The former chancellor of the Republic, Manuel González Sanz, will have to look for employment options in the private sector, as the new government will not give an embassy to the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the administration of Luis Guillermo Solís.
The Vice President and Chancellor of the Republic, Epsy Campbell, ruled out that González will be placed in a position in the Foreign Service. It was even mentioned he aspired to be the representative of Costa Rica in Washington, United States.
Chancellor Campbell denied that this administration is going to replicate the pattern of other previous governments, in the sense that the outgoing foreign minister was placed in an embassy. Such was the case of former ministers Enrique Castillo, Bernd H. Niehaus, and Gonzalo Facio, who were located in England, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The management of Manuel González as chancellor between 2014 and 2018 was very questioned. In the first three years of that administration he preferred to make about 34 political appointments, which are usually related to the payments of political favors. In those same three years he only appointed 16 officials of the diplomatic career.
One of the most notorious cases was the appointment of Ruben Salas in Switzerland in September of last year. Salas is the brother-in-law of Jorge Gutiérrez, current Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was appointed in the last administration.
To appoint Salas as Ambassador in Switzerland, González removed Ambassador Isabel Montero, who at the time was recovering from a cancer-related surgery. The IV Court condemned this act on December 1st of that same year, for having violated the diplomat’s right to health.
In addition to that conviction, on November 10th, he was also condemned for failing to deliver on time, or complete, the information that former legislator Sandra Piszk requested on the appointments he had made in the Foreign Service.
For these appointments González was denounced in March 2018 by the former legislator Rolando González from Liberación Nacional before the Attorney General’s Office. The legislator said that the minister’s appointments do not comply with the principles of ethics and transparency in the exercise of public function, in turn violating the duty of probity.
In addition, in 2005, when he was Minister of Commerce, the Constitutional Chamber judges also condemned him for violating the right to privacy, the secrecy of communications, and the inviolability of the private documents of his then personal assistant Irene Arguedas.
In addition to dismissing Gonzalez as ambassador, Foreign Minister Epsy Campbell told CRHoy that on Tuesday the government will announce “a significant number of dismissals” of ambassadors appointed in the past administration.
The minister said that a group of ambassadors will return on June 30th, on July 31st, August 31st, and September 30th.
At the moment, the new government has fired the ambassadors in Austria, Spain, Italy, and the Organization of American States (OAS).