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Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, September 28, 2004
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| LEADERS meet: President Abel Pacheco (left) and Tibetan religious and political leader Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama, had lunch yesterday afternoon. The event was part of the Dalai Lama's visit to Costa Rica, which ends today. |
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Dalai Lama Commends Costa Rica,
Talks about Cultivating Compassion
Two days of public speeches and meetings with Costa Rica's President and lawmakers behind him, Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama, will conclude his visit to the country today with a private conference with Catholic Church leaders followed by a public event with religious leaders of nearly 30 faiths.
(Click for more)
ICE Board Members
Who Went to Prague Fired
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) on Friday rejected an injunction filed by former Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) board members José Antonio Lobo and Hernando Pantigoso, which sought to overturn a decision by President Abel Pacheco to fire them from ICE's board.
(Click for more)
Monsanto Says it Left
To Increase Efficiency
A representative of genetically modified organism (GMO) and agrochemical giant Monsanto confirmed yesterday the company has closed its offices in San José and moved its Central American operations to Colombia and Mexico
(Click for more)
September 28
Introduction to Aerobic Dancing
Classes begin today with professors of the Universidad Nacional (UNA), at the Escuela del Deporte in Lagunilla, Heredia. Info: 261-1073.
Feterman Duo
Duo performs tonight in the “Tuesday Nights” series, 7 p.m. in room 107 of the School of Music of the University of Costa Rica (UCR). Info: 207-5565.
Crafts Fair in Heredia
Members of the Costa Rican Artisans' Association are showing their works at the Universidad Nacional (UNA) campus in downtown Heredia, as part of the VIII University Cultural Festival, open to the public through Friday. Info: 265-4533, 207-3200.
Edited By Fabián Borges
Tico Times Staff
fborges@ticotimes.net
Dalai Lama Commends Costa Rica,
Talks about Cultivating Compassion
By Robert Goodier
Tico Times Staff
rgoodier@ticotimes.net
Two days of public speeches and meetings with Costa Rica's President and lawmakers behind him, Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama, will conclude his visit to the country today with a private conference with Catholic Church leaders followed by a public event with religious leaders of nearly 30 faiths.
Press conferences, lunches and interviews sprinkled between, the focal points of the Dalai Lama's visit have been two public talks.
The first, given to a near-capacity crowd at the National Theater in downtown San José Sunday afternoon, was called “Individual Peace, Universal Peace.” A crowd outside the gates, many of them holding tickets, would have liked to fill remaining empty seats but, as a security measure, organizers closed the gates a half hour before the Dalai Lama's arrival.
His speech, like the others he has given here the past two days, began with his appreciation of Costa Rica for having demilitarized and made a reality in one nation the ideal he holds for the entire world.
“Because one country already practices demilitarization,” he said, it “proves it's not just an ideal, it's something practical that we can achieve.”
He called on Costa Ricans to take a more active role in promoting their peaceful approach to foreign relations.
“When crisis evolves, as a group try to find how to solve,” he said. “And I think violence doesn't happen out of happiness; it's out of bitterness.
“It's important to know why we're proposing non-violence,” he added. His philosophy stems from the concept that people are interconnected, so other people are a part of him, as well as each other.
“Everything is interdependent,” he said, which, in the global market, is evident on an economic level. “We have witnessed that violence is not right method of solution. If you win a war, someone else loses.”
On terrorism, he said Osama Bin Laden “is also a human and a brother.” He suggested that someone “sit down and talk to him if he has complaints.”
On the Iraq war, he said “before the war there were huge demonstrations against the war, showing the will for peace.”
To help solve problems without violence, he said, “it would be good to form a group of notables to intervene in problems.”
In addition to more open communication between potentially violent forces, he also proposed a change in education, beginning with children.
“From kindergarten, I think one of the lessons should be how to live with every human being.”
He divided emotion into two categories: negative, such as anger and jealousy, which arise spontaneously, and positive, which must be cultivated through training and analysis.
“Analyze the benefits and consequences of negative emotions,” he said. “You will arrive at the conviction that you don't want them. That conviction makes good energy grow. Then there is one factor that gives us infinite conviction: it is compassion, loving kindness.”
Yesterday morning he gave his second public talk, called “Ethics for a New Millennium,” to an auditorium of mostly students at the University of Costa Rica.
