by Rod Hughes

The national soccer quarterfinals continue with the teams facing two adversaries: their opposition on the pitch and the sportswriters. In fact, you would not even know that the festivities are leading to the big, coveted cup of national championship to hear the writers tell it, but was more a Sunday pickup game in La Sabana Park.
Take the game Sunday that knocked San Carlos out of the running, 1-0 on a breathtaking long shot by midfielder Carlos Hernandez. Other than the winning goal, the daily paper Al Dia called the match “full of yawns” and said Alajuela was playing in “slow motion.” La Nacion said it was that goal and nothing more worth watching.
Meanwhile, Puntarenas was eliminating Perez Zeledon 2-0, Saprissa was downing a surprisingly strong La Brujas team from Escazu, 1-0, Heredia held on to the advantage of its opening win to eliminate Cartago in a scoreless ho-hummer.
So on to the semifinals Wednesday with Heredia meeting Saprissa and Puntarenas vs. Alajuela.

When Costa Rica’s newest hospital opened its doors in San Rafael de Alajuela 18 months ago, area residents—some half a million to be served by the facility—were euphoric. Today, the hospital is barely running, reports the daily newspaper La Nacion.
Of the 700 new posts for medical personnel, only 153 have been filled by the Social Security administration (Caja), the giant government agency that runs public hospitals. Those 153 are running at full speed to tend the patients.
Three ultramodern operating rooms cannot be used simultaneously because of the personnel scarcity—especially anathesiologists. Some 400 patients are home awaiting urinology operations and 300 women need gynolocogy surgery. The whole list numbers a staggering 7,000 pending operations and the wait for 1,600 of those is up to 30 months.
Meanwhile, a large portion of recent medical school graduates languish without work.
Of 310 beds, only 226 are in use and that is only seven more than the old, ramshackle hospital the new facility replaced in October, 2004, reports La Nacion. The rest have not even shed their protective plastic covers from the factory and nurses’ desks on the third floor sit gathering dust.
Consulted by the newspaper, a spokesperson for the Caja assure that a “new strategy” to cure the problem was being developed but hospital director Luis Diego Alfaro countered that the strategy included only longer hours for the already overworked staff.
The hospital has been star-crossed from the beginning, according to the report. In August, 2000, seven construction firms competed for the construction contract with a Spanish company getting the nod in December of that year, but it was not until May, 2001, that the $34 million contract was signed after legal appearls by the other companies. But by September of that year, it was found that the ground under the site was a boggy clay that needed another $2 million preparation to assure safe construction. In 2005, the Caja discovered serious flaws in the work—doors badly designed, medical equipment that did not work and some electrical connections unuseable—but too late to get them repaired under the warrantee.

29/4/7

It has indeed been a month of uncertainty. I got my car fixed, and did a few more things for my safety inspection, which was due this month. The car passed that on Wednesday, with a few things to get fixed for next time. I’ll get two tires this week when I go to Canas to price pool parts, and I need new brake shoes. And I got my dental plate welded in Puntarenas on Monday, but I went to Miramar to another dentist and am getting a new plate made there. The first one wanted $400., the second one $116. Quite a difference.
The builder is being swamped with red tape, trying to get a building permit for the new house. I’m sure I couldn’t remain calm going through what he has, and he knows the process. The final block was a surprise to me. When I bought the lot, I was assured it came with title. When we applied for the permit, it wasn’t in my name, and didn’t have title. Both people who said it had title, including my lawyer, now deny saying that. But, I had applied for title on both lots, and the lawyer has completed that now. Why he didn’t say something two months ago when we were in his office signing the contract to build, I don’t know. The municipality gave Carlos a ticket to get the building permit on Friday, but he can’t get the permit until Monday.
I had a lot of difficulty getting my driver’s license, but that finally came through on Friday. I had to drive to San Jose to pick that up. That is a long story in itself and the whole situation left me worried for a couple of weeks, but it’s okay now, and the story is better left untold. In Ontario, when they wrongfully took my A license, it took me a year to get it back.
The rainy season is sneaking up on us early this year. We got our first rain in early April, and have had about five since. Everything is turning green already, and I rarely have to water the lawn anymore. I am hoping that by May, all the troublesome paperwork will be done, and we can all get down to more hands-on work.

