It is after a lackluster campaign and with a fragmented offer of candidates (25 in total) that Costa Rica is called on Sunday, February 6, to elect President Carlos Alvarado’s replacement, as well as his new Congress, in a context of economic depression after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This small Central American country of 5 million inhabitants has been governed for eight years by the Citizen Action Party (PAC, center left): in 2014, the PAC broke with forty years of bipartisanship between the National Liberation Party (PNL ) and the centre-right Social-Christian Unity Party (PUSC).
It is these two formations which, today, again arrive at the top of the polls for the presidential election. Former President José Maria Figueres (1994-1998), of the PLN, has reached a ceiling of 17% of voting intentions, according to the latest survey by the Center for Research and Political Studies (CIEP) at the University of Costa Rica ( UCR), published Tuesday 1er February. Behind him, Lineth Saborio, of the PUSC, former vice-president between 2002 and 2006, obtains 13%. Twenty-three other candidates are vying for the rest of the voting intentions, with a majority of undecided (32%). A second round, on April 3, is therefore more than likely.
“Very high social cost”
Long considered the “Switzerland of Central America” – political stability, health and education systems worthy of rich countries, renewable energy share of 99%, GDP per capita up to ten times higher than that of its neighbors –, Costa Rica, at the head of Latin America in the global happiness index, is now living through darker times, with indicators in the red and a degraded quality of life.
The country is doing quite well in the face of Covid-19, with a record vaccination campaign in the region (86% of the population over 12 years old received two doses). But unemployment has fallen from 10% in 2018 to 14% today, peaking at 24% in mid-2020, and poverty still affects 23% of the population.
“The balance sheet of President Carlos Alvarado is generally negative, points out Alberto Cortés Ramos, professor at the UCR’s School of Political Science. Faced with the pandemic and in a context of recession, he chose to reduce public spending and contain the fiscal deficit. It leaves clean accounts, but at a very high social cost. »
A neoliberal policy which was supported, in Congress, by the two centrist parties, but which caused the PAC to lose the support of those who had enabled its victory in 2014 and 2018: civil servants, academics, the progressive left and the middle class in general. “By reducing the budget of public universities, Carlos Alvarado has alienated a social actor who is a real counter-power in Costa Rica”, says Tania Rodriguez Echavarria, teacher-researcher at the CIEP.
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