Costa Rica is days away from its turn to address the United Nations General Assembly without a confirmed speaker, and new details about the week leading up to Manuel Tovar’s dismissal are raising questions about how the dispute unfolded. President Laura Fernández fired Tovar as foreign minister yesterday, saying he failed to inform her of a Sept. 22 meeting of the Shield of the Americas security coalition in New York that included U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Presidency called his handling of the invitation negligent and said it caused strategic damage.Costa Rica is tentatively scheduled to speak before the General Assembly on Monday, Sept. 28, as the 14th of 21 speakers that day, although some local reports said Tovar had been scheduled to speak on Thursday, the day he was dismissed.
As of this morning, the government had not officially announced who would take his place at the podium. It has been reported, citing unofficial sources, that Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United Nations, Boris Marchegiani Carrero, is expected to deliver the address.
Tovar had referred to the Shield of the Americas meeting publicly five days before it took place. In an interview published by the Miami Herald on Sept. 17, he mentioned a high-level meeting of the coalition that would be held in New York the following week, during the General Assembly. The Foreign Ministry has not said when the invitation was received.
The meeting was originally planned for Monday, Sept. 21, before being moved to the following day. A day before the Herald interview, on Sept. 16, Tovar met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Rubio praised Costa Rica’s leadership on security and sovereignty as a founding member of the Shield of the Americas and of a regional coalition against drug cartels.
Fernández had announced on July 21 that she would not attend this year’s General Assembly. She said at the time that it was more important for her to remain in Costa Rica to deal with security issues and investment projects, and that she had made the decision together with the foreign minister and her team.
On Sept. 22, while Fernández met with Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella during an official visit to Colombia, Tovar attended the Shield of the Americas session on Costa Rica’s behalf. Representatives of 15 countries took part, including Argentine President Javier Milei. Costa Rica signed a joint security declaration at the meeting that included sanctions against 24 organizations the signatories described as terrorist groups.
Former Foreign Minister Manuel González, who led the ministry from 2014 to 2018, said he had never seen a foreign minister removed on the spot while at an event of that level. He acknowledged that appointing and removing ministers is a presidential prerogative, but said the government could have waited until Tovar delivered the speech and completed his meetings before dismissing him.
González also said the dismissal disrupted the meetings Tovar had scheduled for the coming days, at a time when the foreign minister would normally accompany Rebeca Grynspan in her campaign to become United Nations secretary-general.
Rodolfo Solano, who served as foreign minister from 2020 to 2022, said what stood out to him was less the dismissal itself than how and where it happened. He warned that diplomacy has a long memory, and said Costa Rica had planned to use the Assembly to raise climate change, development financing, ocean diplomacy and the regulation of artificial intelligence, but would instead be noted for losing its foreign minister in the middle of the session.
Solano said Fernández’s earlier decision to skip the Assembly had already limited Costa Rica’s ability to lobby for Grynspan at the highest level, because a president’s backing carries more weight than a minister. He described this Assembly as possibly one of Costa Rica’s last opportunities for high-level advocacy before the selection is decided, though he stopped short of saying the dismissal would hurt the outcome.
Solano also said a meeting of that kind would normally be planned and organized well in advance. He explained that such invitations can arrive through the U.S. Embassy in San José, the U.S. mission to the United Nations or both, before being passed to the Presidency for a decision on attendance.
Carlos Cascante, a professor at the National University (UNA), said that if Tovar knew Trump would attend and did not tell the president, it would be a significant error, because a foreign minister can represent the country but cannot stand in for a head of state at a meeting convened for presidents. He added that Washington could have read the president’s absence as a sign that Costa Rica was downplaying the meeting, but said key details, including Tovar’s account, are still missing.
International analyst Carlos Murillo said the abrupt removal of a foreign minister days before a General Assembly speech signals internal problems in the management of foreign policy. He said the administration lacks a clear foreign policy line, and that Tovar and Fernández had at times made differing public statements on international issues. Cascante cited earlier differences between the ministry and the Presidency over Nicaragua and a trade dispute with Panama.
Tovar has not directly disputed the president’s account. In a message posted after his dismissal, he thanked Fernández for the opportunity to serve and stressed the importance of the United Nations high-level week for securing Grynspan’s election. Grynspan’s candidacy, formalized by Costa Rica in March, remains open.
In the Security Council’s third informal straw poll, she received nine votes encouraging her candidacy, five discouraging it and one with no opinion. Any nominee must clear the council, where the five permanent members hold veto power, before the General Assembly votes. Foreign Trade Minister Indiana Trejos Gallo is serving as acting foreign minister while the government weighs its next steps.
