It’s Labor Day, and in Costa Rica like in many parts of the world this day usually involves parades usually raising awareness over particular issues concerning the general population, other times, like today in Costa Rica protesting against a particular political situation.

Today, representatives of different workers’ union groups marched in the streets of downtown San Jose, expressing their opposition to the approval of the Fiscal Plan or Law to Strengthen the Public Finances, which is being analyzed by the Legislative Assembly.

The Law to Strengthen the Public Finances contains several reforms, the most important one being that it transforms the current sales tax to a value added tax (VAT), taxing different services that up until now didn’t pay tax.

The protests in Costa Rica are pacific, the labor union groups demand that the fiscal plan is disregarded and that the Legislative Assembly offers a space for discussion of the same. They state that the public workers are not responsible for the fiscal deficit and are against the proposal of the government to cut back on benefits that these groups have received in the past. Members of the different labor unions marched for this same reason on April 25. They announced more protests during the month of May.

Meanwhile, as it is tradition in Costa Rica when a new Government is elected, the former 57 members of the Legislative Assembly left their seats and today the new members of congress took their positions, it is up to them now to decide on the Fiscal Plan.

Early in the morning the new deputies elected their leader, Carolina Hidalgo is the new President of the Legislative Assembly,  Hidalgo belongs to the Citizens’ Action Party and is an attorney, “The country needs to make a decision and I believe that in the first six months we should be able to proof that we can solve the topic of the Fiscal Plan”, commented Hidalgo, who is the third women in Costa Rica’s history to be elected president of the Legislative Assembly.