Caribbean & Central America - June 2012 (ISSN 1741-4458)

May could have been a great month for President Laura Chinchilla after her ruling Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) retook control of the national assembly (AL)'s directorate at the start of the month [RC-12-05]. However, after losing several members of her administration, including one minister, to corruption in April [RC-12-04], the President also lost her justice and transport & planning ministers, Hernando París and Francisco Jiménez - the latter forced out over another corruption scandal – in May. With 11 of Chinchilla’s 23 ministers having left the cabinet since she took office two years ago (May 2010), the instability at the top is unlikely to do much for her popularity – which, at 26%, is the lowest of any Latin American president according to a recent Mitofsky poll.

Corruption allegations, however, have sprung up at all levels and in all institutions. The office of the attorney general warned in late May that it simply doesn't have enough resources to handle the upsurge in corruption investigations. In fact, there are only six prosecutors who specialise in this type of investigation. Amongst them, they are reviewing 189 cases deemed “complex”, giving each of them an average of 32 cases to handle. “It is very worrying that the lack of human and material resources may be detrimental at some point for some of the investigations”, Juan Carlos Cubillo, the associate prosecutor for probity, transparency and anti-corruption, told the local media. Similarly, the president of the supreme court of justice (CSJ), Luis Paulino Mora, said: “I hope that when discussing the 2013 budget, the economy ministry and the national assembly allow us to grow at a more comfortable pace to meet the needs highlighted by the public ministry and others, of equal or greater importance, in other parts of the judicial system”.

Cubillo's and Mora's statements are particularly worrying because they coincided with accusations levied by Otto Guevara, who announced in May that he wants to be the 2014 presidential candidate of the opposition Movimiento Libertario (ML) for a fourth election running. Guevara's 2009 electoral campaign has been under the magnifying glass for some time and authorities believe that the campaign defrauded public coffers by claiming the reimbursement of some training courses that were never taken. The campaign is also under investigation for securing loans in a dubious manner. In late May, Guevara gave a press conference criticising a police raid on the offices of the party, which he said was politically motivated, adding that “the abuses” allegedly committed by the attorney general's office against ML constituted “corruption”.

Attorney General Jorge Chavarría responded that his office “respects, in all accusations, the principles of objectivity, transparency and legality” and denied all accusations of persecution. Guevara's rebuttal was simple: if the attorney general fails to investigate similar accusations of illicit activities committed by the PLN during its campaign with the same speed and media exposure it has investigated the ML, then the investigation has been politicised.

Temporary political respite

On 21 May five national assembly members of the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) announced their departure from the opposition alliance, formally ending the bloc’s power in the legislature. The bloc’s collapse appeared imminent after the Partido Accesibilidad Sin Exclusión (Pase) quit and crossed the floor to join PLN so as to re-take control of the AL's directorate in the 1 May election. However, the weakened opposition still rejected the president's call for a “political truce” in the AL during 2012. Instead, the leaders of the various opposition parties publicly expressed their disappointment at the president's failure to mention minorities during her state of the nation address and warned that, since they are out of congressional leadership, they will have more time on their hands to monitor the PLN's activities.

• New Costa Rica-Mexico connection

In late May the president of the Mexican economy airline Interjet, Miguel Alemán Magnani, announced that his company had requested the necessary permits from the Costa Rican ministry of transport to open a weekly air link between San José and Mexico City. The A320 flight would allow the transport of 150 passengers each way and would constitute the second route of Interjet to the sub-region – it currently has a weekly flight with the same aircraft specifications to Guatemala City. Interjet is Mexico's second largest airline, but is its only economy one.