President Solis touts Costa Rica’s economy, lack of corruption in CNN interview

I agree with you on the PLN they are worse than the mafia. The PLN party loves to never do anything when they have all the power. The PLN steal and have done very little to change Costa Rica. Solis is not perfect and its hard to fight against the corupt PLN party and the rich PLN.

SDPUS: We seem to agree on the political analysis, namely that the PLN is more motivated to crush the PAC than it is address the country’s problems, chiefly its fiscal problems, since doing so would require it to compromise with the PAC and share credit with it. You also highlight another problem, which is that Solís does not seem capable of making an end run around the legislature by appealing directly to the public, perhaps because the leading media oppose him, although maybe also because Solís lacks the necessary charisma to pull this off.

Where we may part ways is in our forecasts. You say that 4 years (actually 3 now) isn’t enough time for Solís to turn the boat around, while I’m starting to fear that it is too much time. Unless something dramatic happens to change the political dynamics (say Solís uncovering a major corruption scandal that seriously weakens the PLN) I forecast 3 more years of political gridlock in which nothing gets accomplished and the country’s problems worsen. Ironically, we may need to wait until the PLN regains the presidency (along with more legislative seats) before it will become politically possible to address the country’s problems, although counting on the PLN to do that then is surely foolish.

But I don’t know whether the country has 3 more years of time left. The only remaining arrows in the government’s quivver to avert disaster are to start selling off mineral and oil exploration rights, distinctly unpopular moves; to manipulate the exchange rate to the point where a black market emerges; to simply confiscate assets, rather than even pretend that it’s tax collection; and to just print money to pay its bills, highly inflationary. At this point the government has already turned to the loan sharks, namely China, and is dispatching its president to beg for investments from multinational corporations. It has also already instituted mild hiring freezes, which is realistically the only thing governments can do to control their employee expenses, and has already cut its longterm investments in things like infrastructure.

I don’t know how long it will take for the shit to really hit the fan, and maybe the country has more than 3 years, but I’m pretty sure that time is running out. My crystal ball is telling me that if we wait until the next election, Ticos might as well vote in the IMF and austerity measures, since that’s what’s going to happen anyway, although it’s not going to be a pleasant ride while waiting for the IMF to take control or very pleasant after it does.

The annoyance is that this disaster scenario can be avoided if the PLN puts selfish politics aside now and decides to work with the PAC to hammer out compromise solutions. As another post put it, this is probably only a 2-year window of opportunity, since the last year of a president’s term is dominated by political wrangling over the next election. Unfortunately, at this point it appears that the next 2 years are going to be squandered.

And ironically, the crusade against corruption by Solís may be part of the problem. Unless he can quickly come up with some hard evidence of the kind that leads to convictions, all he’s doing is pissing off the PLN with his high-minded accusations. This is not the way to encourage collaboration. Maybe Solís needs to wink at suspected corruption in order to get the political job done. The alternative is for him to be regarded as a good man who nevertheless was captain of the ship when it sank.