As my biography states, I am a Canadian Citizen, Naturalized as a Costa Rican Citizen. Accordingly, I am able to vote in the up-coming Costa Rican Presidential Election to be held on February 2nd, to participate in almost all aspects of the Election process (you can’t be elected President unless you are born in Costa Rica), and to comment publicly at will on political matters; so I will comment.
Costa Rica is a small country with a small population of approximately four and one-half million people. It has a class-structured society, where the political power tends to rest in the hands of a few rich and politically well-connected “old guard” families, regardless of the outcome of any political election.
These power-brokers like to keep the middle and lower classes in their place, making upward mobility difficult for these lower class members. However, in this Election, if the Political Party known as the Frente Amplio was to garner any measure of power, the relatively stable life-style that most Costa Ricans enjoy, could, in my opinion, be threatened.
The Frente Amplio is the most left-wing Party running in the Election and its ideology is extreme Socialist at best and Communist at worst. It is a Party that tends to appeal to the poor and uneducated members of society, and university students, who, being still “wet behind the ears”, believe that real life is as you would read political doctrine from a book.
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua have made these similar social promises to the Nicaraguan people, who tend to be poor, uneducated, and more easily influenced by such promises, than their Costa Rican counter-parts. The Sandinistas have failed to deliver on their social promises in any appreciable way, forcing many Nicaraguans to seek work and a better life in Costa Rica.
Socialist and Communist ideology when read, sounds like a perfect political system to employ, with equality for all and Government social programs to meet any need the people may have. In such a system, the proffered ideology is that it is only a matter of taxing the wealthy and the corporations and all Government social programs will be funded.
The fallacy of this type of thinking is that by taxing in excess in this manner, as in my opinion the Frente Amplio would propose, you are really “killing” the source of the tax base that would support these social programs, by driving this tax source from the Country. In addition, Socialist and Communist ideology does not recognize that human beings need a profit incentive to be good producers. The fall of the Soviet Union and what is now Communist China (Communist in name only), would be the best example of the failure of such political doctrine in practice.
Being Canadian by birth and living a good portion of my life in Canada before moving to Costa Rica fifteen years ago, I am not opposed to a realistic social safety net being established by a Government, to benefit particularly, the less fortunate members of society. This is certainly the case as it exists in Canada and, in my opinion, in Costa Rica at the moment.
Providing the less fortunate members of society with a basic level of well-being through Government social programs, has been a major contributing factor in maintaining the tolerant and stable society that has existed in Costa Rica since the 1948 Revolution. This aspect of Costa Rican Society distinguishes Costa Rica from many, if not all, of its Latin American neighbours.
I am of the opinion that the Frente Amplio Party’s doctrine goes too far in “tipping-the –scales” toward a Socialist/Communist doctrine of Government and may, if given power, disturb many years of progress that Costa Rica has made in establishing the stable society which now exists.
