Costa Rica

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Access to information from government agencies continues to be difficult for the press. Recently the Presidential spokesperson announced a series of measures to limit the number of questions and attendees at the weekly presidential press conferences. The bill before the Legislative Assembly pertaining to transparency and information access was dismissed and discussion of the Expression and Press Freedom bill was postponed. In terms of access to public information, the outlook for transparency has not been the subject of major changes, and as usual, requesting information from public offices is still a little easier for journalists than for the rest of citizens. However, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) is an agency that behaves in a totally different way, and often violates the people’s right to receive prompt answers from public offices, as stated in Article 30 of Costa Rica’s Political Constitution. Reporters in any media company covering ICE can easily note how hard it is to get in touch either with the press office or management. Press people working for ICE only take requests in written format and usually fail to respond to those requests. Often requests are blatantly ignored. Many ICE employees have also signed confidentiality agreements that keep them from expressing their points of view. These agreements might contradict jurisprudence issued by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, where magistrates have guaranteed the right of workers to freely speak their minds if their opinions have to do with healthy criticism (vote 10440-07). ICE might behave this way to protect sensitive data from private competitors, but it is still is a public agency and must abide by the same laws and regulations as other public agencies. On March 18, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court forced the Labor Ministry to release all information regarding employers that fail to pay minimum wage salaries to their workers. The lawsuit was filed by Alejandro Fernández, a reporter for the weekly El Financiero. The verdict creates new jurisprudence and will likely allow journalists to report on all inspecting duties performed by the Labor Ministry in the future. On the other hand, Communications Minister Roberto Gallardo recently limited the amount of questions to be asked by journalists covering weekly presidential cabinet meetings. Gallardo accused journalists of misbehaving and asking too much. The measure was announced on March 21. On Dec. 23, 2010, Chief Public Prosecutor Jorge Chavarría admitted that Costa Rican authorities are not able to hold anyone accountable for the La Penca Bombing, an incident where several journalists died 26 years ago while covering the counter-revolutionary movements taking place in Nicaragua. Since impunity will reign in this case, the Costa Rica Journalists Association decided to move forward with their plan to sue the government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to seek compensation for the bombing’s survivors. The Expression and Press Freedom Bill (#15.974) was not called for discussion by the Executive Branch in the past six months. The bill will likely be discussed after May 1, when the regular Legislative Assembly sessions resume. The Transparency and Information Access Bill (#16.198) was definitely dismissed, mainly because much of its content has already been addressed in jurisprudence issued by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. The bill could also have overlapped with the Constitutional Jurisdiction Act.

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