QCOSTARICA – “The government is playing with the jobs of Costa Ricans, despite campaigning that with Costa Rica you can’t play with,” said Ronald Jiménez president of the Unión Costarricense de Cámaras y Asociaciones del Sector Empresarial Privado (Uccaep) – Association of the Private Business Sector.
Jimenez, saying he is speaking on behalf of businessmen in the country, said the government has chosen to ally itself with the left, rather than with national interests.
He said that reestablishing relations with the government is something that the business elite of the country see as complicated, following the lifting of the ban on the labour procedural reform announced Friday by President Luis Guillermo Solís.
The lifting of the ban opens the possibility of strikes in essential public services and creates legal uncertainty. The business leader expressed his annoyance because “Solís pledged not to lift the ban unless there was consensus (from all sectors)”.
In a social media post, a reader says that the lifting of the ban imposed in 2012 by then President Laura Chinchilla, harms not only the business sector, but the poorest of the poor.
The reader makes the argument that, if there were to be a strike at a public hospital where replacement staff cannot be hired, who will suffer? People with money will head to private medicine and the rest?
“I have many doubts and fears with the actions of this president, that although I did not vote for him, is the president of all and sometimes he appears like an actor in a cheap comedy,” said the post.