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TLC In Jeopardy As Legislators Fail To Approve Two SUTEL Nominations

Opponents of the Tratado Libre de Comercio (TLC) - free trade agreement with the United States - apparently will not stop until the December 31 deadline passes and the trade deal is dead.

The latest roadblock is the failure of the legislature to approve two of the four nominations to the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones (SUTEL).

SUTEL is the agency that will govern telecommunications in the country, including cellular telephone and internet operators, which is a requirement of the Ley de Fortalecimiento y Modernización del Sector Telecomunicaciones, the law that broke the telecommunications monopoly in the country and required under the free trade deal.

The Arias administration has the commitment to complete all the requirements in the trade deal by December 31, the last day it has to deposit the completed agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS), after it was given, a second extension by the trade partners to the deal.

Under the agreement, SUTEL is to be in complete set up by March 2009 and begin public offerings of the first telecommunications concessions by May 2009.

“Sure there are problems with the TLC, we are in the hands of the United States again for our own failures”, said the ministro d Comercio Exterior (Foreign trade minister), Marco Ruiz.

The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep) nominated last month four individuals to head up the SUTEL for the approval by legislators, who on Friday refused two nominations for political and business reasons.

Now, the Aresep must name two other individuals for consideration by legislators who go on their holiday vacation break in less than a week, which could impede the SUTEL nominations and the government’s commitment to honour the trade agreement.

The TLC negotiations began in 2004 and has been an uphill struggle for Costa Rica, which put the decision of the TLC in the hands of the people with the first ever referendum on the issue and the government having to ask for, not one, but two extensions from its trade partners, - Nicarauga, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, the United States and the Dominican Republic (the deal known as CAFTA-DR) - who all have already ratified and put in place their respective agreements.