COSTA RICA NEWS – The Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN) had a plan ready against the 100 days report by President Luis Guillermo Solís, that was to have been presented to the Legislative Assembly today (Thursday).
“We were prepared from the start,” said Carlos Roverssi, current cheif legislative counsel for the PLN, a party that governed for two consecutive terms between 2006 and 2014 and alternated power for decades, now the opposition.
According to Roverssi, who was minister of Communications in the Chinchilla administration, the PLN has been researching management reports of the governments of Oscar Arias (2006-2010) and Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014); collecting data on budget reports for the last eight years and the three months of the the Solís administration, with the intent of counterattacking the President’s report.
The reason for all the preparation by the liberationists was the suspicion that the contents of the report would have strong indirect or passing reference, without explicit mention, to the the governments of Oscar Arias (2006-2010) and Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014).
On Monday, the PLN and other political parties, holding a majority of legislative seats, would not agree on the proposal by the Partido Accion Cuidanan (PAC), on the insistence of President Solís, of delivering the report to legislators without a question period following. The PLN said it would only agree to limit the questions to five. The other parties wanted a full debate. Failing a consensus and last minute efforts to reach some type of agreement, the President was barred from delivering his report to the Legislature.
Roverssi told Amelia Rueda on her radio program that the PLN was prepared, gathering information fron news reports over government errors. “None of this is hidden. Everything is public. (…) We were preparing,” said Roverssi, who said that the efforts were also being coordinated with former President Laura Chinchilla.
Last week, Chinchilla made references in the social media that she would be prepared for any attack on her government by the President.
“We are ready to defent the governments of Doña Laura and Don Oscar,” said Roverssi.
A strong political figure in the PLN, Antonio Alvarez Desanti, confirmed the gathering of information, but said it is uncertain what the Solís report will say, who has daid that he aims to the people how he found the country and give his course of action.
President Solís will be delivering his report to the people and the media on Thursday, August 28, at the Melico Zalara theatre.
Sources: CRHoy; La Nacion; Amelia Rueda; Facebook
This was their plan? To obstruct the president’s address in an apparent cover-up of the sins of past PLN presidents? The president should have the right to make a “state of the union” address without having it become a debate or inquisition. I hope that the people of Costa Rica will take a greater interest in the president’s address now that he has changed the site of his speech. If the president does, in fact, point an accusing finger at the past two administrations, the people should interpret the PLN’s attempt to silence him as an attempt to continue the cover-up of past misdeeds. The participation in the cover-up by the obstructionist members of the PLN in the Legislative Assembly should reflect poorly on them and signal to the people that the current members continue to be part of the problem. One would think that these people would be distancing themselves from those past acts rather than demonstrating their complicity.