3.5 million Costa Ricans are called to the general elections. Latest polls place the undecided at more than 40%.
Latin America is getting ready to start a new electoral year, Costa Rica will be the first to go to the polls on February 6 in general elections in which the president, 2 vice presidents and 57 deputies of the Legislative Assembly will renew, in a process marked by the historic number of presidential candidates and by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the fact that there are less than three weeks to go before the vote, the atmosphere in the country does not compare with that of previous processes. The 25 candidates, twelve more than the last two previous elections, Presidential elections have placed billboards on roads, advertisements on television and on social networks, media that have become the only ways to present their proposals, actions that have begun to intensify in the first days of the year.
3.5 million people are called to the polls and given the impossibility of holding massive events due to the pandemic, the 25 candidates have opted for small activities in communities, for promoting themselves on billboards on highways or in television ads and social networks.
However, according to the most recent survey by the Center for Research and Political Studies (CIEP) of the state University of Costa Rica, published in mid-December, the undecided amount to 41% and no candidate is likely to win in the first round.
In Costa Rica, to win in the first round it is necessary to obtain at least 40% of the valid votes. In the event that none succeeds, a second round will be held on April 3 with the two most voted candidates.
According to the poll, the candidate of the National Liberation Party (Social Democratic), former president José María Figueres (1994-1998), is the one who leads the voting intention with 17.2% support, followed by the candidate of the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC), former vice president Lineth Saborío (2002-2006), with 15.1%.
Then a block of three tied candidates appears: the evangelical pastor of the New Republic Party, Fabricio Alvarado (6.9%); the lawyer for the leftist Broad Front, José María Villalta (6.8%); and the economist of the Democratic Social Progress Party, Rodrigo Chaves (6.2%).
Of the remaining 20 registered candidates, 12 have preference levels that are “not significantly different from 0,” according to the survey.
The large number of registered candidates also represented a challenge for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which organized four debates on January 9 and 12, three of them with six candidates and one with seven, ordered according to their position in the ballot
“The main struggle of the candidates will be to convince the mass of undecideds in a scenario that suggests an imminent second round,” says political analyst Francisco Álvarez.
To guarantee participation, the TSE also resolved that suffering from COVID-19 is not an impediment for people to vote on February 6 next.
The resolution indicates that “having a health isolation order for COVID-19 is not an impediment to voting, nor is having symptoms suggestive of that disease.”
Proposals focused on the economic
The main messages of the political campaign have been directed with special emphasis on the economy with slogans such as “No more taxes”, alluding to the controversial tax reforms promoted by the current government of President Carlos Alvarado, of the center-left Citizen Action Party.
The Government approved a tax reform in its first year in office and is currently promoting a series of projects in Congress to cut costs and increase revenue as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financing of $1.75 billion which is expected to help stabilize finances.
“Since the last elections, hard-line neoliberalism, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic recession have pushed unemployment to unprecedented levels, exacerbated inequality and brought the debt crisis to a head,” says Iván Molina, professor at the Center for Research on Latin American Identity and Culture at the University of Costa Rica.
Molina recounts in his article ‘Costa Rica: a democracy on the brink of the abyss’ that “between 2018 and 2019, the country was shaken by protests… the government’s plans to reach a loan agreement with the IMF caused new disturbances in 2020″, thus stating that, on the eve of the 2022 elections, Costa Rica looks more and more like Chile before its historic 2019 social uprising.
Meanwhile, the candidates’ proposals range from reducing the rate of value added tax (VAT) to taxing free zones. They are included in the campaign of the range of parties with left, right, conservative, progressive, center tendencies, among others.
The issue of the environment has hardly appeared in the messages of the candidates and for the moment none has emerged that polarizes the campaign as it did four years ago with an advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that endorsed homosexual marriage and the gender identity, in response to a query from Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, Molina says that “years of neoliberal strengthening and new political reconfigurations have fragmented the electoral landscape” and that leftist politicians remain largely disconnected from the working classes. This scenario has led to partisan disaffiliation, so “the 2022 elections are likely to favor powerful business groups, allowing them to maintain control of the government achieved in 2018.”
Two more countries will go to the polls this year
After Costa Rica, Colombia and Brazil are the ones that must go to the polls this year to finish defining the ideological map of the region, which has undergone profound changes in recent years.
Colombia, first on March 13, more than 37 million Colombians must elect senators and representatives for Congress and after little more than two months, on May 29, they will choose their new president.
If no one wins in the first round, the ballot to define the contest is scheduled for June 19.
Then, in October, it will be Brazil’s turn, a total of 147,918,483 Brazilians they will elect president, senators and deputies for the National Congress. The first round will take place on October 3, 2022, and in the event that no candidate exceeds the absolute majority of votes, as indicated by the country’s Constitution, the second round will be on October 30. (I)
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