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Friday September 22, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 71
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ON CAMPUS
Q & A: Laura Chinchilla, former pres. of Costa Rica By Allie Spensley
participation in politics.
senior staff writer
Laura Chinchilla is the former president of Costa Rica, and is visiting the University as a celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the 50th anniversary of Latin American studies at the University. The Daily Princetonian sat down to interview her before her talk, Latin America: A Pending Assignment. The Daily Princetonian: Why did you choose the topic of your talk to be Latin America: A Pending Assignment? KRISTIN QIAN :: ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Former President of Costa Rica lectured “Latin America: a pending assignment”
Chinchilla lectures on Latin America, women By Allie Spensley and Kristin Qian senior staff writer and associate news editor
Although Latin American countries have made strides in combating inequality and improving their economies, the region still faces a dynamic set of challenges, former Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla said in a lecture Thursday. “For the first time ever, more people belong to the middle class than are considered poor; however, large portions of the population are vulnerable to falling back into poverty in the case
of economic shocks,” said Chinchilla. “We must make significant gains in productivity over the next couple decades if we are to survive in an increasingly interconnected world.” Chinchilla, the first woman president of Costa Rica, was in office from 20102014. Her major initiatives centered around reducing crime, improving public safety, and establishing public healthcare. Before ascending to the presidency, she served both as Costa Rica’s Vice President and Secretary of Justice. The economies of many Latin American countries
have improved; the region even weathered the 2008 recession fairly well, according to Chinchilla. Economic success translated into social achievement — poverty and unemployment declined, while the middle class grew, she said. Since 2013, however, the total Latin American GDP has been on the downturn again, and unemployment has increased. Chinchilla said that the three main challenges facing Latin America today are economic competitiveness, social inequality, and democratic governance. Latin American countries See COSTA RICA page 5
U . A F FA I R S
Laura Chinchilla: This talk is part of the celebration that they have here of Latin heritage. They organize a series of events concerning the region of Latin America. So, today, what I want to do is give the students a chance to have an updated view of the situation in Latin America in economic, social, and political terms, as well as the challenges that the regions has ahead. From that point of view, I would emphasize the most critical issue in the region has to do with democratic governance, and corruption. Also, we have had problems with violence, and also, we are now in the middle of a period where economic and social performance is not as strong as it was, so that’s going to be my approach. Of course, I will mention something about women in Latin America because I understand that some of them are interested in knowing about my experience as a woman in politics. We have to realize that there are many pending tasks in the region, and this issue, the issue of women in politics, we can say that we have been able to improve the situation of women’s
DP: What do you think the biggest challenge is in Costa Rica today, and what do you think the government can do to address that? LC: The most important problem we have is trying to overcome the desisting ability of the financing of the public sector. We have a huge problem of fiscal deficit, and it has not been easy for us to reach an agreement; it has been very difficult to build a consensus around the measures we have to implement. I must say, the most challenging issue in any nation in terms of building political consensus has to do with how much everyone is going to contribute to financing the public sector. In some ways, we also have a problem building that consensus. What should government do? Government should try to do two things: One, try to spend the money they already get from the people through taxes; try to spend in a more transparent and more efficient way. Two, government has to lead in the political negotiations. DP: In the U.S. presidential elections, gender was an important part of the conversation. To what extent do you think gender played a part in our elections?
