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More on the election

February 7th, 2006
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For more on how the election day really was, you should go check out Jacqueline’s one-day travelogue Election Day in San José, Costa Rica. Jacqueline, a self-declared election nerd, even describes how our election works. Well worth read.

On a more personal note, Jorge has a great article called “…and they didn’t even get the votes“, analyzing how the Movimiento Libertario fared after they decided to be PUSC re-incarnated. Jorge gets his point across rationally, succintly and directly, much more than I think I could do.

My own personal take, in short, is: great. I hope they went ahead and spent money like they were really going to get 25% of the vote. In that case they’ve squandered 3 times as much as they are getting from the government, and got royally fucked.

How I love it when there’s an actual price to be paid for betraying your principles.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Election post-mortem

February 6th, 2006

I’ve started this post many times. Once I begun by making a point about how my dad saw things. Once I decided to start with an example of how public opinion is turning again in favor of Rafael Ã?ngel Calderón and Miguel Ã?ngel Rodríguez, both up until recently in prison and undergoing a corruption investigation. Several times I’ve just gone straight to the numbers. All those times I’ve erased everything, and started over again. While what happened at the election is a complex issue, with many little things bringing about this final outcome, there are clearly some primary factors:

  1. The grudge vote
  2. ¡Ya ganamos! / Salí a votar
  3. Being on the winning side

The grudge vote

There were two kinds of people in this election: those who were voting for Arias right of the bat, and those who would even have voted for me as their Dictator For Life if Arias was the single other choice.

The second crowd were there because Arias pissed people off – plain and simple. There are many reasons for this, the least of which are the cell phone telemarketing messages that his team left. When Arias first ran for office, 20 years ago, he was perceived as a young guy trying to make a difference inside the party. This time around the perception among many – even if they didn’t articulate exactly like this – is that he is just an rich, arrogant egomaniac who was just running for the hell of it, throwing money at the problem because he could. Some felt the Sala IV had been co-opted into allowing the re-election, and that angered them even if they didn’t understand the rationale behind it. Some were driven over the edge by the fact that he just refused to debate Ottón Solís, arguing that he was so far ahead that Solís’ request for a debate was nothing but a desperate measure (hell, even a friend’s father, who worked closely with Arias during his presidency, kept saying that he would vote for anyone but him and PUSC). Finally, some were flat out angered by the fact that he was so sure had already won, that they felt the urge to prove him wrong.

By no means I thought that the vote would be as tight as it was. I personally expected Arias to be just under 40% with Ottón close behind, with an abstention rate of around 40% (it was 35%). Just a week ago I told Jacqueline and Jorge that this would almost certainly spell a victory for Solís in the second round, because everyone would gang up against Arias and Solís would win solely based on the grudge vote. From the way things are looking, he may just sneak under the fence on the first round.

I guess people hated Arias even more than I thought.

On the other hand there were those people who were with Arias, and that would have voted for him even if Noriega came out and handed copies of campaign money receipts personally signed by Arias himself. Among those there were people like my father, who would go out to vote even if you blockaded his front door, but on many others I noticed a repeat of an old tendency.

¡Ya Ganamos!

A few days ago I noted Jacqueline wrote on her blog that for a guy who is certain to win, Oscar Arias sure is campaigning hard. I commented:

    28 years ago Luis Alberto Monge ran against Rodrigo Carazo, who had a party that was considered a mongrel made out of outcasts from other parties. Nobody gave Carazo a chance, to the point that Monge’s slogan was “¡Ya ganamos!” (“We’ve already won!”).

    Since they’d already won, nobody went out to vote. Monge lost the election.

Everyone in Liberación assumed Arias would win, and that he would do so by an overwhelming amount in the first round. Even my father, who is usually pretty objective in his analysis (he pointed out a similarly atmosphere of undue confidence in the last election, which Liberación lost), was dead certain there was no possible way that he would lose. The elections were not going to be even close and, as my dad said, there’s no way Ottón Solís will ever be president of Costa Rica.

And guess what? Many Liberacionistas didn’t go out and vote.

Now, we’re talking about my decidedly non-statistical approach of asking random friends who I knew were Liberación sympathizers. You won’t get an error margin from me. But it was clear that the PAC people were out campaigning, having voted early, as were those of us who had gone to vote for Mendezovia, Joeburgo or whatever else we fancied our null vote being. Liberación people were home, confident. Streets were clogged enough as it was. If they had already won, why bother?

PAC, on the other hand, was busy with their ¡Salí a votar! (go out and vote!) campaign. And go out to vote people did.

