© Archyde.com/MAYELA LOPEZ
Stock image. Costa Rican presidential candidates Rodrigo Chávez and José María Figueres in a debate.
By Alvaro Murillo
SAN JOSÉ, March 31 (Archyde.com) – Former Finance Minister Rodrigo Chaves and former Costa Rican President José María Figueres will dispute the presidential ballot on Sunday that will define who will hold the reins of the Central American country between 2022 and 2026.
Below are profiles of the two candidates:
RODRIGO CHAVES
Economist Rodrigo Chaves comes to the race with chances of victory, according to recent polls, despite his short political career and facing allegations of sexual harassment – which he has denied – during his time at the World Bank, which he resigned following airing the scandal in 2019.
Doctor in Economics from the University of Ohio, remarried and father of two daughters, in 2019 Chaves returned to Costa Rica following three decades abroad to serve as Minister of Finance for outgoing President Carlos Alvarado, for just six months.
He is the standard-bearer of the recently created Social Democratic Progress Party (PPSD), led by television journalist Pilar Cisneros, a strong critic of traditional groups such as the National Liberation Party (PLN) and the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC) that alternated the power for 60 years, and the ruling Citizen Action (PAC), which has governed since 2014.
The 60-year-old PPSD candidate slipped by surprise into second place in the first round of February, which gave him the pass to the ballot, also placing him as an alternative for the population that disapproves of traditional politics, represented by his rival Figueres.
Without promising radical changes in the functioning of the State, his message focuses on removing from power those who have governed the country in the last 40 years.
Chaves, the only man of the seven daughters of the Chaves-Robles couple, has promised to lower the cost of living, reduce privileges of the political class and use decrees and referendums in case of opposition from Congress, where the PPSD will have only 10 of the 57 seats.
With questions regarding the allegations of sexual harassment, which he has argued were due to misinterpretation of their forms; of alleged irregularities in electoral financing and in ways seen as authoritarian, Chaves responds that they are part of the attacks by the press and powerful groups.
“They tell me I’m very arrogant and very dictatorial, but I think I say things as they are and people don’t like it,” he told business leaders this month.
JOSE MARIA FIGUERES
President of Costa Rica between 1994 and 1998, Figueres will try to retake power on Sunday clinging to his image as an experienced man and a “moderate” alternative to his opponent’s speech of rupture.
A West Point industrial engineering graduate and heir to mainstream 20th-century politics, he comes to the runoff wanting to materialize a nearly decade-long re-election effort, despite his reputation battered by alleged corruption scandals.
Figueres, 67, is the son of the caudillo and three-time ruler José Figueres Ferrer, manager of the abolition of the army and founder of the National Liberation Party (PLN), a social democratic group that has more governments under its belt and has been located at the center of the ideological spectrum.
In the contest, Figueres Olsen has presented himself as a figure with international contacts, the product of experiences such as his time at the World Economic Forum, which he resigned in 2004 due to questions regarding consultancies that might have given Alcatel advantages to access contracts with the Condition.
The former president has rejected any anomaly and insists that it is a closed case since it was not prosecuted.
But Figueres not only carries personal questions, but also the heavy backpack of the PLN, the political group with the most power in local governments and the largest legislative presence, but which has been involved in notorious cases of alleged corruption in recent years.
Father of two children and married twice, Figueres also served as Minister of Foreign Trade, between 1986 and 1988, and head of the Agriculture and Livestock portfolio between 1989 and 1990, always under the government of Óscar Arias.
“We are not going to get to learn from the government! We have a plan, the one that offers the most proposals and that has collected ideas from all trends to put them into action,” Figueres said this week in a televised debate.
(Additional reporting by Diego Oré in Mexico City; Editing by Ana Isabel Martínez)
