Q COSTARICA — 43 of 57 legislators voted this Wednesday to reseal the bill by Monserrat Ruiz, a legislator from the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN), which would allow the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) to conduct raids 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including statutory holidays.
Currently, raids by the OIJ are carried out only from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm weekdays, except in exceptional cases (Article 193 of the Criminal Procedure Code).
With this, the legislators, including those from the ruling party, overrode President Rodrigo Chaves’ veto of May 14, claiming it was unconstitutional.
The president froze the initiative during the three months of extraordinary sessions that ran from May to July, during which the Executive branch (Presidency) controlled the Congressional agenda.
Ruiz denounced that President Chaves failed to invoke the veto during 79 days of extraordinary sessions.
The legislator also asserted that the president “was not interested” in seeing the bill through to the legislators.
“We’re finally facing this veto. We wasted a lot of time due to the intransigence of a government that wasn’t interested in calling for the bill for 79 days,” Ruiz lashed out in the plenary session.
“What’s happening with security must be stopped now. It’s not about signing a law or not, depending on whether I like the director of the OIJ or the attorney general. It’s about supporting all the measures, but we’ve wasted a lot of time due to the government’s intransigence,” the legislator asserted.
For her part, legislator Pilar Cisneros, who heads the ruling party’s legislative faction and a staunch supporter of Rodrigo Chaves, stated in the Plenary that she “was never against the case,” despite the presidential veto.
Behind Chaves’ Veto
On May 14, on his weekly television program, President Chaves stated that he would not give the OIJ more tools to carry out raids 24 hours a day, as he believes that giving it the power to extend raid hours is “continued intimidation.”
“The video is crystal clear, I’ll return it to you, ladies and gentlemen. The Costa Rican public has realized that the officials in the Prosecutor’s Office and the OIJ Directorate, at best, are incompetent and arbitrary. As President of the Republic, I will not sign another law that gives these men and their bosses in the Third Chamber, and their boss, the “capo di tutti,” who is in another building, more tools to continue intimidating,” Chaves stated.
Bill 24.495 will now become a Law of the Land after its publication in the government newsletter, La Gaceta.
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