by Rod Hughes

The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber gave the Arias Administration a bit of good news this week when it ruled that the bill to break the government insurance monopoly needs only a simple majority of 29 votes and not a two-thirds vote of the 57 lawmakers. Update: Wasting no time, Tuesday evening 31 deputies voted the bill into law.
The bill, one of 13 that were needed to change Costa Rican law to onform to the demands of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), was sent for review to the court to uncover defects. Surprisingly, the chamber returned it with the notation that it needs only 29 votes to pass since it does not change the function of the government-run Insurance Institute (INS) but aimed only at altering the legal framework in which it works.

The Arias Administration has struggled to maintain its coalition of 38 pro-CAFTA lawmakers in order to pass the bills against the strong opposition spearheaded by the Citizen Action party (PAC). This means that all of the sometimes footloose pro-CAFTA deputies have to be rounded up for each vote on the bills.

But PAC’s inflexibility has its price, reported the English-language newspaper The Tico Times recently. In an exclusive story by political writer Gillian Gillers, the paper reported that one of the reasons PAC lawmaker Andrea Morales left the party to become an independent was that she refused to participate in the blocking tactics PAC was using to oppose the CAFTA bills. Indeed, this inflexibility may have crafted the public image of a die-hard party that cared little that a majority of Costa Ricans had approved CAFTA in a democratic nationwide referendum.

The blocking tactics included not showing up at congressional sessions, thus canceling all floor activity for the day through lack of a quorum. The favorite scorched earth retreat used by PAC was to try to drown the bill in literally hundreds of amendments.

by Rod Hughes

The revelation by La Nacion investigative reporters this week that President Oscar Arias pays at least two advisors from an uncontrolled secret fund has caused political tremors among opposition parties. But the “scandal” may prove to be, like the alleged infiltration of the Colombian narco-terrorists from FARC into local political life, a one-month sensation.

The Citizen Action Party (PAC) wants Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias to appear before the Legislative Assembly to answer questions while the Libertarian Movement has called for a court probe. But President Arias insists that the contribution of the international bank BCIE, by law, needs no accounting since the $1 million involved does not come from the taxpayers’ pockets.

PAC lawmakers also want to hear from the BCIE director and the deputy Presidency Minister. The Libertarians want all donations directly to the president to be laid bare, including details of how they were spent. They are hoping that a Legislative Assembly committee on control of income and spending may provide answers. The committee consists of two PAC deputies, a Libertarian, a Social Christian Unity lawmaker and three from the President’s National Liberation party.

by Rod Hughes

A team of scientists from the Institute of Ocean Research and the University of Costa Rica are studying the tiny one-celled plankton near Cocos Island to try to unravel some of the mystery surrounding these tiny but vitally important creatures. Besides generating a majority of oxygen for the planet, they are important sources of food for such fish as tuna and sardines.

Even if this were not true, many plankton species would be fascinating in themselves, producing that phosphorescence one sees shining on the ocean surface on dark nights, a product of chemical action within their tiny bodies. Despite their importance to the ocean food chain, they are passive themselves, unable to swim but simply drifting on the currents.

Costa Rican researchers Alvaro Morales and Maribel Vargas have been assigned the task of coming up with a sort of plankton census, taking 395 samples from seven sites around the island of zooplankton (animals) and phyloplankton (microscopic algae). The samples come from the surface and at depths of up to 50 meters deep. Despite their importance, relatively little is known about these passive, enigmatic creatures.

It is suspected that already local scientists have discovered two new species. But that is not all the mysteries they are probing. They are also checking out some 136 species of small sealife, from arrow seaworms to copopods, commonly call “marine insects,” only 1.5 millimeters long, reports the daily paper La Nacion.

by Rod Hughes

The daily newspaper Al Dia reported today that only 3% of the 2,476 complaints of domestic violence resulted in prosecution during the first quarter of this year, a revelation that is certain to have political reverberations across party lines. Court figures show only 70 cases resulted in penalties for the aggressors and in 33 cases the court urged reconciliation.

The rest of the cases were dismissed. Costa Rica enacted a tough “Violence Against Women Law” just last year as the relatively high percentage of women lawmakers flexed their political muscles. Unlike many Latin American nations, Costa Ricans set aside the traditional machism of the male population in the wake of an alarming increase in murders of women by their domestic partners. The women’s liberation movement is surprisingly strong here.

But the figures may indicate that the courts have not got the message right. Jeannette Carrillo, head of the National Women’s Institute, shared her worry with the newspaper over the figures, noting that, despite a tougher law, the numbers are nearly exact duplicates of the 2007 data for the courts. Very likely, the nation’s Ombudsman’s Office (called the Defender of the Citizen Office) will weigh in on the subject. It is headed by a woman.