Legislative Assembly

After three rounds of voting, Costa Rican lawmakers on Tuesday night elected journalist Montserrat Solano Carboni as the country's new ombudswoman for the next four years.

Opposition lawmakers expressed a mix of outrage and approval Monday afternoon at the 100-day report presented by President Luis Guillermo Solís last week. Many lawmakers who opined about the president’s report agreed that any guilty parties should be punished, but they urged the president to provide more concrete proposals to address the problems he identified while speaking last Thursday at San José's Teatro Melico Salazar.

Starting this week, legislators will discuss proposals for an expansion of the Florencio del Castillo Highway, the main route connecting the eastern sector of the capital with the province of Cartago.

On Monday evening, hours after the president requested an hour Thursday afternoon to present his assessment of the government as he found it after President Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014) left office in May, the heads of the fractious political parties refused to give him the floor. Solís blamed the National Liberation Party (PLN) for the delay in the report, which would be a first of its kind in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is a step closer to having a new boss at the Ombudsman's Office after a legislative commission narrowed down a list of candidates to three names.

Members of the legislative appointments commission this week were supposed to issue a list of the three top candidates to lead Costa Rica's Ombdusman's Office. But the announcement of those names was pushed back to Monday because one of the top five applicants was absent.

Culture Minister Elizabeth Fonseca on Monday rejected another request by the Legislative Assembly's directorate to approve building permits for a new Assembly complex in downtown San José, at the legislature's current location.

All 53 lawmakers present at a Monday session of the Legislative Assembly voted in favor of removing Supreme Court Justice Óscar González Camacho from the bench, just days before González would have retired. The unanimous vote means González now will face a criminal trial on six counts of alleged rape and one count of attempted rape.

A Legislative Assembly hearing to discuss the possible removal of Supreme Court Justice Óscar González Camacho of the court's Civil Chamber, or Sala I, was postponed until Monday. González faces six criminal charges of rape and one charge of attempted rape.

Though there aren't many left in Costa Rica's rivers, the manatee is about to become a little more famous after a bill declaring it the national marine mammal passed a first round of legislative debate on Monday.