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COSTA RICA'S PROTRACTED PROCESS EXPOSES CAFTA'S MANY PROBLEMS.

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Costa Rica's trajectory toward eventual ratification of the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) passed another milestone on Dec. 12 when the legislature's foreign affairs committee passed it on with a 6-3 vote. That vote now opens the way for a debate in the full legislature, said Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias. This vote was no small achievement; debate was reported to have gone 272 hours in eight months on the highly polemical treaty. "In no other country in the world is there so much debate in committee before voting on it," commented Arias.

The approval came at midnight, with four votes from the ruling Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN), one from the Movimiento Libertario (ML), and one from the Partido de Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC). The Partido Accion Ciudadana (PAC) delivered the three negative votes. The PAC is led by Otton Solis, whom Oscar Arias defeated by the narrowest of margins in the presidential race (see NotiCen, 2006-05-11). Solis ran on a platform calling for renegotiation of CAFTA. He and his party still maintain that stance.

A retrograde movement accompanies the progress, however. As the Asamblea Legislative (AL) moves closer to supporting CAFTA, the general population moves farther away. Popular support for CAFTA has shrunk from 61% in October 2005 to 41% in August 2006, according to a CID-Gallup poll in La Republica, a national newspaper. The decline was reported as Nicaragua and El Salvador, countries in which CAFTA has been in effect for a while, began reporting disappointing results (see NotiCen, 2006-10-19 and 2006-12-14).

At this point, President Oscar Arias, whose presidency is being defined by his strong endorsement of CAFTA, is in retreat from touting future benefits of the treaty to just staying even in the eyes of the entrepreneurial classes with the rest of the countries of the isthmus, all of which have passed it. Several companies have threatened to leave Costa Rica to take advantage of the agreement's provisions if it does not pass in that country.

"Failure to ratify the treaty would place the country at a competitive disadvantage in global markets," said Shirley Saborio...

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