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ARIAS WINS NARROWLY IN COSTA RICA; CAFTA COULD CLOUD HIS PRESIDENCY.

Article Excerpt
By the second-narrowest of margins, Oscar Arias won the Costa Rican presidential elections. He is to take office May 8. He won by 1.2%, just 18,167 votes, over rival Otton Solis. Arias got 40.92% of the total to Solis' 39.8%. This was the closest vote since 1966, when Jose Joaquin Trejos Fernandez beat Daniel Oduber Quiros by 4,220 votes. Arias' numbers alone portend tough times ahead for the new administration, but the more substantive and immediate reason for a difficult presidency is the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

The election was in part a referendum on CAFTA. Costa Rica remains the only country involved in the trade deal not to have ratified it. Polls have shown the population to be about evenly divided on the wisdom of a trade deal with the US, President Pacheco has been ambivalent about it (see NotiCen, 2005-05-12), and the legislature has been in no hurry to consider it. Now the unions and popular sectors are promising to fight the pro-CAFTA Arias every step of the way. These organizations have been supportive of Solis, who has called for major modifications to the text of the agreement before bringing it up for congressional ratification.

Albino Vargas of the Asociacion Nacional de Empleados Publicos (ANEP) said flatly, "Arias would be a president synonymous with confrontation because he works for the oligarchy that is pro-free trade with the United States."

ANEP, the country's largest union, is joined by other people-power...

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