As Costa Rica's legislature ends its second year in office, most party leaders agree that little progress was made during the recently-ended legislative session.
Broad Front Party legislator Suray Carrillo Guevara is drafting a water conservation bill that would ban existing and future golf courses in Costa Rica.
Former Broad Front Party legislator Ronal Vargas Araya on Tuesday evening filed a request before the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) to annul a resignation letter he submitted last Thursday. Vargas stepped down after an office assistant filed a sexual harassment complaint against him with administrative officials at the Legislative Assembly.
Broad Front Party lawmaker Ronal Vargas Araya on Thursday afternoon brought his colleagues in the Legislative Assembly to tears when he announced that he had submitted a letter of resignation to the Supreme Elections Tribunal in order to undergo medical treatment for a severe health problem. Except that doesn't appear to be the truth.
Last week, some 350 people attended an economic forum at Costa Rica’s Hotel Barceló San José Palacio hosted by the business magazine Summa. The forum, titled “Costa Rica: Where Are We Going?” featured panels of experts and insiders who examined issues such as the country’s economic growth, its fiscal deficit and setting the economy back on track. But they also focused on politics – and one particular party. (Hint, it wasn't Liberation.)
The phrase “We’re not autistic,” which I used during an interview I gave to a journalist when speaking of dangerous budget cuts, is commonly used when speaking of politics in Costa Rica. To cite that phrase out of context and somehow associate its use with a lack of sensitivity on my part towards those with autism or any other disability would be a serious mistake.
Recently, Patricia Mora, legislator for the Broad Font Party, stated in the Costa Rican daily La Naciόn – as a way of deflecting criticism – that members of her party “aren’t autistic.” She doesn’t understand that people with autism and their families have to fight each and every day to be included in our society. She doesn’t understand that autistic people are incredible human beings, who, unlike most other people, don’t even know what evil and hypocrisy are.
As Costa Rica’s gasoline prices reach record highs, politicians are scrambling to find a way to curb costs at the pump. Members of the leftist Broad Front Party think the answer lies in a Venezuelan oil-sharing scheme, Petrocaribe.
