File No. 819.00/395.
[Inclosure.—Translation.]
The Unión Patriótica to
the President.
Your Excellency: We, the undersigned, all
belonging to the executive committee of the Patriotic Union, which
is the political coalition that maintains the present Government in
power and which has proclaimed and now upholds the candidature of
Don Pedro A. Díaz, have the honor to address Your Excellency,
begging Your Excellency to be good enough to order the intervention
by the Government of which Your Excellency is the head, in the
approaching elections of Panama, in order to watch the conduct of
the election boards and of the Government. The line of action
followed by the party that has proclaimed the candidature of Doctor
Belisario Porras is creating in this country a very dangerous
situation and may entail consequences of extreme gravity.
The opposition have a majority in all the election boards. One of
these, the municipal committee for elections, has by law the duty to
draw up the lists of all the citizens who, according to the
constitution, are entitled to vote. Duty and honor demand that these
lists should be drawn up with strict fairness; that is to say that
the name of every citizen without exception should be included in
them. But the persons who form the majority in these boards think
otherwise, and therefore in nearly every district of the Republic
they intentionally omit to insert the names of persons who are
friendly to the Government or to the candidature of Señor Díaz, a
citizen who has made himself conspicuous on account of his virtues,
which are universally recognized and esteemed. On the day of the
elections only those citizens whose names are in the lists will be
able to vote. The course of conduct followed by the majority of
these boards will produce, as a necessary result, elections that do
not convey the true state of public opinion in the country. In order
to acknowledge and uphold the rights of a considerable number of
citizens it would be necessary to take prompt action to cure the
evil referred to, which, if it continues, will undoubtedly
jeopardize the preservation of public order. The proceedings of the
election boards show their moral character and the notion they have
of their own strength. If they count with the majority of the
electorate, why is it necessary for them to prevent their opponents
from voting?
We further ask for the intervention of the Government of the United
States in the approaching elections, so that it shall be recognized
that the conduct of the Government of Panama, which has been
unjustly charged with the commission of arbitrary acts in order to
impose the candidature of Señor Díaz, is perfectly correct and
entirely according to law and political morals. We are confident in
the belief that it would not be possible to point to a single act of
the Government that would have the character that is imputed to it
by our enemies.
The intervention by the Government of the United States in the
elections of the Republic of Panama would not be a novel act. There
is the precedent of 1906, in which Your Excellency, as Secretary of
War, had a considerable part.
The object involved in this petition, which is no other than the
preservation of peace in the Republic of Panama, assures us that it
will be entertained and acted upon by the illustrious Government of
the United States, the nation that guarantees the independence of
this Republic.
