Costa Rica in election nailbiter; Arias just ahead

[arcos]

Costa Rica in election nailbiter; Arias just ahead

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Battered by government scandals, Costa Rica slid further into uncertainty on Monday when a presidential election that could decide the future of a trade deal with Washington hung by a thread.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, a former president, held a minuscule lead over rival Otton Solis, whose campaign team suggested they might dispute any loss.

<snip>

Buoyed by an unexpectedly good showing, his opponents hinted they would not accept defeat easily.

"Monday is going to be a long day," Epsy Campbell, Solis' running mate, told reporters. "Because after this process we are going to check every one of the votes."

<snip>

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1584119

This is HUGE... Arias was leading in ALL opinion polls, by margins of 20-30%, and now he's winning by just 0.7%. Although you may have heard of Arias as a Nobel Peace Prize winner and someone who confronted Reagan in the 80s, he's a free market supporter, and for Costa Rica he represents the merging of political and corporate power in the same way Bush has.

Please, send us your well wishes so that Ottón Solís comes out ahead when the ballot counting ends. Solís is opposed to the current version of CAFTA and he proposes renegotiating the treaty in a bilateral way, where the Costa Rican agriculture can be protected from US imports, and US interests are also represented. Arias however, supports CAFTA 100%, and his governmnet had an awful record regarding discrimination by sexual orientation.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Many who see your post will be thinking good thoughts, arcos.

Sure hope Costa Rica's government didn't buy any American (Ohio-based) pre-programmed Diebold voting machines.

From what has been noted, CAFTA benefits only the predictable very few. Best wishes for an Ottón Solís win.

[arcos]

2. Thank you Judy, I know you're with us...

:hug:

Citizen's Action Party has just over 4 years of existance, and is running neck and neck with a party with 50 years of experience and hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaigning. It is expected that each Arias vote will cost nearly 10 times the amount each of Solis' votes will cost. We are running against big money, big corporate interests and corruption.

It is getting closer since the newspiece was written... we are now down to a 0.5% difference, just 7000 votes down out of more than a million and a half total votes cast.

Again, please keep us in our thoughts, tomorrow will be a very, very important day. Although Ottón Solís is no Hugo Chávez (in fact, Solís doesn't like Chávez much), he's a big fan of Lula da Silva and Nelson Kirchner. He's a modern left winger eager to help his country get out of poverty and dependance of the US, and although we are a very small country it would be a HUGE signal to Washington that not only South America is moving to the left, but Central America is too!

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's tough waiting for the conclusion of this important vote.

Last Updated: Monday, 6 February 2006, 10:50 GMT

Costa Rica's election surprise
By Gilberto Lopes
BBC Mundo, Costa Rica

It has been a nail-biting finale that has kept Costa Ricans nervously waiting for election results.

It has been the hardest fought election since 1966

As midnight approached, the difference between the two leading candidates got smaller and smaller with each report by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The party mood in the NLP headquarters, at a hotel in the capital San Jose, turned into expectation and astonishment as the official results showed an unforeseen outcome.

With almost half of the votes counted, centrist Oscar Arias from the National Liberation Party (NLP) had only a slight advantage (0.4%) over Otton Solis from the Citizens' Action Party.

Far from the easy victory that opinion polls had predicted for Mr Arias, the two main candidates were neck and neck.

It has been the hardest-fought electoral contest since the 1966 vote, when Jose Joaquin Trejos unexpectedly won over the NLP's Daniel Oduber.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4684734.stm

[meganmonkey]

4. I am hoping for the best

Don't know a lot about Cosat Rican politics in general, but I know about CAFTA, and it is bad news for everyone (except the owners/wealthy) including the environment.

I'll keep my thoughts with the Costa Ricans today!

Power to the People!!!!

[Judi Lynn]

5. Uh, oh! It's getting tense, now. Recount.

New news story:

Recount ordered in Costa Rica poll

Tuesday 07 February 2006, 4:02 Makka Time, 1:02 GMT

Oscar Arias has not won a landslide as expected
A two-week manual recount of votes has been ordered in Costa Rica after an unprecedented razor-thin margin separated the two candidates in the country's presidential election, the Supreme Electoral Council said.


A day after the polls in the Central American country, only 3648 votes separated centrist candidate Oscar Arias, a former president and a Nobel Peace prize winner, and his centre-left rival Otton Solis.

At midday on Monday with 87.3% of ballots counted, Arias led with 40.5% of the vote against 40.3% for Solis, prompting electoral council president Oscar Fonseca to announce a two-week manual recount of all of the ballots.

"Whatever happens, we will have to have a manual count of the ballots and that could last up to two weeks," Fonseca told reporters.

The announcement of a second count came after numerous government unions demanded that the tribunal have a vote-by-vote count before announcing the winner.
(snip/...)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/051F8DCD-4887-4E40-B98E-8FD79BC49486.htm



If you see any of these scums, run them off.

[High Plains]

6. Whether Solis pulls off the upset or not

This election is one more indication of Latin America's swing to the left. Arias was supposed to win easily. This is a real pleasant shocker. I can't wait for Mexico.