Costa Rican President Oscar Arias wrapped up his visit to Chile saying that he was impressed by that country’s growth and that he is convinced that Costa Rica should learn from their example in two areas - opening state monopolies to competition and in offering public works to bidders under the concession model.

Arias credits these two factors to fast economic growth in Chile, 6% anually in the last few years, and also to the reduction in poverty, which went from 38.5% en 1990 a 18.8% en el 2005.

“We must look to the south, to learn from your success.  It is not an accident that you are the most developed country in the region; it is due to your successful integration into the global economy. We are just beginning to go in this direction. ”, Arias said to Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, following their meeting.

Edited by Amanda Roberson, Tico Times Staff

Fast, continuous access to the Internet is crucial to Costa Rica’s development and productivity, and a new “broadband barometer” will help gauge the country’s connectivity, said Production Minister Alfredo Volio yesterday during a press conference to announce an initiative launched by the computer company Cisco in collaboration with the Production Ministry and the High Technology Advisory Commission (CAATEC).

This “barometer” is a count of how many homes, businesses, educational facilities and government offices in Costa Rica have a broadband Internet connection, defined as permanently available with a speed of 128 kilobytes per second or faster, explained CAATEC director Ricardo Monge. In Costa Rica, there are four types of broadband connections available from the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA): ADSL, cable modem, RDSI(ISDN) and phone lines exclusively for Internet.

As part of the initiative, technicians are interviewing businesses and getting information from ICE and RACSA to count the number of broadband connections in Costa Rica every six months and make the results public, Monge explained. Additionally, a goal has been set for Costa Rica to have 325,000 broadband connections by 2010, meaning 7% of the population would have access to this technology.

According to the first count, taken from December 2005-June 2006, 1.5% of Costa Ricans, or 65,609 people, have access to a broadband connection, a rate inferior to other countries in Latin America including Mexico (2.2%) and Chile (5.6%).

The initiative also includes plans to work with businesses, schools and government institutions to help them get more broadband connections.

Volio said he has seen first-hand the disadvantage farmers and small businesses face without access to technology. He told an anecdote about a recent visit to the southern Caribbean coast, where he discovered that a group of about 200 farmers shared one public telephone that had been out of service for quite some time.

“They were unable to get vital information necessary for their business,” Volio said.

Of the 720,000 vehicles in the country that should get the RiTeVe technical inspection during the year, 80,000 have not done so.  Those paying the “marchamo” (from now to December) are required to show proof of a current technical inspection, so long lines and crowds are expected at the 16 stations nationwide in the next weeks.

However, this week the stations are functioning normally. So go get that inspection before the rush !

After remaining strong throughout the three days of the grueling Costa Rican mountain bike competition La Ruta de los Conquistadores, Colombia’s Leonardo Páez Sunday won first place in this 300-kilometer race beginning on the Pacific coast and ending in Playa Bonita, in the Caribbean province of Limón, according to a statement on the race’s official Web site.

Although Costa Rican Andrey Amador won the third stage of the race – a 120-kilometer stretch from the Caribbean-slope town of Turrialba to Playa Bonita — Páez captured the first place title.

Asked if the Ruta de los Conquistadores was the toughest race he’s ever competed in, Páez, who just won the Pan-American Mountain Bike title in Brazil, agreed with his opponents, “yes.”

U.S. competitive biker Jeremiah Bishop held a steady second place in the race until a hard fall near Turrialba Saturday left him with a nose and jaw fracture and unable to compete.

With Bishop out of the race, Amador and his Costa Rican teammates Federico “Lico ” Ramírez and Paolo Montoyo tried unsuccessfully to defeat Páez.

Although victory eluded Rodríguez, he told the daily La Nación that “to ride together with him (Páez) was an honor.”

Páez finished the race, known as the toughest in the world, in 14 hours, one minute, 52 seconds. Andrey Armador came in second place 24 minutes 41 seconds later, followed by Ramírez, fellow Costa Rican Déiber Esquivel and Italian Marzio Deho, according to the daily La Nación.

-Tico Times

Like many people in Nicaragua and around the world, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias stayed tuned yesterday as results rolled in from Nicaragua’s presidential election Sunday, showing Sandinista candidate and former President Daniel Ortega with 40% of votes and a likely first-round victory.

Asked his opinions on Ortega’s potential win, Arias, also a former President (1986-1990) and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the two leaders would “once again work together as we did 20 years ago, this time not for peace in Central America, but to get Central American countries ahead,” Arias told the press in Santiago, Chile, where he is attending a meeting of the Intern ational Socialist council, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial.

Arias also said he is confident in the stability of Nicaragua’s democracy and that Ortega’s win would not pose any kind of risk to the country.

“I am confident that Nicaraguan citizens will be satisfied with the election results,” Arias said.

Meanwhile, Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica told Channel 7 TV News they were less than satisfied with Ortega’s potential victory.

Several Nicas said they left their country because of leaders like Ortega and expressed concern that he would do nothing as President to develop Nicaragua and overcome poverty.

-Tico Times

By Tim Rogers and Katherine Stanley
Nica Times and Tico Times Staff

MANAGUA – At press time last night, a victory by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega appeared all but assured, with four rounds of preliminary returns and a watchdog group’s “fast count” showing Ortega with a significant lead over his opponents in Nicaragua’s presidential race.

