Costa Rica to hold new count of presidential election votes



By Arturo Gudino
AFP
SAN JOSE
Petroleumworld.com 02 07 06

A two-week manual recount of votes was called in Costa Rica Monday 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 3,648 votes separated centrist candidate Oscar Arias, a former president and a Nobel Peace prize winner, and his center-left rival Otton Solis.

At midday Monday with 87.3 percent of ballots counted, Arias led with 40.5 percent of the vote against 40.3 percent 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 Monday after numerous government unions demanded that the council have a vote-by-vote count before announcing the winner.

Neither candidate dared to claim victory or concede defeat as the council said it would not complete the first vote tally until Tuesday.

Meanwhile the non-governmental organization Transparency International called late Monday for the council to invite international observers to watch the recount to ensure transparency.

Noting the closeness of the vote, Arias acknowledged Monday that Costa Rica is divided and said he would seek a dialogue with the opposition if he wins the election.

"This is a polarized society and if I triumph, I will have to pay a lot of attention to the 50 percent of Costa Ricans who did not vote for me," he told reporters.

Thirty-five percent of the 2.5 million electorate stayed away from voting, in an apparent protest at corruption scandals that have rocked recent Costa Rican governments.

The unofficial election results were contrary to all of the pre-election opinion polls, which had Arias favored by a solid ten to twenty percentage points.

Analysts said the result would be the tightest in Costa Rica's election history.

To be elected president in Costa Rica, a candidate needs to top 40 percent of the total vote. If two candidates are both over 40 percent, the one with the most votes wins.

The election focused on issues of corruption in previous governments as well as the contentious issue of joining the proposed Central America Free Trade Accord (CAFTA) with the United States. Costa Rica is the only country not to have ratified the accord.

Arias, who was president from 1986-90, backs the accord, while Solis wants it renegotiated.

A business tycoon with coffee and sugar plantations and interests in a financial group, Arias, 65, won the 1987 Nobel prize for his efforts to mediate in conflicts in Central America.

Solis was a minister under Arias but left their National Liberation Party in 2000 to protest its turn to the right. He ran for president in 2002 and now opposes the free-market route to prosperity.

The elections Sunday also saw voters choosing two vice presidents, representatives and local officials.

In the legislature, Arias' National Liberation Party won 25 of the 56 seats, compared to 17 or 18 for Solis' Citizen Action Party.

A third party, the conservative United Social Christian Party, suffered from corruption scandals involving leading party figures. Two ex-presidents, Rafael Angel Calderon and Miguel Angel Rodriguez, were charged with taking bribes in 2004.

Calderon is suspected of taking money from a Finnish medical company and Rodriguez from French engineering firm Alcatel.

Both are out of prison on bail awaiting their trial, but the impact on the USCP has been devastating. Its presidential candidate, Ricardo Toledo, earned only 3.5 percent of the vote in the preliminary count, and the party only won four legislative seats.

AFP 02/07/06

Copyright © 2006 AFP. All rights reserved

 

 

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