Being on the winning side

Four years ago, when Otto Guevara ran for president, a lot of people who liked his job in the Asamblea didn’t vote for him for the presidency because “he didn’t have a chance“. Those people went out and either voted for Pacheco, because he looked like a kindly old man, or for Rolando Araya, because they were afraid of the chance of a senile old fool becoming president.

They wanted to feel like they had a chance of winning with their vote. Why waste your vote? was what I heard over and over.

I’ve got no doubt that happened again this time. The “everyone but Arias” camp looked at their Guevaras, their Echandis, their Ã?lvarez Desantis and thought why waste my vote? There was no way they would go with Arias – that was the reason they were flirting with other parties in the first place. PAC was there, ready, and looking like it had a shot. Why not? Wouldn’t it be nice if that arrogant Arias bastard got mud all over his face when he was forced into a second round?

If you want some numbers to back that up, here we go. So far Liberación Nacional has 40.5% of the presidential vote, and almost the same percentage for Asamblea Legislativa. These are people who are committed to the party, whatever happens – the type I described above. PAC has so far 40.28% of the presidential vote but only 25% of Asamblea vote. That 15% difference are likely people that don’t care about PAC’s legislative stance, or what the party claims they want to do with control of the Asamblea. That 15% went to other minor specialty parties, like the one oriented towards people with disabilities.

But those people, when faced with the choice of who to vote for president, decided to cast their vote maybe not for Solís, but for someone where it would count against Arias. Their need to be on the winning side, to not waste their vote, benefitted PAC.

In the end…

Who knows at this time what the hell will happen. Arias (let’s stop pretending this is about political parties) has 40.51% and Solís has 40.29%. There’s still 7.1% of the voting tables untallied, and 4.4% which have tally inconsistencies and need to be re-accounted. That’s a full 11.5% of the votes unaccounted for. Normally those would be insignificant, nothing but the error margin, but with a difference of 0.22% between the two parties it really can throw the election in either way.

I’ll hazard a guess, however. Over 60% of the votes untallied are outside urban areas, where Arias is stronger. A large number of those are in Cartago, Heredia and Alajuela, agricultural areas that have been told to fear CAFTA as if it were the apocalypse itself. Limón and Guanacaste are poor areas, where PAC’s litany against our growing inequality and how we need to even out the social classes finds fertile ground. I do fear that once the smoke has cleared, we’ll have Ottón Solís as president.

The sole idea is enough to make me hope that for once, my pessimism is absolutely, completely, flat out wrong.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Junkie, Part 2

February 5th, 2006

It’s 11:26 p.m., and with 57.7% of the voting tables accounted for the numbers so far are:

  • Oscar Arias: 40.8%
  • Ottón Solís: 40.3%
  • Otto Guevara: 8.2%

Guevara is exactly on the range that Borges and Asociados predicted he would get (as opposed to the over 15% that the ML was getting before they decided to dump the principles).

The difference between Arias and Solís is 0.3% – a tenth of the error margin of the best polls. While the lesser evil is currently ahead, if the numbers as much as sneeze we’ll wake up tomorrow with an pro-union power-hungry ultra-dogmatic elect president (as opposed to the power-hungry egomaniac).

Yay.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Junkie

February 5th, 2006
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I admit it – I’m a junkie. A week ago Jorge re-scheduled an engagement we had tonight, partly becuase he assumed I was going to be checking out the TV for the results on our national elections. I said I had made my piece with the elections, assuming that there was no possible good outcome, and would just take the time for something useful.

And here I am, sitting with Channel 7 on, watching the count and wondering if people will actually give Ottón Solís a chance to completely fuck this country over.


PS: I voted for the Independent Banking Republic of Mendezovia.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

On dollarization

January 28th, 2006
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Last year in Costa Rica inflation was almost 15%, the largest percentage of that due devaluation: a dollar was worth c457.58 when the year started and c495.65 when it ended. There’s an almost 10% drop just because we’re using a currency that allows our central bank to print out new Monopoly bills. Recent studies of inflation in Central America have shown that the two countries with the lowest inflation are Panamá and El Salvador, both which are dollarized, even though both have much higher internal expenses than Costa Rica (like supporting an army) and a much more complicated recent history (internal strife, wars with neighboring countries). Finally, the excuse that dollarization would make us directly dependent on the U.S. economy is absolutely moot – we are already dependent on it: some of our Central Bank reserves are in dollars, the United States is a huge commercial partner, and we bring in about half our imports from there.

As you can imagine, I’m a big proponent of dollarization – but if the government doesn’t want to do it, and the vast majority of people are content the way things are, that’s their problem. It’s always good to read alternate opinions, however, and – once again via Marginal Revolution – I’ve found an article discussing if Argentina should have dollarized back in 2001.

