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COSTA RICA: ICE MELTS UNDER PRESSURE.

Article Excerpt
Costa Rica's President Abel Pacheco has caved in to pressures from the US to open the country's telecommunications monopoly, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) to private investment. On a recent visit, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick threatened the Pacheco administration with exclusion from the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) if it did not comply (see NotiCen, 2003-10-02).

There was little delay in Pacheco's coming to heel. He announced that the government would negotiate a "partial opening," meaning the choicest items on the telecom menu, high-speed Internet, cellular-phone service, and data-network services. The US is not interested, say reports, in the nuts and bolts aspects of the industry, providing telephone lines, or long-distance service.

Unions predictably saw the president's reversal on a commitment not to do what he did as betrayal. Said Francisco Aguilar of the Frente Interno de los Trabajadores (FIT), "Pacheco has betrayed ICE (see NotiCen, 2003-06-05) and the different social groups that put their trust in him. We believed in his words. He has chosen to cave in to the demands of powerful economic groups. We have no choice but to take to the streets."

Equally predictably, business groups saw the reversal as necessary to the country's economic future. Software impresario Alex Mora told the press, "Costa Ricans are demanding better-quality services. Nothing will do ICE more good than a little competition. Public banks have thrived as a result of private competition, the same will...

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