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Costa Rica's president, Laura Chinchilla, who on Sunday will be a year in power, suffered a setback with a united opposition, which seized the ruling Congress directory, allowing you to manage the legislative agenda and threatens to file its reform tax.

In a sign that unity is strength, an alliance of five parties, ranging from fundamentalist neoliberalism radical left, drove the legislative board Monday National Liberation Party (PLN) Chinchilla, which makes up the largest minority in the Congress.

The new president of the Legislative Assembly, Juan Carlos Mendoza, said Tuesday that "the project to be presented no political viability, so that Chinchilla will seek agreement if he wants to take forward the reform.

"With the tax issue as Costa Ricans have to learn that when promoting a reform of this kind can not be done without consulting and construction (project) much more collective," Mendoza said Teletica canal.

Chinchilla promotes reform to reduce the deficit, which in 2011 will border on 5% of GDP for the second year in a country where around 70% evasion.

On Sunday, the Congress was technically crippled by the fight between the 24 members of the PLN and the opposition's 31 so they could choose a new board for the next 12 months. The crisis was resolved on Monday, allowing Mendoza won the vote, the centrist Partido Acción Ciudadana.

Unlike other countries where cohabitation is common ideological color governments of other legislative and the threat of cohabitation unleashed a psychodrama in this small country that boasts of being the oldest and most stable democracy in Central America.

Past four decades that the Parliament was controlled by the opposition, which led to the PLN to make desperate moves to avoid it, before throwing in the towel on Monday, when there was no chance to prevent the triumph of Mendoza.

The four board seats were held by the opposition, which ensures the management of the legislative agenda.

"Now everything has changed, the commission (of Congress) is going to shape the new directory," admitted deputy PLN Antonio Calderon, who took his seat on Monday after the resignation of legislator and former Finance Minister Guillermo Zuniga.

This picture is a blow to the PLN, a nominally social democratic party that is promoting neoliberal policies that Costa Rica has dominated politics since the 1948 civil war.

Although both sides declare their willingness to dialogue, negotiations are more complex then disappeared bipartisanship that prevailed since 1948, due to the strengthening of new groups and the weakening of the PLN's traditional rival, the Christian Social Union, which has convicted two former presidents for corruption.

"We must understand that we are in a multiparty democracy, bipartisanship is over, this is the policy of the past," said Mendoza.

With a reputation for taking too long to approve major projects, the Costa Rican Congress has been criticized by U.S. diplomats, "the hyper-legalistic and highly dysfunctional democracy in Costa Rica" needs "urgent reforms" they wrote in cables leaked a month ago the site WikiLeaks web.