Remember the patrol boats we got from Italy, as part of a $250 million deal with Finmeccanica? They were, we were told by security minister Mulino, newly overhauled, with zero hours on them.
We saw one pass near our newsroom one day. It was so loud that it sounded as if the Panama invasion had just started again. For drug interdiction these boats must be absolutely useless; you hear them coming long before you can even see them.
In any case, of these boats, one is already down. It needs three (!) new engines and the Panamanians don’t have money. So Bocas is now without spaghetti boat patrols, says la Prensa.
Not that that really seems to matter much: We understand that the other three boats are only being used sporadically. This was just such a great deal!
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