The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Epsy Campbell, presented her resignation to this position this afternoon at the Legislative Assembly; Campbell will continue in her position as Vice-President of the Republic.

Campbell has been questioned for her decisions to name people to positions with a certain closeness, relation or affinity to her and who apparently did not fulfill the requierements established by law.

¨I must emphatically reject that I imposed criteria or costume contra legeum¨, stated the former Minister, who affirmed that she transfered the proposals for the designations to the Ministry´s Human Resource Department and they validadted the compliance of technical and legal requirements.

¨I did not provide judicial or technical criteria during any of the stages. These namings could not have been carried out without the technical criteria of the Legal Assessment Dept of the Presidential House¨, she insisted.

However, Costa Rica’s Attorney General of the Republic (Procuraduría General), considered the namings as illegal, stating that there is a special law that regulates the special regimen, as is the Diplomatic Career, and that´s why the Foreign Service Statute was created.

Even though Campbell argued that during past administrations similar designations took place, the Attorney General of the Republic, responded that ´under no circumstance an erroneous practice or administrative practice “contra legem” can perpetuate and become a source of law, and much less generate acquired rights, especially when there is administrative case-law regarding the matters at hand, that constitute a source norm of obligatory compliance and must be respected by the entire Public Administration.