By Stefan Antonmattei

Of the Daily Sun staff

santonmattei@prdailysun.net

Only 99 people have been the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Most of them, if not all, have been extraordinary men and women — among them Oscar Arias. The two-time president of Costa Rica spoke about how governmental public corporations strangle their consumers with monopoly-high prices, deplorable education systems, national pessimism, and the lack of transparency and globalization of governments — all themes that apply to Puerto Rico.

One should pay attention when a man who presided over a small Central American nation was able to negotiate peace agreements between parties in several civil-warring countries during the Cold War era of capitalism and communism, between powerful men like Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. One should also pay attention to how he was able to stir his country into being the second (within the Americas) with the highest per capita foreign investment — a rate higher than those of China, Brazil, and Mexico, and second only to Chile. Costa Rica also has the highest rate of exports per capita — it has negotiated free trade agreements into a marketplace of more than 2 billion people — “we sell our goods to more than 2 billion people worldwide without paying export taxes,” said Arias. His country also has one of the lowest per capita crime rates. Costa Rica is a small country of only 51,000 square kilometers and a population of 4.5 million. “Puerto Rico has an energy monopoly and it is condemned to its high costs by paying a kilowatt per hour rate of 23 cents (three times higher than the average in the U.S.). Why don’t you break it apart?” asked Arias referring to the monopoly held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and how having multiple providers of energy would lower the cost of energy. “In my country I held a national referendum where the people voted to break up two public monopolies we had back then with the telecommunications and insurance industries. We now have competition, better prices and services within the two major business sectors,” said Arias.

When asked about education, Arias pointed out that Costa Rica, unlike most other Latin American countries, was founded by a teacher, not a military strongman. “We invest 8 percent of our National Gross Product in education,” said Arias who emphasized that it is not necessarily the amount of money paid into education but the quality itself. 

“The quality of the education in most Latin American counties is awful; in Finland, for example, teachers are required to have a Masters degree, and the university professors all have to have a Ph.D. Latin America does not value the knowledge of teachers,” said Arias who added that within the top 150 universities in the world, not one is from Latin America. “In Singapore, for example, the best students are selected to become school teachers and university professors, while in many other countries they become lawyers … or politicians, joked the former two-term president. On a more serious note, Arias said that “I am convinced that the failures in today’s education will be the failures in the future economy.”

“Puerto Rico has an energy monopoly and it is condemned to its high costs by paying a kilowatt per hour rate of 23 cents (three times higher than the average in the U.S.). Why don’t you break it apart?” asked Arias

Arias emphasized transparency and zero-to-no corruption as two of the elements that makes Costa Rica receive more per capital foreign investment money that almost any other country in the world. When asked what other elements were needed, Arias spoke of the need by foreign investors to have long-term trust in the governments they are investing in and added that they seek “legislation that provides the lowest possible tax burdens on their investments, education, knowledge of English, a and a trustworthy judicial system.”

Oscar Arias Sánchez, 71, was president of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and 2006 to 2010. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars then raging in several Central American countries, Nicaragua and El Salvador among them. The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded 92 times to 124 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2011 – 99 times to individuals and 23 times to organizations.

Costa Rica is the only Latin American country included in the list of the world’s 22 older democracies — in 1949 it constitutionally abolished its army. It is also ranked third in the world (first in the Americas) by the Environmental Performance Index. In 2007, the government announced its plans to become the first carbon-neutral country by 2021.

The two-time president of Costa Rica was in Puerto Rico as a keynote speaker to the local Chamber of Commerce. Although he deferred questions related to the island’s politics and economics, Arias is no stranger to Puerto Rico. The other Costa Rican statesman, José Figueres, had a close friendship with then Gov. Luis Muñoz Marín; Arias was very close to former Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón and former Secretary of State Antonio “Tito” Colorado.