Enjoy.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Math and economics

Movimiento Libertario taking the government’s money

September 12th, 2005
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And of course, the so-called Movimiento Libertario has voted in favor of taking money from the state. It had so far been called immoral by the official party line, but a few weeks ago Otto Guevara said that he was considering a suggestion made by some party members, who recommended taking money from the state. This is probably what prompted Guillermo Malavassi’s resignation from the party’s presidency, not even two weeks after taking office. It turns out now (gasp! surprised look!) that Otto did most of the convincing in pro of approving that change.

Imagine that. I wonder who could benefit from the party taking money from the state. Surely not the presidential candidate.

On the news item, it’s rather interesting to see how he phrases his rationalizations.

    “We need to get in power and, when we do, we’ll eliminate political debt”, said Guevara.

Just like I said it would happen, he’s saying think of the good we can do. Soon enough he’ll be comparing himself to José Figueres, who got in power via a military coup and proceded to disband our national army.

And nevermind that a president would not be able to do that – political debt is in our constitution, so it’ll require a constitutional assembly to achieve it. Far more interesting is that we seem to have now a “libertarian” who cares about “power”.

That explains a lot.

PS: Just in case there was any doubt as to who elections benefit, check out this other news item: Elections will give a financial respite to political parties.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Movimiento Libertario: On Malavassi’s resignation

September 7th, 2005
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According to the official line, Guillermo Malavassi quit the presidency of the Movimiento Libertario just two weeks after taking office because of a conflict of interest with the UACA, a private university where he’s the dean.

It’s been brought to my attention that on November 2004, Malavassi published an article in La Nación entitled Political Debt – One more step towards legalized national corruption. On it, he decries how public financing of political parties has led the country on a road to corruption, as well killing the spirit of civic collaboration on people if they’re actually interested in a party’s message. Ã? la Frank Zappa , we’re only in it for the money.

His article closes with the following quote:

    As for what’s up to me, I’ll fight for rejecting the state’s contribution. And will contribute everything I can, expecting only to get back a good government.

His recent resignation, then, is indeed likely due to a conflict of interest, although not with the advertised party: the Movimiento Libertario is probably decided to take the state’s money, and he’s resigning ahead of the official announcement. He may not even believe that they’ll be good government anymore.

Ricardo Costa Rica, Freedom, News and politics

Movimiento Libertario: Flee, mortal, flee in fear!

August 30th, 2005
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Not that you’ll read about this on the Movimiento’s own site, but apparently Guillermo Malavassi Vargas, the new party president, has just resigned his position after not even two weeks on the job.

The official line so far is that there was a conflict of interest with his position as dean of a private university. Methinks that the rats are already fleeing the sinking ship, but it may be even more interesting than that.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Movimiento Libertario: Principles, out the window!

August 29th, 2005
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We have this concept here in Costa Rica called deuda política, which translates to political debt: basically, money that the government gives political parties after the election, split out proportionally according to the percentage of votes they get, so that they can pay up debts incurred during the campaign.

One of the first things that I remember hearing about Movimiento Libertario was how they rejected political debt as being immoral, and you can still check out the pages on their site about it. Hell, in 2002 they even had this huge cardboard check made out for 284 million colones (about $750,000 at the time), written out to the people of Costa Rica, a symbol of their rejecting what they considered dirty money.

On August 28, 2005, the Movimiento announced that they’re “considering” taking the political debt money this year, as I predicted a bit back. According to Otto it’s just a few assemblymen that are suggesting it, but he’s dutifully considering it.

Apparently the party’s principles can be expected to have as much value as that big cardboard check.

Ricardo Costa Rica, News and politics

Movimiento Libertario: It was nice while it lasted

August 14th, 2005
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The Movimiento Libertario had a national assembly yesterday, and Otto Guevara’s faction has won (that link is in Spanish). Raúl Costales, the hard-working ideologically correct party secretary, is no longer with the group, although it is still unclear if he was removed or he resigned. Kattia Chavaría, the movimiento’s treasurer an another one insisting the group follows the libertarian ideology, has resigned. Adrián Cordero, a libertarian from Limón who got shoved aside to make way for an ex-PUSC non-libertarian, has also left the group altogether.

All three claim to have received serious threats against themselves and their family.

It seems like I was right when I told �lvaro Alpízar, the campaign manager, current party treasurer and someone who has clearly stated he is not a libertarian, that this seemed to be the birth of a new PUSC.

Anyone wants to place bets against them taking money from the government as political debt (which had previously been rejected as immoral)?

Anyone?

Ricardo Costa Rica, Freedom, News and politics