By: Staff Writer
February 11, 2022
According to the latest results reported from Costa Rica’s Supreme Election Tribunal (TSE) there will be a second and final round on April 3 between former President Jose Maria Figueres of the National Liberation Party (PLN) and Rodrigo Chaves of the Party for Social Democratic Progress (PSD).
Reported by the People’s Dispatch, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) of Costa Rica released on Monday February 7 the preliminary results of the general elections that were held in the country on February 6. As per the results, former president José María Figueres of the centre-left National Liberation Party (PLN) and former World Bank economist Rodrigo Chaves of the centre-left Social Democratic Progress Party will face off in the presidential run-off scheduled for April 3. With 88.20% of the votes counted, Figueres obtained 27.26%, while Chaves secured 16.70%.
Following the top two candidates were Fabricio Alvarado of the right-wing New Republic Party with 14.82%, Lineth Saborío of the right-wing Social Christian Unity Party with 12.36%, Eliécer Feinzaig Mintz of the far-right Progressive Liberal Party with 12.33%, and José María Villalta of the left-wing Broad Front with 8.70%. The remaining nineteen contestants received less than 1% of the votes. A record number of 25 candidates ran for the presidency.
Conservative evangelical preacher Fabricio Alvarado believes that the results can still be reversed, and has announced that he will not concede his defeat until the final count. Meanwhile, Figueres and Chaves have celebrated their victory, and have begun garnering support from other candidates.
Often referred to as Central America’s “happiest” country, Costa Rica is nonetheless grappling with a growing economic crisis and the ruling Citizen’s Action Party (PAC) suffered a bruising defeat.
The PAC candidate, former economy minister Welmer Ramos, seems to be paying the price for sky-high anti-government feeling, polling at just 0.3 percent.
“The ruling party is completely weakened and has no chance” after two successive terms in office, political analyst Eugenia Aguirre, told the AFP news agency.
“The presidential unpopularity figure of 72 percent is the highest since the number was first recorded in 2013,” she added.
It means the country’s traditional political heavyweights, the centrist National Liberation Party (PLN) and the right-wing Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), could return to the fore after decades of a near political duopoly only recently broken by the PAC.
Costa Rica’s Citizens’ Action Party broke 60 years of bipartisan rule in 2014, but after two terms in power it has been practically erased from the country’s political map in national elections. Outgoing President Carlos Alvarado’s party got less than 1% of the votes cast Sunday, according to the latest preliminary results from the Supreme Elections Tribunal. The party didn’t even earn one of the 57 seats in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly. Ramos was never able to shake the unpopularity of Alvarado and the frustrated “change” that the party had promised.