by Rod Hughes

Here it is, not even New Year’s Eve yet, and already 40 drivers have had their cars confiscated because of inebriation—Including one who set a new record: 4 milligrams of alcohol per liter of blood, fully four times the .49 level to legally drive.

A 29-year-old man named Camacho was stopped Wednesday at a roadblock at Plaza Gonzalez Viquez just south of downtown San Jose. When he said he did not know how to exhale into the breathaliser, the cops showed him. But Camacho refused to accept the results, claiming the machine was “rigged.’

Police took a blood test but Traffic Police director German Marin says he cannot give an exact figure. “”These aparatuses do not register higher than four milligrams… because it’s assumed that any higher will induce coma.” By then, even the traffic cops could not trust the results, so an officer accompanied Camacho in taxi to a nearby private hospital, Clinica Biblica, for another blood test, which confirmed the incredible figure.

Camacho signed a release at the hospital to abandon his Honda Accord, which was towed away to a police compund. Camacho went home by taxi.

(At least, we presime Camacho went home and not to another bar. He could have explained to police that he had to drive—he was too drunk to walk!)

by Rod Hughes

The Supreme Elections Tribunal, placed in charge of referendums by the enabling legislation passed in 2006, has received five requests to mount nationwide voting on varied issues but has so far approved only one, the referendum that approved the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Two were rejected outright: a plea to clarify the boundry between Guanacaste and Puntarenas provinces in the Gulf of Nicoya and a claification of marine and terrestrial divisions in Golfito on the southern Pacific coast. Both were considered purely local issues by the tribunal, not national concerns.

Two other issues are pending, one characterized by Magistrate Eugenia Zamora as “a little odd.” It would define the boundry between Costa Rica and Nicaragua which some cartographers and border residents say is marked incorrectly in some places. But the bizaare aspect is that the same proposal contains a requisite that each service window of the Social Security (Caja) health offices would have a bail of holy water. Zamora assumes this is aimed at inducing the Caja officials to give better service.

The difficulty about the boundry referendum is that it would require consultation of both countries’ voters, but so far the proposition has been referred back (with a straight face) to the gentleman offering it so he can remedy certain “procedural problems.”

The other proposal has environmental groups busily gathering the requisite number of signatures to vote on two bills currently stalled in congress.

by Rod Hughes

Crimes in which firearms are used may receive more severe sentences than those which do not, if Independent congress woman Evita Arguedas is able to get her bill passed in the Legislative Assembly. She would also see the courts more severely punish repeat offenders and crimes committed against residences when the family is home.

The bill is similar to that of many states in the United States but in years past Costa Rican lawmakers have not seen the need because such crimes utilizing guns have not been common. But in the first six months of this year, 125 of the 166 homicides committed were with the use of firearms. In the past five months, police have confiscated 2,600 firearms, including AK-47 fully automatic rifles.

Civilian ownership of such weapons was, up until the 1980s, relatively rare here except for a few small caliber rifles for hunting in the rural areas. But during the Nicaraguan civil war, automatic weapons trickled over the border, often borne by wounded Contra rebels or Sandinista army regulars. They often “paid” for their treatment in the San Carlos hospital by giving doctors their automatic weapons and other arms.

Reputedly, one could buy an AK-47 for a few dollars at Ciudad Quesada at that time. Even after the Arias Peace Plan bore fruit, the guns floated around the country, easily finding their way into criminal hands. As violent crimes increased and drugs crept into the society, homeowner handguns became more common in urban areas, often with tragic results when children found them.

Firearm laws have been tightened up meanwhile so that ownership of automatic rifles, handgrenades and other war material are no longer legal in private hands.President Oscar Arias has even expressed a desire to eliminate automatic weapons from police possession but this is not likely to happen since the massacre and hostage standoff at the bank in Monteverde several years ago.

Arguedas’s reform of the Penal Code has the backing of Deputy Minister of Public Security Rafael Angel Gutierrez who especially likes the repeat offender clause. “This will be an opportunity to pass (the responsibility) ti the tribunals those individuals and have them judged from recidivism instead of seeing them released,” he said, voicing the bitter complaint of both police and crime victims.

The congresswoman has appealed to victims of violent crimes and their families to support the Penal Code reform as relatives of traffic accident victims did in support of the Traffic Bill when they flooded lawmakers with tens of thousands of signatures on petitions. La Nacion, the nation’s leading newspaper, cited as examples Flora Gonzalez and Jose Fabio Lopez who lost a daughter and a son, respectively, in assaults with firearms.