Politic(o)s

A poll has been taken by the University Of Costa Rica’s CIEP has produced some results that has take many election watchers by surprise. In...

What is worrisome is that the President seems to believe that the current financial difficulties can be solved simply by raising taxes; that the fiscal reform comes first, and “we can think of the reform of the State later." Decisions have to be made on many fronts, or we are just going to waste the new taxes with the same old practices.

The IVF controversy is one of the saddest episodes of our contemporary democratic history. The country has gone from forbidding the IVF by order of a domestic court, to allowing it by order of an international court: Justices, not citizens, have made all the decisions.

I do not think that the majority of Costa Ricans are desperate enough to offer their country for an app. Unfortunately, some of the attitudes and events of the recent past demonstrate the recklessness that some politicians and citizens are capable of.

It’s surprising how much of the international community has remained silent about recent political imprisonments in Venezuela. No commitment to democracy is meaningful if political imprisonment is tolerated anywhere. In the case of Costa Rica, the silence is shameful.

Religion, it has been said, is exclusively a private matter. But it’s not. I don't mean that the state should be able to intrude on the sphere of our personal and private beliefs. But when we are outspoken about our faith or when we practice our religious rituals in public, we are engaging with other citizens, and must consider others.

People demand security and justice. When they get neither, the result is a serious rupture of the bond between the state’s institutions, the people and their representatives.

The newspaper’s cover referred to Dinnia Díaz – the goalkeeper of the Costa Rican Women’s National Soccer Team, which just qualified for the Women’s World Cup for the first time in history – as “Keylar.” (This allusion to renowned male Costa Rican keeper Keylor Navas is roughly akin to referring to a women’s basketball star as “Michelle Jordan.”)

Politicians, who often accuse others of undermining their work, should be the first ones to realize that their words and statements have an impact. Serious damage is done when we make “politician” into an insult or, even worse, something that looks like a crime on someone’s résumé.