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Show 4 'J Z Disturbing Trend Toward Dictatorial Government in Our Own Hemisphere "J. Just four year ago we finished Z' fighting a long and costly war againt three dictator-run eountriea and w - breathed light of relief when, one after another, Mussolini. Hitler and Tojo were eliminated. We have Joined with other countries in adopting disapproving diplomatic diplo-matic policies toward the Franco regime in Spain on the ground that it ia a tyrannical government. One of our objection to the spread of Russian communism in the world ia that it ia a dictatorial ytem of government which denies popular expression and rule. ' W have rather consistently followed a policy of upporting popular govern- ment and at least frowning on, even " though we may not alway actively 2 oppose, any regime which establishes; Itself in a country by mean of bullet J rather than ballot. - But while we have been concentrating our attention on opposition to dictatorial m government elsewhere in the world, ' iomrTreydlcUtoriaTregimerTiav-, iomrTreydlcUtoriaTregimerTiav-, been apringing up right in our own back ' yard. The case of Panama, which ia doubly close to u because of iu proximity to-! to-! the vital Panama canal, la of immediate interest Panama had three different . presidents In week aa the chief of the Panamanian national police, the country' coun-try' only armed force, played kingmaker king-maker and Juggled the republic's political leadership to auit himself. - Then there la the case of Colombia, also of particular interest to us because . it likewise ia close to the Panama canaL Colombia just held a one-party election to the tune of gunfire, with the choice of a president termed by the Foreign Policy Bulletin aa the leader of the "moat reactionary element" in Colombia. The newly elected president, Laureano Gomez, reportedly organized a black-shirt black-shirt movement in Bogota aome year back and wa blacklisted by the allies in the last war. The opposition party in Colombia boycotted the election because it claimed the government, by declaring a tate of lege, imposing censorship, using troop, etc., had made the election a farce. The Foreign Policy Bulletin concludea Ita comment on the situation with thia warning: "If the Falangist Gomes faction fac-tion remain dominant in a Conservative party dictatorship, lta victory in Colombia Colom-bia will add another Latin American government to the mounting number of countries that have joined the new Madrid-Buenos Aires 'axis' and Increase the pressures on those few remaining nation which are atruggling to retain g "middle-of-the-road system." Plainly there la cause for American concern in thia apparent trend toward dictatorial government in the western hemisphere. While it 1 generally recognised recog-nised that Latin American nations have not practiced the aame kind of democracy we hava, still they hava not gone the whole route to tyranny and in many countries there has been popular rule in very large measure. It would certainly cer-tainly be aa much of a atep backward for dictatorship to become firmly implanted im-planted in our neighbor nations of thia hemisphere aa for it to spread in Europe and Asia. |