To ensure that government officials are not favoring friends and family by awarding them valuable mining concessions, the agency in charge of processing and approving the concessions says it depends on the honesty of its applicants.

Tuesday, Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Minister Roberto Dobles resigned following allegations that he awarded a mining concession potentially worth several millions of dollars to a company controlled by members of his and President Oscar Arias' family. Dobles and Arias are second cousins.

The same day, heads of the Geology and Mining Administration, an office under the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry (MINAET), called a press conference Tuesday to defend their agency.

While the agency's Mining Code prohibits granting concessions to government officials' “relatives in the first degree of blood relation,” the agency depends on a signed, sworn and notarized statement to confirm that is the case. The agency does no background checks into whether other corporations, owned by immediate family, own the one applying for the concession.

José Francisco Castro, the administration's director, said the agency just doesn't have the resources for that kind of follow-up, but acknowledged that it creates a loophole. He said that neither he nor Cynthia Cavallini, head of the National Mining Registry, had ever realized it until asked by The Tico Times on Tuesday.

“We follow the procedures required by law,” said Cavallini. “(To do further background checks), we would have to make a modification to the law.”

Both Castro and Cavallini said they had no idea that the agency was processing or had awarded any concessions that benefited members of Dobles' or Arias' family.

They later acknowledged that at least two other concessions were being processed that had ties to the same families.

The controversial concession that forced Dobles out of office, awarded in his first several months as minister in 2006, was given to a corporation where his uncle (and cousin to President Arias) is listed as vice-president. That corporation, in turn, is wholly owned by another, that is then owned by four others where Dobles' wife, mother and two brothers are beneficiaries. Dobles has maintained that all his actions were legal.

After rumors that she was considering running as an independent, former Citizen Action Party (PAC) President Epsy Campbell reaffirmed her previously announced decision to seek her party's nomination for the 2010 presidential elections.

Campbell's candidacy has pitted her against party founder and two-time presidential nominee Ottón Solís, a move that is threatening to split the party.

Campbell, in a letter to supporters, invoked the struggle of U.S. civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who, she said, “for having refused to give up her (bus) seat to a white person and move to the back, was jailed, setting off the spark for the Civil Rights Movement.”

As she continued, Campbell, who is of Afro-Caribbean ancestry, framed the struggle in terms of gender, and not race.

While she did not name Solís specifically, her invocation of the image of a black woman refusing to give up her seat to a white man as she challenges Solís for their party's nomination appeared to strike a chord, and has set off a very public struggle of allegiances among the party faithful.

In her letter, Campbell stressed the need to attract new members to the party through a reinvention of the party. “To promote change is a difficult task after eight years during which the greater part of the party has accustomed itself to having a ‘sole leader.' … The hour has come for the sweet rebellion.”

The party announced this week it will hold its convention to nominate its candidate on May 30, which happens to be Solis' birthday. While the party has traditionally held closed conventions at which its 80 members vote to nominate the party's candidate for president, this year the convention will be open to new party members who register by April 30. Campbell had previously said she would only run if PAC held an open primary.

The four beaches at Manuel Antonio National Park have regained their Ecological Blue Flag status, the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry (MINAET) has announced.

The Costa Rican Water and Sewer Institute (AyA) last month revoked the Blue Flags, which recognize cleanliness and eco-friendliness in the country's beaches, citing the risk of sewage contamination. But the move was predominately a precautionary measure, as AyA officials said at the time that beaches in the park “remained in good condition.”

Health Minister María Luisa Avila gave MINAET an extension through the end of June to implement the plan, after threatening to close down the park because of the poor sanitary conditions.

The Blue Flags were returned to the park's beaches after MINAET proposed a plan to rectify the sanitary conditions at the park itself, according to MINAET Vice Minister Jorge Rodríguez. The ministry will install portable bathrooms for tourists while construction begins on new, permanent bathrooms and a sewage treatment facility for the park.