The results of the first round of the elections in Costa Rica clearly demonstrated what to expect in the region. Beginning to emerge as a new state and regional trends. As most regional governments proclaimed, democracy in Latin America was established everywhere, especially in comparison with many other regions. However, at more detailed consideration here also signs of “decomposition” and “heterogeneity” are noticeable. In the past two years, discontent with the ruling regimes of voters has reached a high level. An example of this was the municipal and parliamentary elections in El Salvador in 2017, where, despite the mandatory nature of participation in the elections, 58% of voters preferred to stay at home.
Widely known right-wing parties were also affected by “internecine” scandals and internal conflicts. Turning to the general regional panorama, in the congresses the right-wing mostly do not have their own majority, which makes it difficult to implement their government programs. But it is worth noting that the progressive camp has not yet been able to take advantage of this. In addition, the left-centrist political field is often internally disunited and does not find anything in common for cooperation.
On the 1st of April, in the second round of the elections of the left-centrist politician, the representative of the ruling party “Acción Ciudadana”, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, was able to take revenge and defeat the leader of the first round – conservative Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz. By the way, in Costa Rica, the loser is not only a former journalist, but also a famous singer. Quesada, in his electoral campaign, announced the legalization of same-sex marriages, and also expressed concern that then Costa Rica would be perceived as a tolerant country. The leader scored about 60,8% of the votes (to date, after processing 95% of the polling stations), which means that his victory was more impressive than predicted in the pre-election polls of the population. For his opponent voted 39,2% of citizens. The 38-year-old president will be the youngest leader of the state in the modern history of Costa Rica. But the new vice president of Costa Rica for the first time in history will be a black politician – Epsy Campbell. The elected head of state will start his duties on the 8th of May for the period of four years.
The results of the presidential elections in Costa Rica, contrary to the results of the first round and the pre-election polls of the population, led to a left-centrist policy, which means that the forecast of the final decline of the “left” regimes in the region widely spread in the international media is still an exaggeration. Rightly, a number of Latin American countries (in particular, Argentina, Chile and Brazil) came to power with right-wing politicians, and many left-wing regimes (for example, in Venezuela and Cuba) are experiencing an acute crisis. However, it is still too early to assert about the threat of the process, which many Latin Americanists call the right turn of the region.
A number of analysts are inclined to think that Latin America has been hit by a crisis of not leftist ideas, but leftist regimes that for a long time have not resolved a number of issues, in particular, those related to the implementation, the guarantee of human rights and corruption. According to this idea, the leftist ideology in Latin America is still popular and will be able to remain for a long time.