Arnulfo Arias
Arnulfo Arias was president of Panama three times, from 1940 to 1941, from 1949 to 1951 and for eleven days in October 1968, and was deposed by the National Guard all three times. He was the Harvard physician and Panameñista whom the country elected, by its own count, five times and was allowed to serve for a total of two and a half years. His deposition in 1968 gave the country Torrijos, the canal treaties and Noriega. He was the son of a Penonomé farmer, trained in medicine at Chicago and Harvard. He came into politics with his brother Harmodio through the coup of January 1931 by the Acción Comunal lodge against the oligarchy's president. Harmodio was president from 1932 and Arnulfo his minister in Rome and Berlin, where he admired what he saw. The first presidency, from October 1940, was the constitution of 1941, which he wrote. There were the presidential term lengthened to six years, the vote for women, and the social security institute. There was the state's right to the canal's economy. There was the citizenship taken from the West Indian, Chinese, Indian and Arab immigrants and their Panama-born children, the prohibited races, which the country's blacks have not forgotten. There was the refusal to let the Americans arm Panamanian ships or build the bases they wanted. That was why the police removed him in October 1941 while he was in Havana seeing an eye doctor and, the Americans said, a woman, with the embassy's approval given the night before. The second, from 1949, was given him by the police chief Remón after a recount that reversed the count of 1948, and taken from him by the same Remón in May 1951 when he suspended the constitution and the crowd stormed the palace. The Assembly impeached him and barred him from office for life. That lasted nine years. The third was the election of May 1968, which he won by a large margin over the oligarchy's candidate. In the eleven days, he tried to move the Guard's commanders to embassies abroad and the majors Torrijos and Martínez took the palace on 11 October instead. They sent him to the Canal Zone and then Miami, where he stayed until 1978. He came home for the election of 1984, at eighty-two. The count gave it to Noriega's candidate Barletta by seventeen hundred votes after a week of counting, and which the country believes he won. He died in Miami in August 1988 before the invasion that would have let him find out. His widow Mireya Moscoso was elected president in 1999 on his name. The party is still his.
- Lived: 1901 CE – 1988 CE
- Nationality: Panamanian
- Roles: president, physician, politician
