Programa Nuestra Voz: Martes 16 de diciembre 2025

·37 min·3 clips

Fernández Delgado calls Costa Rica 'a paradise of impunity' and targets lifetime magistrates and luxury pensions as fights she will end with 40 deputies.

1. 'Nuestra Voz' on Radio Monumental conducts a second-round campaign interview with Laura Fernández Delgado, presidential candidate of Pueblo Soberano, on December 16, 2025. 2. Fernández Delgado served as Minister of National Planning and as Chief of Staff to President Rodrigo Chávez; she frames her campaign as a government of continuity. 3. The core thesis is that Costa Rica's public sector is trapped by laws decades out of date, and that modernizing those laws and closing obsolete institutions will unlock better services without new debt. 4. She argues that public employees are not the problem—the laws they must follow are, citing the education sector's 70-year-old legal framework that predates the internet, AI, and bilingual classrooms. 5. Costa Rica operates 335 public institutions; Fernández Delgado says many have lost their mandate and now duplicate work from larger agencies or generate bureaucratic creativity with no public purpose. 6. She names the Ministry of Governance as a concrete example: no minister has been named, but its structure remains, and dependent agencies like DINADECO operate without strategic direction. 7. She states she already drafted legislation to close the Ministry of Governance and proposes moving DINADECO under Mideplan to align it with rural development strategy. 8. On infrastructure financing, she endorses the Florentino del Castillo highway concession for Cartago as her top priority, and cites the near-failure of the La Amistad bridge in Guanacaste—a Taiwan cooperation gift—as evidence of chronic maintenance neglect. 9. She proposes closing the National Council of Concessions, which she served on, and replacing it with a public-private partnership authority, arguing that more than 50% of Costa Rica's national budget is legally pre-committed, leaving almost nothing for investment. 10. On long-term planning, she credits the current Chávez administration for establishing regional development goals for the first time, including targets by geographic zone such as the Brunca region and Limón. 11. She cites poverty and inequality reductions under Chávez as evidence that the planning instruments and regional policies are working, though she does not give specific percentage figures. 12. She says her most painful unresolved fight is the 'exceptional meetings' legislation, stalled for 25 years in the Legislative Assembly, which would provide legal guarantees to free-zone companies. 13. She names Panama, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic as countries actively recruiting Costa Rican free-zone companies with superior incentives while Costa Rica debates. 14. She targets luxury pensions as 'robbery by armed force,' noting three bills on the issue were archived during the current government despite her efforts. 15. She proposes judicial reform targeting lifetime magistrates who she says serve over 40 years without accountability to Costa Rican citizens. 16. She mentions that an AI-assisted health forum the previous day demonstrated how artificial intelligence could reduce wait-list times and enable epidemiological forecasting at the Costa Rican health chamber. 17. On energy, she warns that Costa Rica is approaching a capacity crisis if electrical market reform—debated for 35 years—is not completed, noting the delay already affected the ability to onboard a major US client to the national grid. 18. The interview format is a solo candidate interview conducted by host Amelia, with prepared technical questions on planning, concessions, risk matrices, and institutional reform. 19. Listeners interested in Costa Rican electoral politics, public sector reform, or infrastructure finance will find the episode substantive. 20. Those seeking entertainment, non-Spanish speakers, or listeners outside Costa Rica with no interest in its elections will not benefit from this episode.

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