Panamanians are doing their best to register indifference to the return of Manuel Noriega. The 77-year-old former military dictator, drug trafficking convict and all-round banana republic creep, who’s been rotting behind bars in Florida and France since the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, was flown home Dec. 11 to begin serving 60 more years in prison for ordering the murders of political opponents in the 1980s. By collectively shrugging, his countrymen would like the rest of the world to think that Panama has moved well beyond those tropical strongman days, into a functioning, institutional democracy where Noriegas are museum pieces.
Unfortunately, Panamanians are only fooling themselves, not us.
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