<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

The telecommunications bill, one of 13 bills aimed at implementing the Central American Free Trade Agreement, has passed its first test by a margin of 30 votes to 16. the bill is aimed at opening up the Internet access to an open market after years of monopoly by the government agency ICE, which also controls telephone service as well as electrical generation. It is one of the most hotly contested of the CAFTA-related legislation.

All the votes against the bill came from the Citizen Action Party (PAC, for its Spanish acronymn), a bitter foe of CAFTA. PAC will send the bill to the already overworked Supreme Court Constitutional Chamber for review of not only the text but the passage procedure. The bill must endure yet another debate and then a second vote, in which it must muster 38 of the 57 legislators to pass. The coalition mustered by pro-CAFTA President Oscar Arias numbers just 38 an a single absence is enough to derail the process.

The bills, some of which have already passed or are ready for their second test, are needed to bring Costa Rican laws into harmony with the trade pact’s provisions. These bills, fought with a sort of scorched earth retreat by PAC a a few other leftist politicians, have occupied the Legislative Assembly for the first two years of the Arias Administration. Some of that legislation is of great importance such as the comprehensive crime bill.

<strong>by Rod Hughes</strong>

A report by the police intelligence agency DIS to a special congressional investigating committee yesterday reveals damning evidence of frequent references to Costa Rican political figures in e-mail communications between leaders of the guerrilla/narco-terrorist group FARC, including glowing references to a minority lawmaker and an ex-president.

The report seems to back up former Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal’s controversial speculation that FARC may have penetrated the political scene here. The e-mails were downloaded from laptop computers captured by the Colombian army in its raid on a FARC outpost in Ecuador March 1. The raid killed 20 FARC soldiers including Raul Reyes, the organization’s number two official.

By mid-March Berrocal found himself fired by Persident Oscar Arias who even went on TV to disavow his minister’s statements. Testifying before the lawmakers this month, Berrocal did not reveal names of those with FARC connections. Yet, the DIS report says that the captured computers show some 36 messages involving such political figures as former President Rodrigo Carazo (1978-82), current Legislative Assembly Deputy Jose Merino, and a leader of the Costa Rican Electrical Institute (ICE) union Jorge Arguedas.

The DIS report also named the University of Costa Rica (UCR) Federation of Students president in 2001, Maximiliano Moreira, and a Public Employees Union lawyer Saul Umana. The computer files covered the period between 2000 and last November. Most of the allegedly damning messages were not directed to Costa Ricans but were commentaries about them.

"…(I)t will be seen how it goes with Jose Merino and others that come from the party," ran a text message from Reyes to FARC "chancellor" Rodrigo Granda on Feb. 11, 2002, "So it would be good to seek them (with patience) this way because the position of Carazo has been good toward FARC." (Carazo is one of the founders of the Social Christian Unity party and Merino heads a small minor party called <em>Frente Amplio</em>. This may have been an error of Reyes.)

A 2001 message from FARC official Marcos Urbano to Reyes reported, "We went to the University…to obtain contact and good relations with a group called GenteU that is now in the leadership of the Federation, especially with Maximiliano."

Carazo told <em>La Nacion</em> that he could not remember much about the circumstances of the Reyes message "because it was many years ago." However, he added that he met with many people at his home who "come to talk about things that have to do with peace." (Carazo turned a blind eye in the late 1970s to Sandinista military activity on the northern border in the revolution that overthrew Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza and has taken a number of positions farther left of his Unity party’s platforms.)

Legislative Assembly Deputy Merino admitted to <em>La Nacion</em>, "As a deputy, I talked with them. But after that time, I’ve never had contact with anyone considered a FARC member." Both Carazo and Merino say they were attempting to promote peace in Colombia.

But ICE union leader Arguedas may have more trouble explaining away this snippet from a communication directed to Granda: "Yesterday we talked with Jorge Arguedas…He promise us economic aid, in part, for the publication of the magazine." (Arguedas was unavailable for comment yesterday.)

Just when it appeared that the lawmakers’ FARC investigation was at a dead end, the DIS report drops a bomb sure to reverberate long and loudly, especially through such leftist organizations as the Public Employees’ Union (ANEP) and ICE’s union. This reporter can remember during the cold war being surprised to find a huge photo of Che Guevara on the wall of ANEP’s inner sanctum. But it is a big difference between that time and now: FARC is not a leftist guerrilla outfit any more but a drug-running machine willing to use hired killers and kidnapping to further its aims. This is not about ideology but about power through terrorist means.

by Rod Hughes

The testimony of former Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal before a special Legislative Assembly committee probing FARC penetration into the political culture has hardly produced the dramatic revellations lawmakers sought. But Berrocal apparently wanted to extend his 15 minutes of fame yesterday.

