Twenty years after the United States removed Manuel Noriega from power, and with the recent focus on Honduras, Panama has been well below the radar for most Americans:

But it is a strategically important country that is playing a growing role in global trade. Indeed, it is estimated that 5 percent of all international trade-and a much higher percentage of U.S. trade-goes through the Panama Canal. [Outgoing President] Torrijos has successfully promoted Panama as a tourist hotspot and commercial hub. It is an increasingly popular retirement destination for Americans; indeed, U.S. expatriates helped fuel the recent Panamanian housing boom.

Ricardo Martinelli will officially be sworn in as president of Panama today and will serve a five-year term. The occasion will mark Panama’s fourth peaceful presidential transition since the overthrow of Noriega in 1989. Martinelli, who was the candidate of the conservative Alliance for Change party, won a landslide victory of 59 percent to 36 percent over Hugo Chavez favorite Balbina Herrera in the May elections.

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(Background here.)

They had a court order.  Fausta updated:

1:50PM
Indeed, Honduras’ La Prensa states that (My translation: If you use this, please credit me and link to this post)

An official statement of the Supreme Court of Justice explained that the Armed Forces acted under lawful grounds when detaining the President of the Republic, and by decommissioning the materials to be used on the illegal poll which aimed to bring forth Executive Power against a judicial order.Other sources verified that the president of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti, will assume the presidency of the republic in a few hours.
…
Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was detained this morning by the military in compliance with an order of the courts of law.

Meanwhile, the foreign policy experts over at State and the White House* have gone into, bluntly, full Ugly American mode: they’re currently declining to recognize the right of the Hondurans to remove their own head of state on constitutional grounds. Apparently, when it’s a choice between a chief executive on the one hand and said chief executive’s country’s judiciary, legislature, military, and own political party on the other… well, it all apparently depends on what Hugo Chavez thinks.

Let’s just hope that they don’t ask Chavez what he thinks about the Jews.

Moe Lane

PS: Let me expand on that just a little.  I don’t think that this administration is slavishly following Chavez’s lead: I think that they care so little about South American affairs that accommodating their stance to that of a darling of the radical Left seems to them to be a no-brainer.  If the White House is worried about getting the answer to this wrong, it’s not immediately obvious.

*H/T: Gateway Pundit, Hot Air.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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Venezuela Arrests Soldiers Over Alleged Army Plot, Chavez Says

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said soldiers suspected of conspiring in a plot to destabilize the government were arrested, adding the situation is under control.

Chavez, a self-proclaimed socialist who has accused the political opposition of trying to overthrow his government since he survived a brief coup in 2002, said the country’s intelligence agency uncovered a plan to infiltrate the Miraflores presidential palace. He made the comments yesterday on state television.

“We’ve arrested some soldiers, and they remain detained, who were in contact with a solder on the run in the U.S., protected by the U.S. government, sending messages about a so- called Operation Independence,” Chavez said.

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