There is agreement in all research centers 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, candidate of the social-democratic National Liberation Party (PLN).
But the considerable dispersion of candidates and the high level of undecided (over 40%) validates this feeling of uncertainty, since, although there is a coincidence that no candidate will win in the first round, it is impossible to predict who will go to the second.
The fundamental problem is that this campaign, lackluster and uncertain, takes place in a context of national crisis as it has not been remembered since 1984, when the great debt crisis exploded.
This is repeated by most candidates, many of whom speak of the national emergency in which the country finds itself.
And, of course, it has been a long time since there has been such a serious coincidence between economic stagnation and sociopolitical crisis.
Immediately before the pandemic hit, Costa Rica showed a serious macroeconomic imbalance.
The sharp increase in debt and the fiscal deficit forced the government to launch Law 6,935, on strengthening public finances, which caused a sharp decline 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 reached 7% of the domestic product. It is on this panorama that the pandemic landed at the beginning of 2020.
The economic contraction that year approached 5% of the national product, and health expenditures worsened the situation of public finances: the debt exceeded 70% of GDP and the fiscal deficit increased even more.
The government of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), headed by Carlos Alvarado, accepted that the country would go into immediate bankruptcy if it did not resort to international support and entered into negotiations with the IMF (International Monetary Fund).
In September 2020, there was the social explosion against the negotiation with the fund that paralyzed the country for several days and that reminded many of the protests in Chile the previous year.
Recently, with just a few days to go before the elections, the true scope of this social explosion came to light: the protest leaders had asked the then president of the Legislative Assembly, Eduardo Cruickshank, to form a government because the ultimate goal of the mobilization was to overthrow the president. Alvarado.
This prospect of a coup in a democracy like Costa Rica’s gives an idea of the seriousness of the sociopolitical crisis.
The drop in popularity of the outgoing government, amid high-profile corruption scandals, could trigger the collapse of the ruling party, which would not only lose the elections resoundingly (the polls give it 1% of voting intentions) but even face the risk of being irrelevant in the Assembly.
Two successive governments were enough to undermine the foundations on which the PAC configuration was based.
But perhaps the most worrying phenomenon is the low level of mutual trust the country experiences.
Costa Ricans don’t trust public institutions, but they don’t trust each other either. The most recent studies in this regard show levels of mutual trust similar to countries like El Salvador or Nicaragua.
It is not surprising, therefore, that attempts to reach basic agreements to face the national crisis have not materialized 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 to discard (or election of the least bad) and the existence of a high level of hidden intention of the vote. These are not new phenomena, as they have already manifested themselves in the 2018 elections, but in the current ones they seem more pronounced.
In the latest surveys, the percentage of undecided people has risen again, to 49%, and the most frequent answers are that they will choose to discard.
But most observers believe that the rise of the undecided contains a considerable amount of hidden votes. 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 leading candidate in the polls, Figueres, faces this serious circumstance: 40% of respondents say they would never vote for him, which calls into question his victory in the second round.
The candidate of the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC), Lineth Saborío, who appears as a second option in the polls, presents a smaller rejection.
There is speculation about the fate of this hidden vote.
Everything indicates that a part would go to the PAC, which would hardly be left with just that 1% of support. Another part would be oriented towards Figueres himself, despite the public vote against.
And perhaps in this hidden vote there is also a proportion of voters who would support Fabricio Alvarado, from the Nova República party, which represents the denominational sectors, mainly evangelicals, who have already lost the last elections for having proposed the separation of Costa Rica from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. , when he decided in favor of same-sex marriage.
In any case, the surprise of who will pass in second place to the next phase 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 pattern.
One can thus speak of a vicious circle between electoral uncertainty and the economic and sociopolitical crisis.
The dispersion of candidates and the high level of undecided are not simply epidermal political phenomena, but reflect problems with deep roots in the bowels of society.
There is no doubt that the next president will walk a razor’s edge.
Even if it obtains an initial grace period, any stumbling block in its management will give rise to new manifestations that express the accumulated social malaise.
It is difficult to estimate the degree of turmoil on the horizon.
Source: Folha
