Costa Ricans went to vote on a free-trade deal with the US yesterday in a referendum that has split the Central American nation like no other issue in decades.
Opponents fear the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will weaken the country's prized welfare system, among the strongest in Latin America.
Supporters, led by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias say Costa Rica needs to open its economy more since it is a small country with few natural resources.
The White House said on Saturday that if Costa Ricans vote against the CAFTA deal, the Bush administration would not renegotiate the agreement. The White House also suggested it may not extend trade preferences now afforded to Costa Rican products and set to expire next September.
"The United States has never before confronted the question of extending unilateral trade preferences to a country that has rejected a reciprocal trade agreement," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.
A poll last week in La Nacion newspaper showed Costa Ricans rejecting the trade deal by 55 percent to 43 percent. Other recent surveys showed the country -- home to 4 million people and the most prosperous and stable in Central America -- sharply divided.
The agreement would open state-run sectors like telecommunications and insurance to competition from foreign firms. Opponents say that threatens institutions that have contributed to the country's social stability for decades.
Critics also say the deal will mean a flood of cheap US farm imports and limit the country's sovereignty by taking investment disputes to international arbitration.
"The experiences of other countries that have signed CAFTA have not been good -- a lot of unemployment and a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few," hardware store owner Alex Cordero said.
Costa Rica is the only one of the six Latin American signatories to the trade deal that has yet to ratify it. The deal is in effect in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
In the largest march in Costa Rica in years, about 100,000 people filled the streets of the capital last weekend to protest the trade pact.
Costa Rica, which has no army and boasts of pristine beaches and jungles, has enjoyed almost uninterrupted democratic government for over a century and has much better free education and health care than its neighbors.
Arias, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping end Central American civil wars in the 1980s, says CAFTA will help Costa Rica stay ahead in the region.
Also see story:
The growth of regionalism in Latin America
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the