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| Welcome to edition 3525 published on 06/27/2008 | There are 6 articles in this week´s edition. |
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The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE), despite its nominal non-partisanship - recently issued another ruling that has obvious political consequences for the November municipal elections. Having already prevented Liberal candidate Eduardo Montealegre from running for mayor of Managua with his own party, the CSE recently declared that the Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS) and the Conservative Party (PC) must be dissolved. Both the court's Sandinista and Liberal judges argued that these parties had failed to fulfill certain legal requirements. Few doubt, however, that the ruling was political. Virtually every analyst in Nicaragua recognizes that the elimination of the MRS is the product of the pact reached between Arnoldo Alemán and Daniel Ortega in 1999. Almost a decade after these old rivals forged a détente, they appear to have accomplished their objective: the creation of an intractable two party system.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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The Constitutional Court (CC) recently upheld an appeal against the Mining Law lodged by the Center for Legal, Environmental and Social Action (CALAS). On April 1, the CC decreed that seven articles of the Mining Law are unconstitutional. Following this resolution, mining corporations will no longer be allowed unlimited access to the country's mining resources. Foreseeing that Congress is likely to lodge a counter-appeal against the CC's ruling, CALAS has issued a writ of amparo (a legal instrument that can be applied against public officials or private persons to protect citizen or corporate rights) to prevent Minister for Energy and Mining, Carlos Meany, from issuing new mining licences while the CC's ruling comes into effect.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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More than fifteen years ago, US ambassador Cresencio Arcos famously said that “In Honduras, justice is like a viper – it only bites the shoeless.” Shortly after, the Attorney General's Office came into being with the explicit mission of making the justice system fairer –largely, this meant the institution would take on the country's pervasive corruption. But in April, 2008 four of the country's leading prosecutor's announced that they were going on a hunger strike, arguing that the Attorney General's Office was not prosecuting corrupt figures, but rather protecting them. They called for the Attorney General's impeachment, and only called off the strike thirty-eight days later. Although Congress later voted against impeachment, long time observers of Honduras politics say the strike was the first serious blow to the country's corrupt ruling class in many years.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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Central American leaders are restructuring the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) in order to reduce the number of projects planned by 95% and prioritize strategically important health, energy and infrastructure initiatives in the region. In this context, Guatemala is planning new legal initiatives to ensure private participation in infrastructure and hydroelectric projects with the fewest social and legal obstacles possible. The legal initiative on expropriation seems the most controversial, and the construction of a road from Ixcán to Huehuetenango in a strategically important area known as the Northern Transversal Strip (FTN) is the most ambitious project.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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The Costa Rican Legislative Assembly has approved a new Telecommunications Law that will open the country's telecommunication market to new service providers and network operators. There were some concerns surrounding the opening up of the market as some feared it would lead to price hikes after years of state-subsidized telephone services.. However, the government has stressed that modernization is necessary in order to benefit from technological advances in the sector. Under the new law, two institutions will be in charge of managing the concessions for the market: the Telecommunications Superintendency (SUTEL) and the Costa Rican Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications (MINAET). These two institutions must formulate a plan and present it to the Costa Rican Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) who will approve the creation and development of 19 new regulation statements that must be ready in less than 9 months.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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The Guatemalan political elite has been plunged into political turmoil after the press exposed an irregular transfer of funds from the private accounts to high-risk investment firm Mercados Futuros S.A . As more details of the irregular transaction emerged there were calls for the president of the Legislative Assembly, Eduardo Meyer, to resign his post. Then, the plot thickened when far-right Patriot Party (PP) leader, Otto Pérez Molina, and the former president of the Legislative Assembly, Rubén Dario Morales, of the National Advancement Party (PAN) were also implicated in the scandal. The PP has responded by attempting to undermine the investigation against its leader by directing accusations towards Banking Superintendent Edgar Barquín.
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published 06/27/2008 |
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