A National Liberation Party ethics committee on Tuesday night ordered former Costa Rican presidential candidate Johnny Araya Monge to refrain from participating in any political activities for a period of four years, as a result of his decision to drop out of the presidential race on March 5.
Costa Rica’s former two-term President Óscar Arias Sánchez (1986-1990 and 2006-2010) hasn’t even waited a full year before twice publicly criticizing the new administration of Luis Guillermo Solís, who once belonged to Arias’ political party, the National Liberation Party, and was a member of the 1980s peace delegation that helped end the wars in Central America and delivered Arias a Nobel Peace Prize.
Opposition lawmakers expressed a mix of outrage and approval Monday afternoon at the 100-day report presented by President Luis Guillermo Solís last week. Many lawmakers who opined about the president’s report agreed that any guilty parties should be punished, but they urged the president to provide more concrete proposals to address the problems he identified while speaking last Thursday at San José's Teatro Melico Salazar.
On Monday evening, hours after the president requested an hour Thursday afternoon to present his assessment of the government as he found it after President Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014) left office in May, the heads of the fractious political parties refused to give him the floor. Solís blamed the National Liberation Party (PLN) for the delay in the report, which would be a first of its kind in Costa Rica.
The National Liberation Party spent $1.85 million more than it can cover in the last election, while the Libertarian Movement Party found itself in a $794,000 hole.
An electoral mandate of such a magnitude as the one Costa Rica has just delivered to the Citizen Action Party’s Luis Guillermo Solís is impressive around the world.
The National Liberation Party’s (PLN) "non-candidate," Johnny Araya, left his home in Rohrmoser, a wealthy neighborhood west of San José, at 9:30 a.m. Sunday to begin Costa Rica's second-round Election Day.
Although their candidate announced he was quitting the race back in March, members of the ruling National Liberation Party have blasted social media networks with get-out-the-vote messages for today’s presidential runoff.
Historian and former diplomat Luis Guillermo Solís is set to cruise to victory Sunday in Costa Rica's presidential runoff election after his sole opponent dropped out of the race.