by Rod Hughes
UPDATE—Power outages continued throughout the country this week due to a decision by the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) to ration electricity to make up a lack caused by low water levels (according to ICE) in hydroelectric dams around the country. The blackouts, unlike the one April 19 touched off by the explosion of a circuit at Cachi Reservoir causing a nationwide domino effect, are regional, lasting from two and a half to four hours.
(ICE promised shorter outages during the weekend and then only in some sectors.)
Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias, acting in the President’s name, has declared the energy crunch a national crisis, although how this will put Humpty Dumpty together again is not explained in detail other than a call to the Legislative Assembly (congress) to give ICE sufficient funds to finish several hydroelectric projects in progress.
Business leaders and industrialists, through the union of private enterprise chambers, have severely criticized ICE for not confronting the problem sooner Certainly, many were hurt by the unexpected blackout of more than an hour April 19. The Tico Times reported last Friday that Intel, the electronics giant, lost 150,000 units on the production line at their plant here.
ICE, after promising that rationing would not be required, began the so-called “rolling outages” after Aresep, the country’s rate regulator, turned down a 23% increase in electric rates, granting a lower percentage and then rescinding even that after the April 19 blackout.
ARESP said ICE demanded far more than it needed. ICE responded that they had no money to pay for diesel to run their thermal generators to make up the gap caused by their faltering hydroelectric output—and began the rolling blackouts.
Many observers suspect that the frequent blackouts are a power play (no pun intended) by ICE to pressure ARESEP to grant all it asks.
But there is little doubt that the country must update its generating capacity in the near future to meet a precipitously rising energy demand.

by Rod Hughes

Und zo, we come down the long 2006-7 trail to the quarterfinals leading to the National Soccer Championship. Who’s excited?
We will get to the opening games in a moment— games which Spanish-language sports columnists dismissed as about as fast-moving, gripping and suspenseful as a knitting tournament—but first a little history.
Time was when only 10 teams were in the First Division and everything was simple–They played throughout the season and then the top two teams met in a two-out-of-three series that capped the whole affair.
But, perhaps influenced by the NFL, NBA and MLB to the north, owners decided to cram in as many games as possible, expand the franchises a bit and and call the last half of the season a tourney in order to hype the suspense and earn more gate receipts.
And who can blame them, taking into account the financial anemia that seems chronic with many First Division teams? In the past 12 or 15 years, we have seen (1) half of the clubs’ owners nearly needing to pawn their dentures in order to pay their employer quotas to the Social Security (Caja), (2) the sports mecca for thousands of soccer fans, Ricardo Saprissa Stadium in Tibas, padlocked due to debt but bailed out by sale to a foreigner and (3) a very good Guanacaste team from Nicoya forced by indigence to transfer its franchise to Escazu (city of the witches) and become Las Brujas.
Now the opening games: The most puzzling was the 4-3 struggle between Heredia and Cartago where Heredia, at the last of the season the most consistent team in the Division, blew a 4-0 lead late in the game and nearly its win. Scoring began at only nine minutes into the game with Heredia’s Marvin Angulo followed by Jafet Soto, then a self-inflicted goal by Cartago and capped by Junior Diaz. Then it was Cartago’s turn as “Cocha” Alfaro, Jose Francisco Alfaro and Esteban Bolanos beat Heredia’s defense about the head and ears.
Alajuela was meanwhile cruising to a 3-0 win over San Carlos. Perez Zeledon and Puntarenas, La Brujas and Saprissa were all scoreless in two real snoozers.
And if you consider this report cruel, you should have read what the Spanish-language press said about the openers! “Who put the hex on good football?” moaned a headline in the daily Al Dia report on the Brujas-Saprissa game. And that was one of the kinder comments!

By Amanda Roberson Tico Times Staff
Police have discovered that some of the 56 Chinese migrants who were discovered lost at sea off the Pacific beach of Playa Guiones Saturday paid as much as $35,000 to be transported from their country without knowing their final destination, explained Vice-Minister of Public Security Ana Durán at a press conference yesterday.

While investigating these shipwrecked migrants, who were recently brought to a shelter in San José, police discovered that six of them were carrying round-trip airline tickets from China to Bogota, Colombia, with layovers in Hong Kong and Paris, Durán said.

From Bogota, they were taken by truck to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and from there, they headed north in a boat that broke down in Costa Rican waters.

Police suspect the three Ecuadorians and two Peruvians aboard the shipwrecked boat were “coyotes” transporting the Chinese to the United States or Canada, common destinations for migrants from poor countries, Durán said. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating these five people.

The Chinese aboard “weren’t clear where they were going,” she said, explaining that the migrants’ passports had been taken away from them and they had been sedated in Ecuador before getting on the boat.

Authorities are in the process of trying to fly the 16 who have tickets back to Colombia. Police are contacting airlines to find out if the other 40 also have tickets; if they don’t, Costa Rica will go through “standard immigration procedures” to deport them.

In the meantime, the 50 adults in the group are being held at a police shelter, and the six minors are being sheltered by the Child Welfare Office (PANI).

