Election did not show shift
of the country to the right

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

I have to take issue with your assertion that Sunday’s elections represent a “significant shift to the right in Costa Rican politics.”

Actually, if we assume that Chinchilla’s party represents the center (a center that would be fairly far left by U.S. standards), Sunday’s results show that her strongest opposition came from farther left, not the right.  Solís on the left took 25 percent of the vote while Guevara on the Libertarian right took 21 percent.  The victorious party is center-left while its opposition remains tilted farther left.

I understand your reasoning, namely that Solís took far fewer votes this year than he did in 2006 as well as that the Libertarians nearly tripled their normal also-ran vote tally.  However, the left lacked the galvanizing issue, CAFTA, that it had in 2006, and as a two-time loser many were reluctant to support Solís again.  The banks also cut off his access to credit, which limited his ability to advertise effectively during the final weeks of the campaign.  Meanwhile, Guevara abandoned many core Libertarian positions, like the privatization of health care, in an attempt to bring his campaign closer to the center-left mainstream.

Anything is possible, but viewing Sunday’s election results as signifying a shift to the right strikes me as far fetched.  My read is that voters broke for Chinchilla in the end in order to stop Guevara, whose vote count was significantly lower than polled, and thus to preserve their center-left social democracy.  However, they didn’t break for her in landslide numbers, and the real surprise was that Solís took twice the percentage of votes he was polling.  Many Costa Ricans seemed to see Chinchilla as the safest candidate, but a quarter of them went to the polls determined to place their candidate on the left ahead of Guevara in case there would be a runoff between the top two candidates.  The center-left and far left both succeeded in their objectives, while the right failed.

These outcomes strike me as pretty normal for Costa Rica, although we’ll now have a few more Libertarians in the legislature.

Marines sought to join
organization forming here


Local U.S. Marines are forming a Costa Rica detachment of the Marine Corps League.

Eligible members are those who served as U.S. marines and U.S. Navy hospital corpsmen who have trained with Marines.

Mel Goldberg, a U.S. Navy captain, said that there are 16 persons ready to sign up but that more are needed. Associate membership in the Marine Corps League is open to all veterans of other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, he said.

This is an opportunity for U.S. Marines to associate with other U.S. Marines to preserve the traditions and promote the interests of the U. S. Marine Corps, he said.

Those interested can contact Goldberg at 2288-0454 or 8870-6756 or Bill Enell at 8812-0126.

Another quake near Quepos


An earthquake estimated at a magnitude of 4.4. took place near Quepos at 8:50 p.m. Monday.

The Obvservatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica said the location was about 15 km or about nine miles north northwest of Quepos. The case was attributed to the interplay of tectonic plates.

The quake felt in the Central Valley was a sharp shock of short duration.

Quakes are common in the southern zone and in the Central Pacific where the Coco and Caribe plates are in collision. There were some 31 felt quakes in January and most were in that area, according to the Red Sismológico Nacional of the Universidad de Costa Rica.