Panamanians elect a new president today, and it's expected to be Martín Torrijos, the 40-year-old son of a former dictator.

BY FRANCES ROBLES

PANAMA CITY, Panama - Fourteen years after a U.S. invasion ended Panama's military dictatorship, voters appear likely to elect the son of a military ruler as their new president.

Polls show that Martín Torrijos, son of the late Gen. Omar Torrijos, will win today's election over former President Guillermo Endara and two others by a comfortable margin.

Just under 2 million voters are expected to select the country's fourth democratically elected president since the 1989 U.S. invasion toppled Torrijos' successor, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.

''It's interesting, there isn't a commitment to looking toward the future,'' said Torrijos supporter Ebrahim Asvat, president of El Siglo newspaper. ``Everyone is looking back.''

It's a familiar phenomenon in Panama, where many analysts say the driving forces behind this and the last presidential election have been two dead men: Omar Torrijos, who ruled Panama from 1972 until 1981, and Arnulfo Arias, the three-time president he ousted in a 1968 coup.

The younger Torrijos, 40, heads his father's Revolutionary Democratic Party, known as the PRD. A former vice minister of justice, the Texas A&M University graduate has never held elected office and spent much of his dad's rule working at a McDonald's in the United States. Born out of wedlock, he was 18 when his father died in a plane crash in 1981.

FIRST VOTE

But some 300,000 voters are youths who will be casting a ballot for the first time. They don't hold the PRD's past support for military rule against its star candidate. And some of those voters who remember the time before the Internet and cellphones recall Torrijos warmly as a leftist who helped the poor and negotiated the return of the Panama Canal from U.S. control.

If anything, the dictator's son is expected to benefit from his father's track record. And despite his bloodline, some say Torrijos' youth makes him part of a change in the political guard, someone chosen by his historically autocratic party, not by a tap on the shoulder but through a primary.

''We're saying goodbye to the past!'' Torrijos shouted at his closing campaign event Wednesday. ``Welcome to the future.''

Endara seems just as certain of a victory. ''I'm going to win, damn it!'' he said last week.

Analysts say some Panamanians are still bitter about the years of repression under military rule and will cast a vote for Endara, 67, who was the first president after the U.S. invasion. Endara helped Panama recover from a stormy period of protests and strife, and has campaigned on his experience.

''I'll cast my vote for Endara, because he's the least worst,'' said University of Panama political analyst Miguel Antonio Bernál. ``But when I do, I'll be holding my nose. Torrijos is a tool, merchandise put on the market by his party, and Endara surrounds himself with people who stink.''

Bernál said neither candidate has come up with solid proposals to combat the country's leading ills: corruption and 12 percent unemployment. There is little ideological difference between the contenders, products of an outdated political system that shuts out new leaders, Bernál said.

''This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen: They want to let the dead govern,'' Bernál said. ``We have an electoral system that replaces the same with the same.''

ARIAS FOLLOWERS

Followers of Arnulfo Arias, gathered under the Arnulfista Party, have nominated former foreign minister José Miguel Alemán, who has suggested that a vote for Torrijos is a step toward military despotism.

Despite polls showing Torrijos with 47 percent and Endara with 29 percent of the expected votes, Alemán's party says he could win because it was behind in 1999, when Arias' widow, Mireya Moscoso, wound up beating Martín Torrijos.

At 13 percent in opinion polls, Alemán is a distant third. A fourth candidate, Ricardo Martinelli, is not expected to garner much support in today's vote.

Analysts say Torrijos will benefit from Moscoco's perceived failures, winning the ''punishment votes'' of those turned off by her administration's corruption scandals and lack of accomplishments.

Endara is sure to win some of those votes as well, they say, because his party has something going for it: It never supported military rule.