The former minister, a member of President Oscar Arias’s National Liberation Party, strongly criticized what he called “Arismo,” a manufactured word meaning undue influence of the president and his brother, Rodrigo, Minister of the Presidency, on the party’s functioning. Indirectly but clearly, he accused the president of dictating to the party the next election’s presidential nominee, current Vice President Laura Chinchilla.

Arias has indicated that he would not be displeased at having a woman president in 2010. This irked several party stalwarts including San Jose mayor Johnny Araya, who may have his sights set on the same goal although as yet unannounced. Chinchilla has tried to stay aloof from this bickering. But Berrocal, whose own political career has been sadly bent, predicts an “insurrection” within National Liberation “in the next few weeks” in response to Arias’s allegedly dictatorial influence.

Berrocal was Security Minister for nearly two years, compiling an admireable record of confiscated narcotics. Then, he announced that he expected Colombian authorities to find links between the Colombian guerrilla/narctoics traffickers/terrorists FARC and local politicians. This did not happen and his boss, the President, was highly peeved and indirectly accused his top cop of demoguery, firing him in a most abrupt way.

The Legislative Assembly named a committee to investigate Berrocal’s startling assertion, expecting him to name names, but have been disappointed. Without this concrete date, the committee appears at a dead end, although it may continue to meet for the remainder of its 30-day term, just for appearances’ sake.

by Rod Hughes

Former public security minister Fernando Berrocal stuck to his guns in a hard-hitting report to the Legislative Assembly yesterday, presenting 36 pages of testimony that declared the deep penetration of the Colombian FARC guerrilla-terrorist-narcotics trafficking organization deep into Costa Rica. But lawmakers are still waiting for concrete evidence, including the names of Costa Rican politicians Berrocal claims have been turned by FARC.

In early April, Berrocal said he expected Colombian officials to turn up connections between politicians here and FARC terrorists from captured guerrilla records, raising a miniature political tornado. But no such definitive information was forthcoming from the Colombian government. President Oscar Arias reacted to the Berrocal statement was if stung, alleging demogoguery, even going on TV nationawide to disavow it. By mid-April, Berrocal was out on his ear.

But his statements were taken seriously enough to cause lawmakers to name a temporary investigative committee to seek the truth. Before his impolitic declaration, Berrocal had built up a tremendous credibility, his police forces in cooperation with U.S. agencies netting record hauls of smuggled narcotics. His report to congress was awaited with some hope of clearing up the whole affair, including his abrupt dismissal from the President’s cabinet.

Committee chairwoman Mayi Antillon of National Liberation Party expressed disappointment with the Berrocal appearance. “He hasn’t given us proof of (Costa Rican) contacts,” she said. Berrocal is expected to return Monday and Tuesday to answer the 16 committee members’ questions and, if Antillon is any example, they will be direct ones.

A sample of Berrocal’s eloquence in testimony: “All the drugs that pass through Costa Rica come from FARC. In this region 80% of narcotics is from FARC. Now, if that isn’t penetration, I don’t know what is!”

Yes, but as they used to say in the old U.S. TV commercials, “Where’s the beef?”

by Rod Hughes

Fact check: Presidents, when reviewing past accomplishments, tend to paint with a wide, rosy brush. But many times the press picks up a gilded lily but this time it was the Comptroller General’s Office that blew the whistle on one statement of President Oscar Arias’s State of the National address to the Legislative Assembly May 2.

The government does not devote 6% of the gross national product to education as the president stated and as law stipulates. This is no shame to the Arias Administration—no government has mustered a budget that devotes this amount to education since the law was passed making it a Constitutional article. In fact, the government gave 5% last year, according to the Comptroller General’s accounting. And even then, the Ministry of Education has only spent 4.75% of it.

Spokespersons for the ministry explain that it takes time to go through the legal hoops necessary to solicit bids for a new classroom or even a new school. So the funds sit in the bank until construction begins. Still, something seems wrong with the system when classroom roofs leak and children have no desk or other learning tools.

This is not the first time the Comptrollers have protested that the government has not met their constitutional quota. Just one year ago, Rocio Aguilar presented a case of unconstitutionality to the court. Naturally, the Arias Administration has come in for harsh criticism from the opposition party Citizen Action (PAC). Perhaps it merely proves that it is easy for lawmakers to set a goal for another branch of government.

by Rod Hughes

A brief news story published by the Associated Press today confirms the unheralded death in Cuba five months ago of once-infamous financier Robert Vesco. From 1972 to 1978, the controversial Vesco kept the political scene in Costa Rica in a turmoil and made the country synonymous with “refuge from the law.”

