LIMON, Costa Rica – After the results began trickling in Sunday evening, Ottón Solís claimed victory at 6:45 p.m. of the primary election for the Citizen Action Party (PAC), with more than 70 percent of the votes that had been counted until that time (stay tuned for complete results).

Yet, this election wasn't just a victory for Solís. Delegates, board members and campaigners across the country were celebrating the success of the party's first primary election in its nine-year history.

The fledgling political party only had 67,000 people registered to vote in Sunday's election, but delegates opened tables in cities and towns across the country to receive their fellow party members.

In the Caribbean port town of Límón, home of challenger Epsy Campbell, a sea of her red-shirted campaign workers greeted voters as they passed through the doors. The former legislator, seeking the title of first female president in Costa Rica, had her photo plastered to the side of Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez School. Banners and other paraphernalia boasted her name.

“People seem visibly happy,” Campbell's husband Norman Swaby said, as he stood inside the polling station greeting friends and neighbors. “They are coming here with great enthusiasm.”

Gómez credits Campbell with flushing the party with energy.

“The party really needs to be thankful for Epsy because this party was dead before she came around. If it weren't for Epsy announcing her candidacy, who knows where this party would be,” he said.

Campbell's challenge of party founder and symbolic head of PAC – Ottón Solís – first inspired the primaries. She said she wouldn't run unless party members gave her the opportunity to challenge Solís in a primary election. In the ensuing months, the campaign has stirred up much media attention and energy among voters, Gómez said.

Campbell and Solís were joined a few weeks later by businessman and anti-free trade treaty activist Román Macaya.

The party is also capturing some disengaged voters from other parties, including the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), which watched two former presidents head to trial on corruption charges.

“My party is The Unity party (long known as Social Christian Unity), but I'll give my vote to Ottón,” said Limón voter Jesús Méndez, as he emerged from the ballot box, a cardboard tri-fold erected to give some privacy to voters as they marked their choice. “I see that he can be a great president and bring about change. The other parties did nothing. Liberation? Nothing. The Unity? Nothing either.”

Look for the final vote tallies online at www.ticotimes.net on Monday. The winner will represent Citizen Action Party in the presidential election in February.

More than a dozen families whose homes were toppled in Costa Rica's Jan. 8 earthquake are looking forward to new permanent houses thanks to a project by the charity Habitat for Humanity Costa Rica (HPHCR).

Habitat has begun prepping sugarcane farmland in Tambor, Alajuela, northwest of San José, to make it ready for the construction of a 13-family residential area, HPHCR said. The project is being financed by a ¢120 million ($210,000) donation from the company Florida Bebidas.

By the first week of June, Habitat plans to have mapped out the residential lots and areas for such amenities as sewage and sidewalks. On June 22 Habitat volunteers – with the help of Florida Bebidas employees – will begin building homes for the Tambor project slated for completion in the third week of August.

Ten of the 13 homes will be 44-square-meter, two-bedroom units, while the remaining three homes will be 58-square-meter, three-bedroom units. The land area to be developed spans 685 square meters total, according to an HPHCR press release.

The Jan. 8 earthquake razed entire villages in the Alajuela and Heredia provinces when it struck right near Poás volcano, killing more than 20 people and forcing hundreds of families to evacuate their homes.

A house-building charity active in the country for 12 years, Habitat is taking on its first project to specifically help victims of the Jan. 8 quake, said Carlos Vargas, project engineer.

“We work with families in need, not only earthquake victims – but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of Habitat building more homes (for victims of the Jan. 8 quake) in the future,” Vargas said.

Visit The Tico Times' free Daily News archive at http://www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/dailyarchive.htm for extensive coverage of the earthquake.

Long lauded for its green image, Costa Rica could soon see stiffer laws to protect animal rights that would put animal abusers in jail.

An animal rights collective has proposed a law against maltreatment and cruelty to animals, group leader Carlos Zamora said in a statement.

Zamora said the use of instruments to inflict unnecessary punishment and pain upon animals, engaging animals in fighting games, food depravation, the use of drugs to force them to work excessive hours or overworking animals when they are ill are all examples of acts that should be punishable by jail time.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, animal cruelty is a possible indicator leading to violence against other humans and other criminal acts.

Under current Costa Rican law, cruelty to animals is punished by fines.

The proposal, which was presented last week through the Legislative Assembly's Popular Initiatives Office, faces a potentially long process before it can be voted into law.

While many countries throughout the world rely on their armed forces to help during peacetime emergencies, Costa Rica, without an army, is dependent on a completely different type of organization during such times: The Red Cross.

“It's kind of as though the army's responsibilities were divided up between several organizations,” said Jim Batres, who has worked at the Costa Rican Red Cross as a security guard for 23 years. “But a number of them have definitely fallen on our shoulders.”

“It's in times like these that the Costa Rican Red Cross is at the service of its country and its people, and we will do anything and everything to ensure their safety,” said Red Cross President Miguel Jiménez during a recent press conference dealing with the H1N1 flu outbreak.

Although a private and independent organization, the Red Cross has assumed primary responsibility for a variety of emergency response duties, including rescues, collapsed buildings, vehicle crashes and stranded or lost persons. The organization is also tasked with evacuating people affected by flooding, active volcanoes or earthquakes.

See the June 5 print or PDF version of The Tico Times for more on this story.