Araya said the municipality is investing approximately ₡360 million ($647,000) in improving the city’s video surveillance system, which currently has 120 cameras mainly in downtown San José.
"We’re not issuing warnings or asking vendors to clear out. We’re confiscating all merchandise obstructing passage for pedestrians and motorists,” San José Police Chief Marcelo Solano said.
Preliminary results by Costa Rica's Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) on Sunday night showed turnout in municipal elections has increased from 28 percent in 2010 to 35 percent this time around.
The former mayor of San José, Johnny Araya Monge, who headed the municipality for 22 years, believes progress has stalled since he left office in 2013 to pursue a losing bid for the presidency the following year.
Advertising spaces along streets and at bus shelters around Costa Rica's capital have gone blank and will be removed. Some are illegal; others must be scrapped, city authorities say, because the contract governing them doesn't say who owns them now that the contract is up.
Ex-presidential candidate and former San José Mayor Johnny Araya Monge on Wednesday evening said he will not seek to become the National Liberation Party’s candidate to lead San José’s Municipality next year.
Johnny Araya, the National Liberation Party’s disgraced former presidential candidate and former long-term mayor of Costa Rica's capital, denied recent rumors that he had meetings with leaders from the Accessibility Without Exclusion Party to run for mayor next year.
The ban means former presidential candidate Johnny Araya can't run for mayor of San José next year. He also can't continue to serve as an adviser to his party's 18 lawmakers in the Legislative Assembly.
