QCOSTARICA – Former President of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, warns that we are facing the “most serious” crisis of insecurity that the country has experienced.
Chinchilla met with the legislative fraction and authorities of the Executive Committee of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), once one of two parties that led national politics, after an invitation to address the problem.
The former president called for urgent action to be taken.
One of the objectives of the PUSC legislators was to know first-hand the opinion of the former president, who told them to approve the laws proposed by the current administration to combat organized crime but also to analyze the issue of emerging capital and thus hit criminal structures with it.
“I don’t see that much attention is being paid to emerging capital and as long as we continue to discover money laundering, what generates the great incentives for crime, we are going to continue with our guard down facing this evil,” said Chinchilla.
Chinchilla described as “ridiculous” the extraordinary budget of ¢6 billion colones that the Government presented to the Legislative Assembly to deal with the wave of homicides, and affirmed that the current security policy has an unknown direction.
“The Government sent an extraordinary budget to create 300 (new) police posts. I would like to say that, given the magnitude of the problem, this is ridiculous (…) the legislators have to ask the Executive Branch for a truly extraordinary budget, which will effectively compensate many of the shortfalls that the police and prisons of our country have,” said the former president.
The former president was direct in saying that one year into the Chaves administration, “this situation is one of its main shortcomings, given an exponential growth in murders and crimes”.
Chinchilla brought an urgent message to the legislators before her, “there is time to stop this escalation of violence and crime.”
“We must act now (…),” she added.
In parallel to Monday’s meeting by Chinchilla with the PUSC legislators, rumors of a change at the Ministerio de Seguridad Publica (MSP) – Ministery of Publica Security – arose.
Principally is the request of Mario Zamora, the former minister of security in the Chinchilla administration (2010-2014), requesting leave of absence without pay until May 2026 at the Defensoría de los Habitantes (Ombudsman’s Office).
Rumors are that Zamora will replace the current Security Minister, Jorge Torres.
After serving as security minister in the Chinchilla administration, Zamora returned to his position in the Ombudsman’s Office, where in the last four years he became the right hand of Ombudswoman Catalina Crespo, before being appointed by Rodrigo Chaves as ambassador to the United States.
While President Chaves or any formal government body has yet to confirm intentions to make the change at the end of the first year of government, at different times, President Chaves has said that security has been neglected in the country in the last two governments, which implicitly seems to recognize the merits of Chinchilla’s management with Zamora as minister.
This despite the well-remembered criticisms launched by Pilar Cisneros as a journalist for this issue, when she did not imagine that she would become a legislator for the ruling party and did not even know Rodrigo Chaves.
