Costa Rica: elections in times of crisis

For Enrique Gomáriz Moraga / Latin America21

There is agreement in all polling houses and studies that the word that defines the current electoral race in Costa Rica is uncertainty. A relative uncertainty, of course, because more than half of the population believes that the next president of the Republic will be José María Figueres, the candidate of the Social Democratic National Liberation Party (PLN). But the considerable dispersion of candidates and the high level of undecided votes (more than 40%) validates this feeling of uncertainty, since, although there is agreement that no candidate will win in the first round, it is impossible to predict who will go on to the second.

The underlying problem is that this campaign, lackluster and uncertain, takes place at a time of national crisis such as has not been remembered since 1984, when the great debt crisis exploded. This is repeated by most of the candidates, several of whom speak of the national emergency in which the country finds itself. And, of course, it had been a long time since such a serious coincidence between economic stagnation and socio-political crisis had taken place.

Immediately before the pandemic hit, Costa Rica was showing a serious macroeconomic imbalance. The sharp increase in the debt and the fiscal deficit forced the Government to launch Law 6935 on Strengthening Public Finances, which caused a sharp drop in consumption and a considerable increase in social unrest. In any case, at the beginning of 2019 the debt reached 60% of GDP and the fiscal deficit at 7% of domestic product. And the pandemic landed on this panorama at the beginning of 2020. The economic contraction that year approached 5% of the national product and health expenses aggravated the situation of public finances: the debt rose to exceed 70% of GDP and further increased the fiscal deficit.

The Government of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), headed by Carlos Alvarado, accepted that the country would go to immediate bankruptcy if it did not resort to international support and entered into negotiations with the IMF. In September 2020, there was a social outcry against the negotiation with the Fund that paralyzed the country for several days and reminded many of the protest in Chile the previous year.

Recently, with only a few days to go before the elections, the true scope of that social outburst has come to light: the leaders of the protest had asked the then president of the Assembly, Eduardo Cruickshank, to form a government because the ultimate goal of the mobilization was to overthrow President Alvarado. This perspective of a coup in a democracy like Costa Rica’s gives an idea of ​​the seriousness of the sociopolitical crisis.

The sharp drop in the popularity of the outgoing government, in the midst of noisy corruption scandals, could cause the collapse of the government party, the PAC, which would not only lose the elections outright (the polls give it a 1% vote intention ), but even faces the risk of being irrelevant in the Legislative Assembly.

Two successive governments have been enough to undermine the foundations on which the configuration of the PAC was based. But perhaps the most worrying phenomenon is the low level of mutual trust experienced by the country. Ticos and Ticas do not trust public institutions, but neither do they trust each other. The latest studies in this regard show levels of mutual trust similar to countries such as El Salvador or Nicaragua.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the attempts to reach basic agreements to face the national crisis have not come to fruition in this legislature. Basic ingredients were missing, such as the credibility of the convening leadership and a minimum level of mutual trust.

Under these conditions, there are two phenomena that are present in these elections: the choice by discarding (or choosing the least bad) and the existence of a high level of hidden intention of the vote. They are not new phenomena, because they already manifested themselves in the 2018 elections, but in the current ones they seem more pronounced.

In the latest polls, the percentage of the undecided has risen again to 49% and the most frequent answers refer to the fact that they will choose by discarding. But most observers believe that the surge in undecideds contains an appreciable amount of shadow voting. The electorate is not willing to declare who they will vote for, among other reasons because there is also a high vote of manifest rejection.

For example, the candidate who leads the polls, José María Figueres, faces this serious circumstance: 40% of those surveyed say they would never vote for him, which casts doubt on his victory in the second round. A minor rejection is presented by the candidate of the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC), Lineth Saborío, who appears as the second option in the polls.

There is speculation about what the final destination of that hidden vote will be. Everything indicates that a part would go to the PAC, which would hardly be left alone with that 1% of support. Another part would be oriented towards Figueres himself, despite the contrary vote that is made public. And perhaps in that hidden vote there is also some proportion of voters who would support Fabricio Alvarado, of the New Republic party, which represents the confessional sectors, mainly evangelicals, who already lost the last elections for having proposed the separation of Costa Rica from the Inter-American Court. of Human Rights, when it ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.

In any case, the surprise that whoever passes second to the next round could be elected president is not ruled out, given the level of rejection presented by the main political forces. And probably the chosen candidate would do so with a very small proportion of the electoral roll.

Thus, one can speak of a vicious circle between electoral uncertainty and economic and sociopolitical crisis. The dispersion of candidacies and the high level of undecided votes are not simply epidermal political phenomena, but rather reflect problems with deep roots in the bowels of society. What is certain is that the next president is going to walk a razor’s edge. Even if he gets some initial grace period, any setback in his management will bring out new manifestations that express the accumulated social unrest. It is difficult to estimate the degree of turbulence that is anticipated on the horizon. (OR)

Enrique Gomáriz Moraga prepared his doctorate in Political Sociology with Ralph Miliband. He participated in Open Zone and the refounding of Leviathan. He was the first director of Tiempo de Paz. He worked at FLACSO Chile and has been an international consultant for agencies such as UNDP, UNFPA, GIZ, IDRC, IDB. He currently resides in San José, Costa Rica.

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