LC: According to the Latin American experience, there are some policies and some actions and issues that are very important in terms of promoting women’s rights. When it comes to women’s political participation, the quota system is very important. I have found no other way, at least See Q & A page 5
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Eisgruber writes letter to Senate in Reich ’04 acquitted support of Catholic judge Amy Barrett of LIBOR-rigging senior staff writer
In 1998, Amy Barrett, then a law student at Notre Dame, cowrote a paper for the Marquette Law Review about whether Catholic judges should recuse themselves from capital punishment cases if their religious convictions should render them unable to impartially uphold the law. Almost 20 years later, Barrett, now a law professor at Notre Dame and an appellate-court nominee, is under scrutiny for her religious views, largely due to this same paper. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Barrett during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, in which senators typically question nominees about their judicial philosophies. Some Democratic senators drew criticism after questioning Barrett about her Catholic faith during a hearing on Sept. 6. In response, President Eisgruber wrote a letter to the Republican chair, Chuck Grassley, and the ranking Democrat, Feinstein, in which he criticized Feinstein and others for interrogating Barrett about the religious and spiritual foundations of her jurisprudential views. The senators seemed concerned that such influences might be invoked in abortion cases. Not everyone shares Eisgruber’s conviction that the ques-
In Opinion
tioning violated a fundamental principle of the Constitution: that people should not be subject to discrimination on the basis of the spiritual foundation of their views. “I’m quite surprised that someone of that stature and past writing would raise objections based on what appears to be a very appropriate line of questioning for a candidate who has written that a judge needs to be more true to her religious belief than to the Constitution,” said Nan Aron in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. Aron is founder and president of Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group that monitors and reports on federal judicial appointments. “I only wish that President Eisgruber had taken the time to adequately study her record and her comments before making his criticism,” said Aron. “In fact, a review of her record suggests that not only were [these question about her faith] entirely appropriate, but critically important ones to be raised at her hearing.” Barrett’s paper caused a furor because Senate Democrats seemed to misunderstand the argument, according to Matthew Franck, a visiting politics lecturer at Princeton and director of the Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute.
Columnist Lou Chen challenges Princeton’s hierarchy of majors, and columnist Thomas Clark calls for a greater tolerance and focus on truth in debates on religion and secularism. PAGE 4
“Did they really not get the point that [Barrett and John Garvey, her co-author] were making or did they willfully distort it?” Franck added. Catholic judges are in a bind, begins Barrett’s paper “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases.” “They are obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty. They are also obliged to adhere to their church’s teaching on moral matters,” she wrote. So the question, in Barrett’s view, becomes the following: What ought a trial judge, whose duty might include sentencing a criminal to execution, do if they believe that the death penalty is wrong? “Their answer is that the judge must not twist the law to reach the moral outcome of striking down the death penalty as unconstitutional, and in their view the death penalty is not unconstitutional,” explained Franck. “The duty of the judge is to recuse himself.” “I believe that the views expressed in [“Catholic Judges in Capital Cases”] are fully consistent with a judge’s obligation to uphold the law and the Constitution,” wrote Eisgruber, a constitutional scholar with expertise on religious freedom and judicial appointments. “It’s very important that we have set in place a set of See JUDGE page 2
charges after second trial in two years Originally published July 10, 2017 By Norman Xiong senior staff writer
Ryan Reich ’04, accused of manipulating the LIBOR rate for profit between 2005 and 2007, was acquitted in April. Reich, an ex-Barclays interest rate swaps trader, was among the eight individuals acquitted of LIBOR rigging over the past two years. The ruling comes from a retrial of the case after the jury of the first trial was unable to reach a verdict in July 2016, according to the New York Times. The LIBOR, short for London Interbank Offered Rate, is a benchmark interest rate used by the world’s leading banks for short-term loans to each other. A total of 35 different LIBOR rates are set each business day for five world currencies across seven different loan periods, from one day to up to one year. Manipulating the LIBOR rate affects financial institutions’ perceptions of the health of the economy, as LIBOR rates are inversely
Today on Campus 12:30 p.m.: Chilean Minister of the Environment, Marcelo Meno, will speak on “Chile’s Energy and Environment” at the Adlinger Center, Maeder Hall.
related to confidence in financial system stability. Reich was tried alongside Stylianos Contogoulas, another ex-Barclays trader. The two were charged with conspiracy to manipulate the U.S. dollar LIBOR over a period of two years from 2005 to 2007. The three-month U.S. dollar LIBOR is the figure quoted most often for determining interbank interest rates. The rate is used to price over $3 trillion of derivatives, securities, and loans around the world, underscoring the magnitude of the charges. Contogoulas was also acquitted of LIBOR fraud and manipulation. Reich and Contogoulas will walk free after a five-year investigation lasting from July 2012 to April 2017 by the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office and two trials in two years. Reich and Contogoulas were initially charged with four other Barclays employees — Peter Johnson, Jonathan Mathew, Jay Merchant, and Alex Pabon — for manipulating the U.S. dollar See LIBOR page 3
WEATHER
By Sarah Hirschfield
HIGH
83˚
LOW
62˚
Partly Cloudy chance of rain:
0 percent