By GLENN GARVIN
Herald Staff Writer

PANAMA -- A presidential campaign that has sometimes seemed more like a
political ghost story than an election will end Sunday when Panamanians go to
the polls to choose between the widow of a three-time president and the son
of the general who helped depose him in a military coup.

Polls released earlier this week show Mireya Moscoso, the 54-year-old
widow of Arnulfo Arias, has recovered from a deficit of 18 percentage points
to forge into a dead heat with Martin Torrijos, the 35-year-old son of former
military strongman Omar Torrijos.

Many political analysts here -- including some in the Torrijos camp -- say
Moscoso may have a slight edge as the campaign moves into its final hours.
``The momentum has gone her way the past few weeks,'' said a Torrijos
strategist. ``But I think we can get it back.''

The winner will preside over the most momentous changes here since Panama
seceded from Colombia with American military backing in 1903. Not only will
the country's interoceanic canal come under local control for the first time at
the end of this year, but for the first time in its history there will be no U.S.
troops on Panama's soil.

The irony is that the battle to lead Panama into a new age of political maturity
is being fought by two spectral wraiths from a rough-and-tumble past that
nearly everyone here believes is best left behind.

``Panama may be more democratic than at any time in its history,'' said
Roberto Eisenmann, founder of the country's leading daily. ``But if you want to
see the glass as half-empty, it's true that our political battles still seem to be
fought at the cemetery.''

Moscoso is running as the candidate of the Arnulfista party her husband
launched; Torrijos under the banner of the Revolutionary Democratic Party
created by his father. Both campaigns have focused more on the parties'
founders than on their current candidates.

Neither Moscoso nor Torrijos has much in the way of a political track record.
Neither has held elected office, and the only governmental experience for
either of them is Torrijos' four uneventful ears as vice minister of the interior.

Nor do they appear to have many differences over ideology. In a campaign
with few real issues, both have pledged to slow the pace of market-oriented
reforms initiated by outgoing President Ernesto Perez Balladares, backing
away from his plans to cut back trade barriers and privatize state-owned
companies. Both promise coalition governments that will reach decisions about
the operation of the Panama Canal through national consensus rather than
partisan fiat.

What Torrijos and Moscoso do have are illustrious loved ones who, before
their deaths in the 1980s, did much to shape Panama's political destiny, for
better and often for worse, and felt no qualms about breaking the rules to do
so.

Moscoso is the widow of Arnulfo Arias, who was 54 years her senior, three
times elected president and three times deposed in military coups. (It is widely
believed the army stole a fourth election from Arias in 1984 through ballot box
shenanigans.) Arias is fondly remembered by many Panamanians for creating
the country's social security system and granting women the vote. But he also
flirted with the Axis powers during the early days of World War II and pushed
through constitutional restrictions on blacks, Jews, Asians and other minority
groups.

Torrijos is the out-of-wedlock son of Omar Torrijos, a key member of the
group of military officers who engineered the last coup against Arias, in 1968.
Within months, Omar Torrijos was in firm control of the military government
and remained in power until his death in a plane crash in 1981. Omar Torrijos
endeared himself to the country's poor with lavish social spending that mired
Panama in debt. He became a national hero for negotiating the return of the
Panama Canal, but his critics were quickly and bloodily suppressed. The
military government he created eventually mutated into the regime of Gen.
Manuel Noriega and careened into a war with the United States.

Arias has been dead for a decade, Omar Torrijos for nearly two, but you
wouldn't know it from this presidential campaign. The general, his trademark
cigar clamped between his teeth, appears in television ads, billboards and
posters on behalf of his son, whose campaign theme song is titled Omar Lives.

Moscoso, meanwhile, begins every speech with her husband's old Latin motto,
``vox populi, vox dei,'' ``the voice of the people is the voice of God,'' drawing
a roar of approval every time. Her publicity photos inevitably show her sitting
beneath a portrait of Arias.

The necrophiliac quality of the campaign has become so pronounced that, at a
brief Friday news conference, a reporter asked Moscoso if she wasn't
embarrassed to be part of an election ``between two dead people.''

``I don't think that's true,'' she replied in mildly injured tone. ``The spirit of Dr.
Arias lives for thousands and thousands of Panamanians. But the work we are
doing in this campaign, we are doing on our own.''

If Arias and Omar Torrijos really were running against one another, the
prospect would be frightening: a military dictator versus a politician known as a
racist with Fascist sympathies. But analysts across the political spectrum all
agree that the rival campaigns are trading on name recognition rather than
ideology.

``Whoever wins, we're going to have a normal, democratic government,'' said
Eisenmann, who has been part of the Moscoso campaign's brain trust.
``Mireya Moscoso wasn't even born yet when Arnulfo Arias was putting
things into the constitution about blacks and Jews. And Martin Torrijos was
only a teenager when his father died. The two parties have traveled light-years
politically since those days.''

Torrijos began the campaign last October with an 18-point lead, in part
because banker Alberto Vallarino led a walkout from Moscoso's party and
launched his own candidacy, cutting into her support.

But as Vallarino's underfunded candidacy has dwindled away -- his campaign
is spending $2 million, against as much as $10 million apiece for the other two
candidates -- Moscoso has gained strength. Meanwhile, many political
analysts here say, Torrijos squandered support by trying to play it safe, giving
bland speeches and avoiding the press.

The final polls released this week showed Moscoso with a tiny lead of just
under two percentage points -- but well within the polls' three-point margin of
error.