The Vesco saga began when he took over International Overseas Services, an international, Swiss-based investment company, from founder Bernard Cornfeld. Promising that he would get the troubled company reorganized and on track, he allegedly stripped the subsidiary companies, selling their assets and absconded with a fortune estimated at $220 million.

Sought by both French investors and the U.S. Justice Dept., Vesco was invited into Costa Rica by then-President Jose Figueres who managed to push through a law prohibiting extradition to the United States of fugitive lawbreakers. The so-called Vesco law was repealed after Vesco left the country upon the election of President Rodrigo Carazo who had made Vesco a dominant campaign issue by promising to expell the fugitive.

Vesco did not maintain a low profile and granted interviews freely to La Nacion, the country’s leading daily and a foe of the fugitive’s sojourn here. The Tico Times had several interviews in which he blandly parried the probing questions of reporter Steve Schmidt. During that decade a book on Vesco entitled “Vesco Buys Himself a Little Republic” came out and one syndicated editorial cartoonist suggested that a fine tax shelter might be “a bungalow in Costa Rica.”

Figueres’ successor in the presidency, Daniel Oduber, did his best to honor his predecessor’s promises to Vesco but finally asked for Vesco to leave. No date was set and it took Carazo’s election to finally cause his departure to the Caribbean and finally to Cuba, where Fidel Castro welcomed him with open arms. This turned into open hands and it is thought that when the Communist dictator had drained what was left of Vesco’s wealth, Castro tired of him.

Whatever the situation, Cuban authorities arrested Vesco on murky charges and threw him in prison where he sank out of public sight. Cuban authorities limited themselves to record that Vesco died Nov. 23, 2007, of lung cancer and was buried in a modest subterranean vault of gray and black granite the day after. He was nearing his 72nd birthday.

by Rod Hughes

President Oscar Arias’s National Liberation Party got a free hand in electing Legislative Assembly officials, thanks in large part to a pass given them when the Social Christian Unity delegation submitted blank ballots. What the conditions Unity extracted from Liberation lawmakers are, of course, unknown.

Thus, Deputy Francisco Antonio Pacheco received an unprecedented third term as president of the Assembly. The vote was viewed as a victory for the Arias Administration in its efforts to push through it agenda. Of the six directors on the Assembly’s new board, only Deputy Guyon Massey of tiny the National Restoration Party does not belong to Liberation.

Even if the blank ballots enabled a near-clean sweep for Liberation, the Social Christians viewed them as a protest because they felt Liberation had not consulted them sufficiently. But other opposition parties were not buying into that explanation. “They well understand numbers and arithmetic,” scoffed Deputy Francisco Molina, floor leader for Citizen Action Party (PAC).

by Rod Hughes

Speaking before the Legislative Assembly yesterday, President Oscar Arias reassured the nation that he realizes tha citizen’s concerns for their safety in the face of growing crime is “real” and that his administration will treat the threat seriously. Public unrest about crime and the helplessness of the country’s inadequate laws have grown to a mighty chorus this year.

As the daily newspaper La Nacion pointed out, “the President’s tone is much different from that of his new Minister of Public Security Janina del Vecchio” who told a press conference two weeks ago that she found violent crime “not as bad as (she) had expected.” (Both Chief Proscutor Francisco Dall’Anese and Judical Investigation chief Jorge Rojas had rushed to counter the statement, realizing that it endangered the quick passage of a comprehensive crime bill in the Legislative Assembly.)

Recently the English-language weekly The Tico Times took the lawmakers to task in a blistering editorial for their lackadaisical attitude about the bill while crime swirls out of control. Indeed, public concern runs so high that a campaign has been mounted by Arnoldo Garnier, advertising entrepreneur here, and former Security Minister Juan Diego Castro to urge the administration and the courts to push the legislators into action on the bill.

The occasion for the President’s declarations was the traditional May Day “State of the Nation” address to the Assembly, postponed this year until May 2. Usually, a president will review the accomplishments of the past 12 months, but Arias used his 37-minute speech to urge the lawmakers to take their responsibilities seriously and laid out what needs to be done.

Arias also made a priority of the rising cost of living while acknowledging that most of its causes were factors abroad beyond this country’s control: rising petrolum prices, the use of foodstuffs like corn as alternate fuel, international expenditures for arms, the U.S. slide toward recession and the decline of economic aid. He limited himself in “pointing with pride” chiefly the 3.5% reduction in poverty figures, increased tax revenues, used in social programs including aid to impoverished students and, above all, the restoration of confidence in the government.

