By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff

With many glumly predicting dismal voter turnout during the Dec. 3 municipal elections, analysts and electoral officials gathered yesterday at the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) in San José to discuss ways to improve not only the voting process, but also municipal governments as a whole.

The speakers, including a national legislator, several analysts and others familiar with municipal government, emphasized the importance of increasing local control in Costa Rica, the most centralized country in Latin America, according to Fabio Molina, president of the Institute for Municipal Development (IFAM). Molina said that although the press focuses on low voter interest in the upcoming election, the level of interest is actually quite remarkable, given that municipalities account for only 1.7% of total public spending.

In the first-ever popular elections of mayors in 2002, the abstention level was 77.4% — but taking into account null and blank ballots, only 21% of the 2.3 million registered Costa Rican voters cast valid votes. Carlos Sojo, of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), told The Tico Times in 2002 that the disappointing turnout “was like a class officer election at a university” and that parties would have to work hard to inspire voters if the next municipal elections were to show better results (TT, Dec. 6, 2002).

TSE magistrate Eugenia Zamora said at the forum that municipal governments are in a state of “permanent crisis,” with problems including difficulties in collecting municipal taxes and the lack of state contribution to political parties for municipal campaigns (unlike presidential and legislative campaigns). Many reforms have been proposed, but an excess of varied proposals has caused backup in the Legislative Assembly, Zamora said.

The forum was part of the “Dialogue About Well-Being” series sponsored by FLACSO, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Students from the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica in Cartago will be displaying their creative ideas Thursday in the X Feria de Ideas de Negocios.

The event will be in the Biblioteca José Figueres Ferrer of the institute, one of four public universities in Costa Rica. Some of the ideas put forth at previous events have gone into commercial production. The three categories are eco-friendly, services and computers-electronics. Top prizes are $1,000. The event is being sponsored by many of the major companies in Costa Rica.

The new system of exchanging money went into effect Tuesday, and those who didn’t know what the buy and sell rates meant, still didn’t.

The Banco Central has let the colon float within limits, but its one thing to shop around for a good price for a new car. Doing the same thing with pockets bulging with dollars is another.

The Central Bank envisions the savvy economic man, but there was not a lot of difference in the rates offered by the public banks Tuesday. There was a 3.5 to 4 colon difference in the buy and sell rates.

The story was different at smaller, private entities. One reported that it would give customers 470.60 colons for each dollar.  That was well below the average of about 521 colons to the dollar. That was another way of saying they had enough dollars or maybe “Tourists welcome.”

The market showed some movement Tuesday, mostly because of the pent-up demand from a three-day weekend.

The Central Bank will be publishing a daily reference rate that will be the rough average of all transactions at supervised entities.

Some expats think that the market will take a month or two to get evened out. The rates will show seasonal changes as tourists and seasonable businesses make deposits and withdraw funds.

For many, the uncertainty of tomorrow’s rate represents a de facto dollarization of the economy.

The Central Bank expected to get off the hook in supporting the colon. Officials there say that the floating colon will reduce inflation. Others expect the colon to devalue quicker under the new system than it would have had the 20-year-old system of daily mini-devaluations stayed in place.

More than half the debt in Costa Rica is denominated in dollars, as is the exterior national debt. A drop in the value of colons could have serious effects on individual borrowers and the government. which collects its funds in colons.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the new system are those shady guys who hang around the boulevard and Calle Central with calculators in their hands. They offer tourists and others better rates, and looking for a better rate is being encouraged now.

Of course they offer better rates because many of the dollars they sell say hecho in Colombia in small letters under the engraving of Pablo Escobar.

Investigators said they arrested 15 persons who used their government positions to award land to themselves, close relatives or accomplices.

The law also requires that the appplicants meet certain requirements, and agents said that those who were arrested altered documents to show that those who recieved the land were eligible when they were not.  The investigation was delayed because much of the documentation for the agricultural development agency during that period had been destroyed. Agents say this was done on purpose.

Investigators said that in-laws, brothers and other relatives of the public employees got the gifts of property. At least 65 separate cases are being investigated.   The land area is some 689,108 square meters, agents said. That’s about 170 acres.