It costs Costa Rica about ¢1.2 million ($2,300) per day to provide food and shelter to these migrants, and the legal processes to deport them cost as much as $5,000 per person, Durán said.

These are “huge costs for the country,” she said. “We are a country that protects human rights, but these situations are arising that are draining the resources we have,” she said.

Costa Rican business leaders are being given a chance to opine on an association agreement between Central American and the European Union before these two regions begin negotiating the agreement in Brussels, Belgium, in June.

The idea behind this “internal consulting” period, which began yesterday, is to develop a “solid and articulated national position” on the agreement, which would include a free-trade agreement and increased political cooperation, said President Oscar Arias, according to a statement from Casa Presidencial.

“Today we initiate a broad and participatory process of consultation and gathering information from the productive sector and civil society for an agreement that, without a doubt, has the potential to influence the generation of better living conditions for our population,” Arias said, explaining that Roberto Echandi, Costa Rica’s chief negotiator for the agreement, will be listening to “different points of views and positions” during the consultation phase.

The decision to begin negotiating the agreement in June was announced this week at a meeting between representatives of the two regions in Guatemala, according to Costa Rica’s Foreign Trade Ministry.

After months of controversy, the Presidents of Central America announced that each country would have its own negotiator for the negotiations, who will take turns selecting the regional representative at each round of talks. That decision was a victory of sorts for President Oscar Arias, who insisted that Costa Rica should have its own negotiator, instead of relying on one regional negotiator (TT, Dec. 26, 2006).

Echandi, who was involved in negotiations for the controversial Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), will head the Costa Rican delegation in Brussels. The negotiation team is also made of Foreign Vice-Minister Edgar Ugalde and Foreign Trade Vice-Minister Amparo Pacheco.

-Tico Times

by Rod Hughes

There are potholes and, then, there are potholes.

The difference between them is that some reach celebrity status, enough so that they make the pages of the leading daily La Nacion when they are finally filled—somewhat like a movie star undergoing surgery.

The huge, 17-meter-deep hole in Barrio Dent in the university suburb of San Pedro (in the Montes de Oca municipality) east of downtown San Jose began when a giant drain collapsed in October of 2005. Rainfall during two rainy seasons widened the yawning hole in the highway to 60 meters, reported La Nacion—that is more than 300 feet, if La Nacion has its measurements right. This, of course, did nasty things to the local traffic pattern.

Now, the bureaucracy in Costa Rica is abnormally slow, but this pothole would have been repaired much sooner had it not been for a disagreement that developed between the San Jose and Montes de Oca municipalities–in fact the Montes de Oca council blocked repair plans by the San Jose people until they received guarantees from San Jose that construction would be thorough so that the problem would not recur.

San Jose’s Municipality received their construction permits to fill the hole in mid-2006 but decided to wait until the dry season. Now, at the end of that season, the big drainpipes are installed and buried, ready for the final paving scheduled to be finished May 7.

No doubt the TV news people are planning a special report. Then, people may forget, although it may serve as an inspiration for all the ambitious little potholes in the nation’s roads…

This is not the only famous pothole in history. More than two decades ago, a giant one opened in a highway and month after month worsened while the local residents fruitlessly complained. When it filled with rainwater, some wag put up a sign that read, “Swimming Prohibited.” A La Nacion photographer caught the saga in a front page picture. Within a few days the Ministry of Public Works was hard at it with repair crews.

It appears that the nationwide power outage last week did more than just turn off the lights. It also turned off the national rate regulatory agency (Aresep) as it was considering the rate hike asked by the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE).

Aresep’s chief regulatory of energy, Fernando Herrero, told a news conference yesterday that Aresep was inclined to grant half of ICE’s rate hike request—until the nation’s lights went out last Thursday night for more than an hour. “It’s unacceptable that we grant a hike with such poor service.”

Like all good bureaucrats, ICE executives asked for a much higher rate increase than it could expect to get from Aresep, a whopping 23% average hike. Aresep was inclined to grant a bit over 18% for homes and a hair more than 15% for business and industry. But the blackout changed the regulators’ minds.

Herrero added that ICE is in good financial condition and can well afford to consider a little financing. ICE has 35 days to present another proposal and by that time may have cleaned the egg off its face…

By an overwhelming majority of 48 to 5, the Legislative Assembly last night approved the mounting of a nationwide referendum to approve or reject the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Only 29 votes were needed for approval.

The Supreme Elections Tribunal, the autonomous elections watchdog agency, now has 90 days to organize the balloting. This will be the first-ever referendum vote for this country.

(See previous articles on this newsfeed.)