In Bukele's wake, Laura Fernández sweeps the Costa Rican presidential elections

She was followed at a considerable distance by Álvaro Ramos, the representative of the centrist National Liberation Party (PLN), who won 33% of the vote, while none of the remaining candidates even reached 5% of the vote. 

The landslide victory of Laura Fernández, a 39-year-old political scientist, was based on a campaign promising to further develop the tough policy against narco-terrorism undertaken by her predecessor, Rodrigo Chaves, after realising that the so-called ‘Switzerland of Central America’ had been plunged into chaos by the proliferation of drug trafficking and the resulting increase in crime, including homicides: no less than 17 per 100,000 inhabitants, an ‘unbearable rate, fostered by impunity’, in the words of the president himself. 

The president-elect has had no qualms about ratifying her electoral proposals and promises, starting with the most striking of all: to build a mega-prison in Costa Rica similar to the one built in El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele, who was precisely the first Ibero-American leader to congratulate her on her landslide election victory. 

Security has become her top priority, in order to rid the country of rampant crime, which has led to a slowdown in tourism, which once travelled with complete peace of mind to the territory that has the greatest biodiversity in the world in relation to its size. Restoring security and stability in this natural paradise has become Fernández's greatest obsession. 

On the contrary, the left-wing and far-left opposition consider that the president-elect's radical security proposals are part of an alleged plan by the country's conservative right to consolidate a ‘dictatorship’, i.e. an authoritarian regime similar to that implemented by Bukele in El Salvador. Fernández denies such aims, but argues that it is essential to combat the chaos imposed by gangs and drug trafficking with tough measures: increased sentences and even a declaration of a state of emergency in the areas of the country most affected by violence. 

She also advocates reforming the powers of the state, a thinly veiled reference to the judiciary, which both Fernández and Chaves blame for ‘promoting impunity’. As across the continent, there is a widespread feeling that the vast amounts of money handled by organised crime facilitate the buying of votes and hinder the fight against this cancer, which has grown unstoppably. 

Another accusation levelled by the opposition against the current president and his successor, who will be sworn in next May, is their intention to proceed with constitutional reform. In this regard, the country's former president and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Oscar Arias, lashed out at both leaders on election day, openly accusing them of promoting the end of democracy. ‘The first thing dictators want,’ he said, ‘is to reform the Constitution to stay in power.’ Chaves responded curtly with ‘there is no dictatorship here,’ while Fernández replied that ‘no one wants arbitrariness or authoritarianism in Costa Rica, and as the new president of the Republic, I will never allow it.’ 

With Costa Rica, in geopolitical terms, the conservative liberal wave is spreading across the continent following the recent victories of right-wing candidates in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras. This year will also see two other crucial elections in Brazil and Colombia, countries currently ruled by left-wing presidents Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, respectively.