San José, Costa Rica
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Costa Rica heads to the polls this Sunday to decide a brand new president after an election season overshadowed by crime and political apathy.
Amid persisting violence from prison teams in a rustic long-considered a peaceful tourist hub, polling reveals that Costa Ricans are most involved about safety this 12 months. Voters are additionally distressed by the decline of their high quality of life, as properly as the nation’s muddled political panorama – a reality indicated by the twenty candidates for president alone.
Taking the lead in national surveys amongst the rating of contenders is a right-winger from the nation’s ruling celebration: Laura Fernández, a 39-year-old former Minister of National Planning.
In Costa Rica, a candidate should get hold of a minimum of 40 % of the vote to win the presidency in the first spherical. If nobody reaches that threshold, the top two head to a runoff.
Fernández’s polling lead means she’s shut to securing the presidency in the first spherical, in accordance to the Center for Research and Political Studies of the University of Costa Rica (CIEP-UCR). Second place is occupied by no one in any respect – greater than 1 / 4 of these CIEP-UCR surveyed are undecided.
Costa Rica’s wrestle with prison violence in recent times is a merciless irony. The nation has lengthy been a mannequin for peace. It was the first nation to abolish its armed forces, a degree of nationwide satisfaction in a area marked by political turmoil.
Yet authorities figures present that the final three years have been some of the most violent in latest Costa Rican historical past, with 905 homicides in 2023, an all-time document. The authorities attributes a lot of the violence to drug trafficking. In January, the US Treasury alleged that the nation has develop into a “key global cocaine transshipment point.”
Costa Rica is not alone on this pattern, of course: crime-related fears drove 1000’s of Latin Americans to the polls in latest months, from Ecuador to Chile to Honduras. The area’s wrestle in opposition to crime is overshadowed by one authorities particularly: El Salvador and its self-described “dictator” Nayib Bukele.
Bukele introduced homicide charges in El Salvador to historic lows by means of a gargantuan imprisonment marketing campaign and police crackdown, however faces quite a few allegations of human rights violations, particularly relating to his infamous Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Nonetheless, he stays extraordinarily well-liked in Latin America. He’s additionally sought to promote his model of iron-fist rule in Costa Rica, the place the authorities broke ground on a CECOT-style prison final month with Bukele’s blessing.
“Nayib Bukele’s presence is important, legitimate, and honors us,” declared the retiring incumbent President Rodrigo Chaves at the groundbreaking ceremony.
José Andrés Díaz González, political scientist at Costa Rica’s National University in Heredia, informed NCS that the safety disaster is half and parcel with a decline in the nation’s social providers.
“The foundations of the social pact are being weakened,” Díaz mentioned. “Health, with the accelerated deterioration of the Costa Rican Social Security Fund; education, as an engine of social mobility; and security, with the increase in homicides and the loss of the feeling of security in homes.”
Díaz identified that Costa Rica faces the identical demographic cliff as many different international locations: the inhabitants is getting older, threatening additional pressure on a security web already coming aside at the seams.
“We are in a demographic transition that implies that fewer people will have to produce more,” Díaz defined. “In 15 or 20 years, the pension system will be under greater pressure, there will be fewer contributors, less tax revenues and greater demands for care for the elderly population.”
According to a 2025 report from the State of the Nation Program (PEN), an area assume tank, Costa Rica skilled an financial rebound in 2024 and the first half of 2025.
The nation grew to become the first in Central America to be part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2021, and that group’s newest stories on Costa Rica additionally paint a rosy preliminary image: an “improved” fiscal scenario with declining unemployment, declining debt and tech merchandise making up a rising share of the nation’s exports.
Among peer nations, OECD reported, Costa Rica’s development has been “more resilient and stronger.”
The upward-trending numbers, nonetheless, solely present half of the story, in accordance to PEN political scientist Leonardo Merino.
“Costa Rica has economic growth that is disengaged from people’s well-being,” Merino informed NCS. He defined that a lot of the development is concentrated in so-called “free trade zones,” which supply vital tax breaks and customs exemptions for traders.
“Free trade zones are the main engine of growth, but they account for only 12 percent of employment and around 15 percent of production,” mentioned Merino. “The domestic market economy, where the majority of the population is, is growing little and has been abandoned.”
OECD concurred with that evaluation, too, writing that “innovation outcomes are weak” outdoors of free commerce zones.
This put on and tear is additionally mirrored in a marked political apathy amongst on a regular basis Costa Ricans. According to Merino, three many years in the past almost each individual in Costa Rica was affiliated with a political celebration. Today, barely a fifth of the nation identifies with a celebration.
“It is a worrying trend,” Merino mentioned. “Fewer and fewer people are voting, young people are participating less and now even older adults are staying away from the polls.”
In 2022, Costa Rica registered the lowest voter turnout in its latest historical past, with two out of 5 eligible voters staying residence on election day.
Both Díaz and Merino agree that the Costa Rican social pact — constructed over greater than a century — is at stake. Environmental considerations have held a central place in Costa Rica’s id for years, very like its lack of a standing military, and the nation has set bold sustainability goals.
But the two political scientists say that even that is altering. The thought of a “green Costa Rica” coexists immediately with proposals for ending a two-decade-old ban on fossil fuel exploration and exploiting pure assets such as treasured metals, gasoline and oil.
“It’s not just a choice. If something is not done, the deterioration can continue,” mentioned Díaz, “and so far no political party has considered this issue with the seriousness it requires.”
Election day in Costa Rica won’t simply decide who holds political workplace. It will even take a look at the capability of the nation’s politicians to reconnect with an more and more distant citizenry and resolve the tensions accumulating in Costa Rica’s social cloth. Will an army-less nation identified for its environmentalism develop into the subsequent El Salvador?