The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) announced at approximately 7:15 p.m. that with 61.8% of votes counted, National Liberation Front (FSLN) candidate Ortega had a sturdy lead with 38.59%. This puts him well ahead of Eduardo Montealegre of the National Liberal Alliance (ALN), with 30.94%, and José Rizo of the Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC), with 22.93%.

The CSE is expected to announce the outcome of the remaining votes this afternoon.
According to CSE president Roberto Rivas, data suggest that a second round is virtually impossible. (To win in the first round, a candidate must receive either at least 40% of votes, or 35% or more with at least a 5% margin over his closest opponent.)

The expected win would snap Ortega’s losing streak after three electoral defeats and return his former revolutionary party to power 16 years after being voted out of office.

Last night’s CSE numbers mirrored a “fast count” by the Nicaraguan election observation group Ethics and Transparency, which announced yesterday morning that their tally showed Ortega with 38.49% and Montealegre with 29.52%.

Huge crowds of Sandinistas last night began arriving in Managua for a celebration, although none of Ortega’s opponents had conceded. In separate press conferences throughout the day, Montealegre and Rizo maintained the preliminary results did not reflect reality and that they would wait for a significant proportion of the votes to be counted – for Rizo, at least 60%, and for Montealegre, 100% – before conceding.

Ortega, making his first comments to reporters since the election as he left a meeting with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said that “until the council makes its pronouncement, we have to maintain calm,” and urged his fellow candidates to resolve to work together to “eradicate poverty…and give security to the private sector, to investors.”

The San José city council delayed a vote last night as to whether or not to hold the traditional end of year festivals in Zapote, just east of downtown.  Last Tuesday, a motion to cancel the Zapote fair was placed before the council, but it only got 7 votes of the 9 needed to pass.

The council members who did not vote for the motion, asked for a committee to investigate whether or not the festival should be held.  Roberto Delgado (Renovación), Lawrence Molina (PLN), Fabiola Murillo (PAC), José Antonio Chavarría (independiente), Jorge Hidalgo (PLN) and Yalile Castaing (PUSC) were on the commission.  The commission was to give its report to the full city council  yesterday, but asked for 24 more hours to complete the investigation.   Once the report is given the council is expected to vote on the motion to cancel the fair.

Mónica Nágel Berger, executive director of Alterra Partners, manager of the airport the International Juan Santamaría, denied that its parent company has disappeared, and assured that Alterra has not thought about leaving its operations in Costa Rica. This after Rodolfo Silva, ex-Minister of Transports (1996-1998), affirmed during an interview with Al Día, that Alterra Partners is a “shell”, after the closing of its headquarters in London, England.

“Alterra works in Costa Rica, we continue working in a legally constituted company, that has businesses in Peru and in others places.  Some businesses were sold them, that is part of the culture of transnational companies. I do not see possibilities that corporation disappears, or leaves. There are 140 people working in Alterra and we are thinking about how to solve the problems at the airport”, stated Nágel.

Last Friday, the civil servant announced that Alterra is rushing to comply with the government order to open two new boarding lounges, that will take care of passengers during the high season 2006-2007. Nágel said that the delay in works, is due to the fact that the contract signed by Gobierno and Alterra “was not simplest”. The airport was supposed to be finished by August of the 2004, but a year before the International Financial Corporation (IFC) suspended the payment of $120 million, charging that the project’s revenue did not guarantee the recovery of the money. Alterra decided to suspend works until the Contraloría demanded resumption, in December of the 2005. The government, Alterra and the IFC are still trying to resolve on the financial imbalance.

Another of the eight convicts who escaped Oct. 9 from Costa Rica’s largest prison La Reforma — in Alajuela, northwest of San José — was captured by police Saturday in Cartago, east of San José, according to a statement from the Public Security Ministry.

The fugitive, identified by the name Douglas Quirós, 48, was hiding in a covered rancho area near a hardware store, the statement said. Residents informed police they had seen him, and Cartago police officers found him early Saturday morning sleeping in the covered area surrounded by newspaper clippings with reports of his and the seven other fugitives’ escape.

Police took Quirós, who faces 44 years in prison and has been convicted of crimes including aggravated robbery and rape, to a prison in Cartago.

His arrest leaves Rafael Herrera as the only one of the eight convicts who escaped from La Reforma who is still at large.

The fugitives broke out of the prison by sawing through their window bars, taking multiple guards hostage and killing another (TT, Oct. 13).

Four of the eight fugitives – Johel Guillermo Araya, Alberto Martínez, Johnny Rodríguez and Freddy García — were found in a house in Guácimo, on the Caribbean slope, Oct. 24. García was killed during a shootout with police.

Another of the fugitives, Roberto Clark, was arrested two days earlier at the annual Carnival festivities in the Caribbean port town of Limón (TT, Oct. 27), and a sixth inmate, Victor Urbina, surrendered himself to police Oct. 26 in Tres Rios, east of San José (TT, Nov. 3).

-Tico Times

The Esquivel Volio family was the largest supporter in the last campaign, giving ¢90,030,500 to the PLN, according to a study of the TSE done by Al Día.

Costa Rican Campaign Financing
The law does not allow donations of over ¢19,485,000 (less than $40,000) and foreigners may not contribute to campaigns.  But Costa Rican companies with foreign shareholders or directors may contribute.  “We don’t know the interests behind this fiction we call a corporation.  The public should vote knowing what economic interests are behind each party. It isn’t important who donates, as long as they are not masked.  ” Luis Antonio Sobrado, TSE Magistrate

The TSE donation list is updated and shown on their website: www.tse.go….

Al Día published the following list:

Liberación Nacional