Between frequent smiles, laughter and jokes with his translator about the weak air conditioning in the room, he spoke at length on the importance of gaining a broader perspective on a problem to know best how to solve it, as well as on ethics not based on religious values.
“To look from wider angle, wider perspective – this attitude will not solve the problem but it will help keep a calm mind,” he said.
On ethics, he said, “If moral ethics should have a religious base, you can't include those who have no beliefs. That means most of humanity would fall outside principles of ethics.”
He called secular ethics the “promotion of human value,” of which the core principles are demilitarization, respect for the environment, decreasing the gulf between the rich and the poor, and population control.
Today, from 10-11:45 a.m. in the Children's Museum in San José, the Dalai Lama will visit with religious and spiritual leaders from around the country. The event is open to the public. At 2 p.m., he will discuss “The Eight Verses of Training the Mind.” For those who do not have reservations there will be a screen set up in the indoor garden.
ICE Board Members
Who Went to Prague Fired
By Fabián Borges
Tico Times Staff
fborges@ticotimes.net
The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) on Friday rejected an injunction filed by former Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) board members José Antonio Lobo and Hernando Pantigoso, which sought to overturn a decision by President Abel Pacheco to fire them from ICE's board.
As a result of the ruling, the Lobo and Pantigoso have stepped down.
The board members, along with Alvaro Retana, who recently stepped down from his post as head of ICE's telecommunications division, have been at the center of a controversy that started last October when they traveled to Prague, Czech Republic, with Ricardo Taylor, the top Costa Rican representative for Swedish telecom firm Ericsson, when they were scheduled to attend a global telecommunications conference in Switzerland (TT, Aug. 6).
At the time, Ericsson was involved in and later won a $130 million public bid to provide ICE with 600,000 new GSM cellular telephone lines. The contract was signed in June.
In July, the Comptroller General's Office rejected the contract, citing 28 objections to it (not including the trip). Last week, Comptroller General Alex Solís ordered the bidding process to be started again from the beginning.
After legislators from the Libertarian Movement Party denounced the trip to Prague, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Assembly and ICE all began investigating the matter.
On July 20, Pacheco fired Lobo and Pantigoso because of alleged irregularities connected to the trip (TT, July 23). A week later on July 27, he named engineers Jorge Gutiérrez and Francisco Lay to ICE's board of directors.
On Aug. 3, a day before ICE was to announce the results of its investigation, Retana resigned as ICE's head of telecommunications (TT, Aug. 6).
Lobo and Pantigoso, however, filed an injunction before the Sala IV, claiming the President's Cabinet lacked the authority to investigate and fire them.
The Sala IV agreed to study their case, thereby suspending the decision to fire them.
Friday's court ruling resulted in the immediate firing of Pantigoso and Lobo and gave Pacheco the authorization to reinstate his previous appointments. The new board members will likely be sworn in during today's weekly Cabinet meeting.
Monsanto Says it Left
To Increase Efficiency
A representative of genetically modified organism (GMO) and agrochemical giant Monsanto confirmed yesterday the company has closed its offices in San José and moved its Central American operations to Colombia and Mexico.
The closure, which happened in April, was announced and championed last week by environmental groups as a victory in their battle against GMOs (TT Daily Page, Sept. 24). However, Manuel Rivas, Monsanto's manager of product development in Central America, told The Tico Times yesterday the decision to leave was made to increase efficiency – not in response to pressure from anti-GMO groups.
Rivas also confirmed the U.S.-based company has withdrawn its request from the Costa Rican Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) for permission to plant genetically modified corn in Costa Rica.
“It is not a priority market, because of the small size of the cultivation,” Rivas said. He said the company would instead look to Honduras and Guatemala for cultivation of modified corn.
However, Rivas said Monsanto officials may in the future resubmit their request to grow the controversial crop in Costa Rica. He also stressed normal Monsanto business continues in Costa Rica, primarily distribution of the company's herbicide Roundup.
GMOs are crops that are genetically modified by scientists to exhibit certain traits, such as disease or herbicide resistance. Many of Mansanto's genetically modified products are “Roundup Ready,” meaning they are resistant to the herbicide the company produces.
Opponents say GM crops have unknown health risks and could contaminate the genetic material of nearby crops through the natural spread of seeds from gene-modified plants. They claim genetically modified corn has already severely contaminated crops in Mexico (TT, July 23).
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