sovereign of the Zone, but the U.S. got those "rights, power and authority" which it "would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign," in exchange for $10 million down and $250,000 a year (raised to $430,000 in 1936. when the U.S. went off the gold standard).

What Chichi seems to want now (though he has not said so officially) is a fairer annual rent. Possible asking price: $1,000,000, or a percentage of the canal's tolls (now running around $37 million a year). Chichi also would like the Canal Zone to curb some of its business activities (notably, commissaries for its employees) to help competing Panamanian commerce.

The U.S. is undoubtedly prepared to concede something, and delegates from both countries have just begun negotiating in Washington. How much Panama gets in the end may depend a lot on just how tactful a pitch likable, English-speaking Chichi Remon was able to make to Ike at dinner this week.

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