Citing disagreements with how the Costa Rican Presidency handled the multi-sectorial dialogue meant to address the country’s economic crisis, Women’s Minister Patricia Mora announced her resignation on Monday.
The executive president of the National Institute for Women (INAMU) expressed her “indignation and concern” about how “matters of national interest” have been addressed over recent days.
In a Facebook post, Mora said that she had participated in the multi-sectorial economic dialogue because she saw it as a “noble and necessary political exercise.”
But after those meetings ended, President Carlos Alvarado announced in an interview with La Nación that Costa Rica still planned to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — information he had withheld from the dialogue table.
“It turns out that while various sectors were there, delivering the dialogue agreements, we were unaware that Don Carlos Alvarado and his economic team had not only already made the important decision to start negotiations with the IMF, but that it had already been communicated to the director of La Nación,” Mora said.
“I am narrating a concrete act that demonstrates what we have been observing with great concern and that I have denounced in the sessions of the Governing Council on several occasions: the recurrent practice of disregarding the value of democratic representation, of imposing corporate interests in the decisions of State, behind the back of the population, interference that translates into inequality, privileges for some and poverty, violence and exclusion for others.”
President Alvarado said that negotiating a loan from the IMF was necessary if the fiscal adjustments agreed to by the internal dialogue were “not enough.” He promised more details about internal measures and IMF proposals over the coming days.
Mora had been Minister of Women’s Affairs and head of INAMU since 2018. She previously worked for the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy (MIDEPLAN) and served as a professor at the University of Costa Rica (UCR).