Without a doubt, the message on crime created the greatest resonance with a public that has placed the subject in first place in polls. Toward this concern, an informal movement, Recuperemos la Paz, (We will recover the peace) has turned its attention. As The Tico Times pointed out in a recent article, this movement contains two different facets which reporter Nick Wilkinson took as a “fracturing” of the movement.

But the result may not be a diffusion of effort so much as a classic carrot-and-stick approach to move a lethargic government into action. Founder Arnoldo Garnier, reflecting his advertising background, favors a persuasive approach and got President Arias, Legislative Assembly president Francisco Pacheco, Supreme Court Chief Justice Luis Paulino Mora and Alajuela Bishop Angel San Casimiro to sign an informal pact containing intent to pass the crime bill within six months.

But hard-liner Juan Diego Castro favors an aggressive approach, not only toward crime but in pushing a vote. He distrusts the lawmakers to act and is gathering forces to offer a referendum. Garnier, two weeks before the State of the Nation address, admitted that it might come to that, but favors the softer approach first as more effective. That appears to be the case with Arias.

But certainly reporter Wilkinson had it right when he wrote that Castro has issues with Vice President Laura Chinchilla, who is one of the authors of the crime bill. Castro was Chinchilla’s boss when she was Deputy Minister of Security and then took over the job. Castro considers the bill weak on protecting the crime victim. He feels that the bill, moreover, reflects Chinchilla’s political ambitions more than concerns for crime.

Chinchilla, in presenting the bill, acknowledged that it needed changes that the lawmakers could make in debate but said it was offered as a starting point of deliberations. It would be a pity if one or both of these public figures allowed policy or personal frictions to interfere with the average citizen getting the improved law enforcement protection he so dearly desires.

by Rod Hughes

Anna Moscarelli, the Swiss-Costa Rican hotelier who allegedly owes the Costa Rican Catholic Church $3 million in a questioned loan transaction, was financial advisor to a notorious Sicilian Mafia figure, Filippo Salamone, an investigative article in the daily paper La Nación revealed today. Moscarelli is also a longtime friend of new Security Minister Janina del Vecchio reaching back to the years when del Vecchio served as ambassador to Switzerland.

But that appears to be all that the two old friends now agree on. Moscarelli says that del Vecchio knew of her work for the Mafia lord, del Vecchio stoutly denies it. But once they were close enough for del Vecchio to write a letter of recommenation to then-Tourism Minister Carlos Roesch in 1998, lauding Moscarelli as an honest person who should be granted permits to build hotels.

Salamone, a Palermo, Sicily, resident, was convicted in Italy of bribing public officials to let large government contracts to Mafia families. Moscarelli admits that she worked for Salamone and former Italian Christian Democrat parliamentarian Salvadore Sciangula as financial counselor and in business administration capacities but says she “knew them not as Cosa Nostra people but as persons.” Sciangula was being investigated for corruption but died in 1995 before charges were brought. Corruption is so rampant in Sicily that the island is known as “Briberyland” (Tangentopoli) in Italian.

Antimafia prosecutors in Lugano, Switzerland, sent a letter to the Costa Rican courts in 2005 requesting that officials question Moscarelli on her connections to Salamone and Sciangulo. After she left the embassy, del Vecchio worked for a time for Moscarelli and even stayed briefly in her home in Costa Rica when del Vecchio returned from Switzerland. But del Vecchio maintains she knew nothing about Mpscarelli’s association with the Mafia figures.

When a La Nación reporter repeatedly probed Moscarelli’s insistance that del Vecchio knew of the tie with the Sicilian mob, the Minister replied, “No, no, that’s probably the things she, in her desperate situation, wants to put out now. I don’t have the faintest idea what she’s talking about.”

by Rod Hughes

The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber yesterday struck a blow for press freedom when the judges ruled that a reporter may not be forced to reveal the sources of his information. Under certain conditions, he still may be ordered by the court to turn over documents but not forced to reveal the source.

Costa Rica has been the target of human rights orgnizations due to its antiquated (model 1902) press law which, among other dangerous assaults on freedom of speech, allows incarceration of journalists and contains a draconian article that makes it illegal to “impune the honor” of a public figure. Thus the court edged closer to the guarantees of most other Western nation. Indeed, not even the United States has the protection of sources in its jurisprudence.

A reformed press law has been languishing in the Legislative Assembly since the last administration and, like many needed bills, has all but been forgotten. But this week’s decision makes even the reporter’s notes inviolate. The 6-1 decision came in response to a writ of habeas data filed by lawyers for ex-President Miguel Angel Rodríguez who wanted to examine documents used by the daily La Nación to develop its exposé of the ICE-Alcatel scandal. Rodríguez faces corruption charges in that case.