Popular Vanguard Party denounces steep increase in public transportation fares in Costa Rica

Here is the entire statement as follows: 

The Popular Vanguard Party (PVP) denounces and condemns the new and disproportionate increase in public transportation fares that will take effect tomorrow, a measure that constitutes another blow against the economy of working families, pensioners, students, and the popular sectors of Costa Rica. 

Just a few weeks ago, the Regulatory Authority authorized increases of between ₡25 and ₡100 on some routes and up to ₡500 on others. Now, once again, the continuity government of Rodrigo Chaves imposes another adjustment that reveals the true face of an economic policy that always finds a way to punish the people. 

The routes in Goicoechea are a clear example of this aggression. The fare will increase from ₡400 to ₡520, an increase of ₡120, equivalent to a 30% increase in one fell swoop. 

For a working person who uses the bus twice a day, five or six days a week, this increase represents thousands of additional colones per month—money that will no longer be spent on food, medicine, their children's education, or rent. 

But this increase doesn't come in a vacuum. It arrives when the working class has endured more than six years of wage freezes, when the basic food basket continues to rise in price, when rents reach unbearable levels, when public utility rates increase, and when the cost of living grows much faster than the income of most of the population. 

While the people are forced to tighten their belts ever more, big business continues to enjoy a system designed to protect its privileges. Obscene tax exemptions remain in place, tax evasion and avoidance persist, amounting to billions of colones each year, and an economic model is tolerated where large business groups reap benefits while the majority are punished with new taxes. 

These are not isolated incidents; they are the consequence of the same neoliberal policies that, for decades, have shifted the burden of the crisis onto those who live by their labour, while concentrating ever more wealth in the hands of a privileged minority. 

The Popular Vanguard Party condemns this further blow to the already meagre wages of the working people. What is urgently needed is to hold accountable those who have historically evaded their responsibilities to the country, eliminate unjustifiable tax privileges, decisively combat tax evasion and avoidance, and place the economy at the service of the vast majority. 

Faced with this new aggression, we call for strengthening popular organization in every corner of the country. 

It is time for community associations, committees, neighbourhood organizations, unions, student movements, and all social forces to raise a single voice against an economic policy that impoverishes the people to enrich a minority. History demonstrates that no right has ever been won through resignation. Costa Rica's social progress was born from the organization, mobilization, and conscious struggle of its people. Today, that task is once again urgent. 

No more price hikes. No more frozen wages. No more privileges for the wealthy while the people bear the brunt of the crisis.

Only popular organization and community unity can pave the way to a Costa Rica with social justice, where the wealth produced by the majority no longer benefits only a few. 

Organizing is defending the dignity of the Costa Rican people!