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Even though it is Central America, the region where over decades El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama have been regular sources of news about conflicts, both internal and with each other, we hear very little about Costa Rica, a nation of less than four million people which has been a functioning democracy since 1948. One reason is that Costa Rica can boast of having more teachers than soldiers. The Constitution prohibits the existence of a standing army and the only armed force is a border guard that numbers a few thousands, thus having removed for the political scene one of the forces that have regularly played a role in disrupting Latin American democraies.
Former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict in Nicaragua, where the Soviet-sponsored Sandinista dictatorship was being challenged by the U.S.-supported democratic movement that was known as the “contras”. However, many saw Arias’s intervention as delaying the truce with which the Sandinistas acknowledged their defeat in 1988, which was confirmed politically in 1990 when, in internationally supervised elections, Nicaraguans opted for democracy by electing president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro.
After being president from 1986 to 1990, on the strength of his Noble Prize the 59-year-old Arias became a fixture in the international lecture circuit. Now he wants to get back into politics in his native Costa Rica. Why does he want to do that?
For one thing, because he is missing the action, say those who have talked to him recently, For another, because opinion polls show he is very popular among Costa-Ricans. Quite naturally, because Arias has not been personally involved in the legislative impasse that has been going on for years, holding back structural reform plans proposed by president Miguel Angel Rodríguez, of the Natioal Liberation Party, which are seen as vital to contain a strangling fiscal deficit and internal debt. Part of the problem, government and opposition figures alike recognize, is not just the strong confrontation among parties but internal fragmentation in the major ones.
Last week, after five years of negotiations, two goverments and four day of a non-stop session, the National Assembly approved by 45 to 10 votes a bill to divide the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity into two businesses — for telecommunications, the other for electricity — and open them to private investment, about 20,000 people marched through the streets of San José, Costa Rica’s capital, protesting the end to the state electric and telecommunications monopoly. Unions claim it would result in job losses and high rates for consumers. Strikers blocked streets and highways and paralyzed the state oil refinery and the country's two ports, and some public hospitals were unable to offer attention and schools failed to open. The bill will be reviewed by the Constitutional Court before being submitted to another vote.
The adversaries of the so-called “energy combo” announced they will increase pressure to stop the initiative from being approved in a second debate by strikes at state universities, ports and other public institutions and services, which would seriously disrupt the economy.
Arias wants to do something about this growing climate of confrontation by reentering the political scene. Nothing wrong about that. Except that for 30 years presidents in Costa Rica have been constitutionally barred from reelection, so to be president Arias would have to launch over the next two years what would be a bruising political battle, which Costa Rica doesn’t need at all, as the 57 national assembly members would have to determine whether to remove that constitutional hurdle by a two-thirds majority vote of its legislature, repeated in two consecutive years.
Arias’s backers say that in a private, nationwide referendum they organized two weeks ago 88 per cent of the 130,000 Costa Rican voters who participated favored him. However, one of Arias’s rivals for the nomination of his National Liberation Party, José Miguel Corrales, insisted: “There is no reason to take the slightest notice of some private election.”
Others noted that the turnout was relatively low for a country with 2 million voters. “We cannor consider that the number of people who voted is representative,” said Daniel Gallardo, leader of the party’s congressional delegation.
Furthermore, other former presidents are sure to emerge later and push their own re-election ambitions, many the same presidents who are responsible for the structural problems Costa Rica faces now.
It is crucial for Costa Rica to overcome the increasingly confrontational style in its politics, but it might be that, in his effort to bring about a solution to this problem, Oscar Arias could become a part of it.
Claudio Campuzano is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com