PUTARENAS, COSTA RICA, March 11 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) – Laura Chinchilla, first woman to be elected president in Costa Rica will take over on May 8 a country with huge problems and social debts heaped together from former governments.
Chinchilla won on the first electoral round even when a female representative in the small 51 thousand-square-kilometer nation had never run for president from a majority party.
In the elections, she got more than 20 points ahead of Otton Solis, of the Citizens’ Action Party (Pac, by its abbreviation in Spanish) and Otto Guevara, of the Libertarian Movement Party who compiled 25.1 and 20.8 percent of votes in their favour respectively.
A population harassed by growing social insecurity, corruption and poverty gave their vote to a smart 50-year-old woman.
The Central American country, with shortly more than four million 500 thousand inhabitants has 18.5 percent of the population in poverty and saw violence skyrocket 25 percent, according to figures from the state-run National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).
Changing that situation becomes two of the greatest challenges for the future president, who got the presidency with 46.7 percent of electors’ votes, according to analysts at Costa Rica University.
“We will have many challenges ahead in the next few years. Perhaps, the main one being the deployment of organised crime bands toward this area”, the president-elect said in her first speech to the nation.
Other necessary urgencies inherited by Chinchilla are improving the public education system, strengthening the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS, by its abbreviation in Spanish), environmental sustainability and promoting economic development, analysts said.
In education, its goal is avoiding drop-outs, improving funds for school scholarships, spreading education and making way for each school center in the country to access information and communications technologies.
Moreover, her government is committed to making more Basic Devices for Integral Assistance in health, providing the CCSS with more specialists, encouraging afternoon surgical operations and reducing a waiting list which are some of the main faults in the health.
Increasing infrastructures and creating jobs are other priorities envisioned by the new government in the country, whose work force consists of two million 121 thousand 451 people; 165 thousand 944 of them being unemployed.
Furthermore, the president-elect should manage to deal with a split Legislative Assembly in which her political grouping, the ruling National Liberation Party (PLN, by its abbreviation in Spanish), could hardly reach 23 out of 29 seats for the necessary simple minority for passing projects.
After the election returns for renewing the one-chambered Congress, the Supreme Court of Elections reported that the PLN had got a 46,8 percent win in the Legislative body.
On the other hand, the PAC, regarded the second political force in Costa Rica, saw the number of its supporters diminish by 14 percent and the PML was reaffirmed as the third party in rank.
According to analysts, the president-to-be will have no other way out than reaching agreements with opposition groupings for meeting her campaign promises.
Among the prioritised ones are those dealing with environmental topics, where she promised to arrange how the territory is used, protecting conservation areas, managing water, promoting clean energies and turning Costa Rica into the first neuter-carbon country in the world.
Likewise, Chinchilla said that she would push forward economic development making use of knowledge and implementing science and technology.
She also bets on international trade as a way for development as well as on Free Trade Treaty (FTA) with the European Union and China encouraged by outgoing president, Oscar Arias.
However, except for the initiative to crack down on increasing criminal delinquency, during her election campaign she did not present any convincing scheme to face such scourge, which is her main challenge, analysts said.
No changes are expected in fields such as citizens’ freedom.
When she was vying for the presidency, Chinchilla pointed out that she opposed depenalising abortion and gay marriage as well as leaving out Catholicism as the official state religion.
Laura Chinchilla Miranda, who was born on March 28, 1959, in San Jose, was the first vice-president of the Republic and Minister of Justice in Oscar Arias’s administration.
On March 8, she left the post for driving forward her candidacy to be president on behalf of the National Liberation Party.
But her race had started long before that. In 1990, she was a counsellor for some international bodies in Latin America and Africa in the sphere of institutional reform, especially in law reform and public security reform.
She has various publications, either in Spanish or English (books, monographies and articles) on topics dealing with law administration, citizen security and police reform.
As part of her work in the public sphere, her tenure as deputy minister of Public Security (1994-1996) and Minister of Public Security (1996-1998) are worth mentioning. — NNN-PRENSA LATINA
Source:brunei.fm/
