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The leader of the Social Democratic Progress Party prevailed over former president José María Figueres, who was not given a second chance by the corruption allegations. Taking advantage of this, the 60-year-old economist and former World Bank official will set himself up as the 49th president, with the mission of activating an economy hit by the pandemic, and by job unemployment and poverty figures, which lower the myth of the “happiest country” of Latinamerica.
The future will tell if the economist profile of Rodrigo Chaves is the solution that Costa Rica requires. Today, it is the poor figures in labor unemployment and poverty, in addition to his short political career, that have made him the forty-ninth president of the Republic and collector of the baton left by Carlos Alvarado.
After the ballot this Sunday, April 3, the Presidential Palace of San José is already waiting for you.
Few, at least in the first electoral round, would have said he was the winner with the young Democratic Social Progress Party, which he leads together with the journalist Pilar Cisneros Gallo. But his frenzy and his easy verb against 24 opponents, especially against former president José María Figueres, have led him to fulfill a political aspiration built in just three years.
And it is that, unlike Alvarado –political scientist– and Figueres –industrial engineer and former president between 1994 and 1998–, Chaves was only Minister of Finance for 180 days between 2019 and 2020.
In a Costa Rica that cries out “we have more than 25 years of a constant economic and moral crisis”, and “the next president has to change everything, because this is very poor; there are no jobs here, there is nothing”, in citizen declarations To the AFP agency, the accusations of corruption against Figueres have only reinforced Chaves’ career as a former World Bank official. Even despite the criticism.
A candidate who has eaten “fights”
If last March, in his attacking tone, he defended himself against opponents and the press by shouting “you said ‘we eat the anger’ for our country”, now, at 60 years old, he will have to show his grit and speech in favor of national economic recovery.
In its Curriculum vitae He has a Ph.D. in Economics from The Ohio State University and Harvard, plus a 30-year career at the World Bank. And those who, like Rolando Gutiérrez, a 58-year-old auto technician, cling to this, believe that it is the “hope” to help Costa Ricans “in this very difficult situation.”
As difficult as it is to understand that the so-called ‘stable economy’ and ‘happiest country’ in Latin America actually has an unemployment rate of 14%, a poverty rate that reaches 23% – the extreme is 6.3%, unchanged since 2010, which demonstrates its structural nature – and a public debt of up to 70% of GDP, the fourth highest in the region, over more than five million inhabitants.
Thus, the supposed well-being has not been distributed among the population, causing such inequality that the electorate has paid little attention to one, his questions for allegedly paying campaign expenses with bank accounts not officially declared; two, complaints of sexual harassment, which do concern feminist groups and movements due to the fact that violence against women is normalized even more.
In this sense, Rodrigo Chaves is penalized for inappropriate behavior between 2008 and 2013 against two young subordinates, in addition to a media accusation from the ‘Wall Street Journal’, which revealed that he behaved abusively with his staff in Indonesia, between 2018 and 2019.
Although he left the World Bank by his own resignation in November 2019, the sanction had forced him to downgrade his position, not have people in his charge and the veto of not increasing his salary in three years. Something that he defended himself against AFP this February with his “jokes”, “cultural differences” and his relationship with women: “I have a wife, six sisters, eight aunts and two daughters, I have a deep respect for all women “.
From the promise of change to a change for Costa Rica
Although the winner of the traditional National Liberation Party (PLN), which has triumphed more times in the electoral history of the Central American country, the conservative and right-wing Chaves faces the challenge of defining how he will face the corruption for which he blamed so much previous governments. .
The objectives of reducing the administrative procedures of entrepreneurs –idem for business action in general– social charges, generating more jobs, attracting more investment without affecting the impoverished coastal sectors and lowering the price of the basic food basket should also be grounded.
Costa Rica has the nineteenth most unequal economy in the world, according to its World Bank membership, and suffers from a marked labor informality. Shortcomings that it has suffered since before the pandemic, but that have deepened with the health crisis, which has mainly hit the tourism sector, the engine of the Costa Rican economy.
Aside from his economic promises –which in turn were little criticized for their electoral program–, applying by referendum the profound state reforms that he defended so much, such as a single pension system, is his heel of popularity. He dared to do the same economically, defending the use of decrees.
Challenges that he must take on without disappointing a disenchanted Costa Rican population, which defies the label of living in the ‘happiest country’ in Latin America.
With Reuters, AFP and EFE
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