Groups Plan CAFTA Protests
Groups opposed to the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) announced yesterday that they haven’t given up their fight against the controversial pact and are planning a protest Feb. 26 to urge leaders to renegotiate it.
President Oscar Arias’ administration should “take advantage of this occasion to sit down at the table and renegotiate the several negative aspects CAFTA has for Costa Ricans,” said Albino Vargas, secretary general of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP), during a press conference yesterday.
The United States has recently renegotiated trade pacts with South American countries, Vargas argued, so reworking parts of CAFTA should also be considered a possibility.
Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz said the United States was able to renegotiate agreements with Peru and Colombia because they had not been ratified by any country’s legislature. The situation with CAFTA is different, he said, since the U.S. legislature has approved it, and it has gone into effect in other Central American signatory countries.
At the upcoming march, CAFTA opponents plan to meet at various points downtown before converging on the Legislative Assembly.
Costa Rica is the only signatory country that has not ratified CAFTA. Discussion of the pact on the assembly floor is expected to begin next month. -ACAN-EFE