Judges are being asked to order the detained individuals not to leave the country. In some cases, prosecutors are seeking preventative detention.

There is no justification for the general strike that anti-free trade forces have planned for Monday and Tuesday, the Arias government said Wednesday.

Arias noted that the ratification of the treaty is now in the hands of the assembly. Legislative leaders said Wednesday  that no more testimony would be taken at hearings on the document and that discussion now would be limited to lawmakers.

Opponents of the treaty are working to bring union dock workers from Limón and Moín into the strike. Union workers there want the government to promise that they will not put the docks out to bid for a private concession as happened on the Pacific at the Caldera docks. Workers have been engaged in job actions.

They are seeking to get farmers to protest in San Carlos, San Isidro de El General, San Ramón and Limón. They also want to paralyze the entire educational system. The protest is being called the Primera Gran Jornada de Lucha contra el TLC, using the Spanish acronym.

One question mark is how many of the estimated 40,000 employees of the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, the health and welfare agency, will join the protest. Union leaders there have struggled to show how the treaty might affect hospital and health workers with minimal success.   

Osvaldo Alpízar, the director general of the Fuerza Pública, has agreed to a suspension without pay while allegations of harassment are studied.

In his place, the security minister, Fernando Berrocal has appointed  Oldemar Madrigal Medal, the head of the  Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea and the airport police.

The minister said that Alpízar sought the suspension without pay and characterized it as a temporary move. There is no time limit on the suspension.

Madrigal Medal entered the Fuerza Pública in 1967 and has extensive experience as a pilot and as an aircraft captain.  He holds the top police rank of comisionado.

A former Fuerza Pública official living in Alajuela reported receiving threatening telephone calls since May. The Judicial Investigating Organization has reported that the calls appear to have come from three telephones, two government-owned phones used by Alpízar and one owned by a member of the Alpízar family.

The Alajuela man taped the calls, although the male voice was disguised by distortion.

Alpízar was at the press conference Wednesday when his suspension was announced. He denies he made the calls.

The municipality of Puntarenas has reached an agreement to allow the company Environmental Power Costa Rica to set up a waste-to-energy power plant. The agreement has been approved by the Contraloría de la República after three years of consideration.

According to the agreement, the 150 tons of municipal solid waste produced each working day will be received free at a collection center, where recyclables will be extracted. The remainder will be burned for electricity.

According to Environmental Power, the plant when fully operational will produce about 30 megawatts/hour of electricity to be sold to the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad and employ about 200 people. Total investment will be about $60 million.

Ken Roblyer, Environmental Power president, didn’t eliminate the possibility that other municipalities might be incorporated into the project. Puntarenas itself doesn’t produce the required volume. The general rule of thumb used by planners is one kilogram per person per day of trash. Poorer populations produce less and richer areas more. The municipality had 102,000 persons in the 2000 census. Given the tradition of backyard burning and incomplete coverage of rural areas, the amount delivered to the plant likely would be considerably less than the amount calculated.

The actual site for the power plant has not been determined or approved, though it will be in the Puntarenas municipality. This includes a large area, reaching to Chomes on the Gulf of Nicoya and Monteverde on the continental divide.

Mayor Omar Obando said “This money that we save will be used for the benefit of the city of Puntarenas. The municipality will continue pickup of the solid waste from the communities, take it to the processing center and we don’t have to pay a dime. The company, in fact, will pay taxes to the local government,” he said.

Obando said that with this project the local government will save approximately 200 million colons per year (about $385,000). That’s the sum spent on the Zagala dump, for maintenance and machinery. Obando emphasized that when the company starts to receive the solid waste, the municipality will perform a technical closure at Zagala.

Incinerators have a poor record in developing and middle-income countries around the world as the ratio of food waste to paper and plastic is high making for high water content and low calorific values. A generator usually needs a supplemental fuel such as natural gas or bunker oil to maintain combustion, making electrical production uneconomical.

The design for the plant is modeled after one in Spokane, Washington, which produces about 20 megawatts from 765 tons per day of higher-value trash. Another in Peel Region, Ontario, produces 9 megawatts from 480 tons per day, and uses about 25 percent of that internally. These plants also charge high fees to receive the waste, 85 dollars Canadian in the case of the Ontario facility.