Weekend TV : Candidates Carry On With Debates; Latin-American Politics Makes News

Politics--both domestic and Latin-American style--will be big news on the small screen this weekend.

One week before Southern voters go to the polls to elect nearly one-third of all the delegates to next summer’s Democratic and Republican conventions, Cable News Network (CNN) will carry debates between presidential candidates of both parties from Atlanta. Democrats Jesse Jackson, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Albert Gore, Paul Simon and Gary Hart square off at noon today; Republicans George Bush, Robert Dole, Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson battle at noon Sunday.

The Democrats get together again in Houston Sunday at 2 p.m. on Channel 11. Walter Cronkite will moderate this debate, which will feature direct questioning of the candidates by panels of government officials and political science students.

On Sunday (7 a.m. on Channels 4 and 36, 7:30 a.m. on Channel 39), “Sunday Today” takes up the question of drug running in Central America in an interview with Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro taped earlier this week in Havana.

Later Sunday morning, the attempted ouster of Panama’s strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who is under U.S. indictment for drug trafficking, and the threat he poses to U.S. security and to the Panama Canal, will be debated by “The McLaughlin Group” at 9:30 a.m. on Channel 4 (5:30 p.m. on Channel 50).