Costa Rica Votes
Today. Every
Vote Counts.
Every vote counts and Costa
Ricans are urged to get out
today and vote. Some 2.8 million Costa Rican voters
are being called on today to elect their
president, two vice presidents, 57 deputies
and 498 members of municipal councils.
Beginning at 8pm today, the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones
(TSE) will start posting the results of voting
on their website
www.tse.go.cr, reporting the vote
count from the 6.6.17 voting centres who wil
either call in or send the results by
internet to the TSE central offices in San
José.
The months of traversing the country,
plastering slogan-laden billboards along
every major roadway and explaining their
platforms to the media have come to a close.
Now it's time for Costa Ricans to make their
choice.
Heading the into today's election, Laura
Chinchilla of the Partido Liberación
Nacional (PLN) is expected to obtain the
required 40% of the vote and form a new
government that will be sworn in on May 8,
2010, taking the presidential sash from
outgoing Oscar Arias.
If the polls and predictions come true,
Chinchilla will be the first ever elected
woman president in Costa Rica.
Chinchilla, as first vice-president, has
served as president, on a temporary basis,
on several occasions when Oscar Arias was
out of the country, as the
constitution demands. She has also served as
a Security minister and most of her campaign
has been focused on improving security and a
person with leadership experience.
Following her lead is Otto Guevara of the
Movimiento Libertario (ML) party who has
been promoting change and Ottón Solís of the
Partido Acción Cuidadana (PAC).
The "menos del malo" (the least bad), Luis
Fishman, of the Partido Unidad Social
Cristiana (PUSC, is not even considered a
contender in this election.
For decades the PLN and PUSC have alternated
running the country, with the PAC and the ML
stepping on their heels during the past
decade or so.
The PUSC decline followed the "guilty"
verdict of its 2010 presidential candidate
and former Costa Rican president, Rafael
Angel Calderón. Fishman was a last minute
replacement to save the party from not
offering a candidate for 2010.
Guevara, who is considered a more
conservative candidate, has centered his
campaign around improving security and
creating a more "free market" economy for
Costa Rica.
Of all of the candidates, Guevara's ideas
are unique if not radical, as he has pushed
for the dollarization of the currency, which
would mean doing away with the use of Costa
Rican colon, as well as for opening the
national oil refinery to allow for
competition.
"In our administration, we would be a
government that truly opens a free market,
with freedom for business, freedom from
limiting taxes," he said. "The ideas of our
campaign are more modern."
Solís, who came within a hair of winning the
presidency in 2006, has geared much of his
campaign at mocking the other candidates,
most notably in a series of commercials in
January that characterized Chinchilla and
Guevara as puppets.
Aside from the publicity garnered from the
commercials, the Solís campaign has been the
least visible of the candidates. In his now
third attempt at the presidency, Solís seems
to be banking on his established reputation
as a man of the people, for the people.
Solís, who hails from Perez Zeledon in the
southern part of the San José province, has
focused campaign efforts on the reduction of
poverty, the creation of a progressive tax
and making the government more "transparent"
to eliminate corruption.
"We believe that fighting poverty is not a
battle that is fought only once," said
Solis. "It is an ongoing effort by society
to show commitment to those most in need.
What we are proposing is to significantly
reduce the number of people living in
poverty, which has never been done before."
Voting will take place from 6 a.m. local
time to 6 p.m.
And for the first time in the last 60 years,
Costa Ricans will not have to vote and face
the decision sober, as the "dry law" that
governs presidential elections, shutting off
the flow of booze one day before, the day of
and the day after the elections was repealed
for 2010.
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