[Marxism] Protests Bring Costa Rica to the Verge of Paralysis

[Suresh <borhyaenid@xxxxxxxxx>]

Protests Bring Costa Rica to the Verge of Paralysis

Wed Aug 25,11:03 PM ET

Jose Eduardo Mora, Inter Press Service (IPS)

SAN JOSE, Aug 25 (IPS) - Nationwide protests in Costa
Rica that started out with blockades of roads and
freeways by truck drivers and which expanded Wednesday
to include a broad range of groups threaten to
paralyse this Central American country.

 Isolated protest measures at strategic points around
the country organised by truck drivers known here as
traileros began Monday, to demand that the government
put an end to the three-year monopoly by Riteve, the
Spain-based company contracted to conduct the
mandatory technical inspections of all Costa Rican
vehicles.

But the conflict has grown and spread, and the protest
by the truck drivers' union and the Chamber of
Transport turned into a springboard for organisations
voicing a wide range of political, economic and social
grievances.

The government of Abel Pacheco is now facing demands
from farmers, public employees, high school teachers
and social organisations, all of which have declared a
strike against the approval of a free trade treaty
with the United States and anti-inflationary measures.

The organisations that have joined the protest include
the National Civic Committee umbrella group, the Union
of Small and Medium Farmers, the National Association
of Public Employees (ANEP), and the Internal Front of
Workers of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute
(ICE), the state-owned power and telecoms company.

The government and citizens are walking through a
minefield. By some miracle we have not stepped on any
of those mines, which would make the country blow up,
sociologist Francisco Escobar, a former director of
the doctoral programme at the Costa Rica-based
Autonomous University of Central America, told IPS.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the
government called out the police to break up protests
in the city of Alto de Ochomogo, in the central
province of Cartago, 20 km east of the capital, and in
the eastern province of Limn, on the Atlantic coast.

But the unrest continued in the north, south and
central regions of this normally peaceful country of
4.2 million, which has no army and is known for its
strong tradition of democratic and economic stability
and its record of high achievement in education,
health and social security.

Link:
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=655&e=14&u=/oneworld/20040826/wl_oneworld/6573926541093489436>


Economic Leaders Resign
By Fabián Borges and Rebecca Kimitch
Tico Times Staff
fborges@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
rkimitch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Pacheco administration this week halted eight days
of civil unrest by forging a controversial agreement
that caused the resignations of Finance Minister
Alberto Dent and the President's top economic advisor,
Ronulfo Jiménez, and sparked concern in the business
sector.

After more than a week of public unrest, government
officials agreed in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday morning
to an additional 0.5% salary increase for public
employees ? something Dent said the country can't
afford.

Officials also agreed to explore renegotiating Riteve
SyC's controversial monopoly on mandatory technical
inspections of vehicles and study ways to reduce the
cost of living for Costa Ricans. Thus they addressed
three of the four major demands of last week's
protests, which shut down the nation's highways,
borders and ports and caused millions of dollars in
losses (TT, Aug. 27).

WHAT government officials got in return from the
consortium of unions and associations, christened the
National Civic Movement, was assurance that the civil
unrest that temporarily paralyzed the country would
end.

They also got the resignation of Dent and Jiménez...

PRESIDENT Abel Pacheco, in response to Dent's
resignation, said, ?I don't think the government
should be ashamed at all. Protestors had a series of
demonstrations that put the government on the brink of
a coup d'etat. What we lived in Costa Rica was
terrible.?

The chaos peaked Aug. 24 when blockades as long as 15
kilometers closed southeastern and northwestern access
to San José, on the Inter-American Highway. Almost
every sector of the nation's economy was affected.

Police cleared most of the blockades Aug. 25, but
scattered protests and roadblocks continued through
the weekend. One of the most controversial incidents
occurred Friday on the highway between Guápiles and
Río Frío, on the Caribbean slope. An ambulance on its
way to San José with a badly wounded man was not
allowed through the blockade. The man eventually died
in a Guápiles hospital, sparking public debate and an
official investigation...

SOME unions celebrated the upheaval in the
government's economic team.

?This has been an historical fight for the people of
Costa Rica. It shows the rejection by the people of
the policies of neo-liberalism,? said Albino Vargas,
secretary general of the National Association of
Public and Private Employees (ANEP).

?The middle class, for which this country was known,
is disappearing and the policies are causing an
acceleration of the concentration of wealth in the
hands of a few,? Vargas said.

Business chambers blasted the government's negotiating
skills and lamented the resignations.

Jiménez, regarded as the mastermind of the Pacheco
administration's economic policy, was also economic
advisor to former President Miguel Angel Rodríguez
(1998-2002).

Officials from the Costa Rican Union of Private-Sector
Chambers and Business Associations (UCCAEP), an
umbrella group that represents 40 business chambers,
said in a statement the group is worried about the
precedent set by the government by signing agreements
under the pressure of ?minority groups who block
public roadways.?

They said the decision was made without studying its
effects, and would affect the country's internal and
external credibility.

?Decisions like this generate a lack of confidence and
legal insecurity for national and foreign investment,
and strengthen a climate of political and economic
insecurity to the detriment of development required by
the country,? the statement said.

Link: <http://www.ticotimes.net/topstory.htm>


                
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