Q COSTARICA — Gone are the days when then-President Rodrigo Chaves declared his mission in power would end on May 8, 2026, and that he would retire with the satisfaction of having awakened the people.
He said he wouldn’t endorse anyone, but that people should carefully consider their choice to continue the transformation of a Costa Rica brought to its knees by the parties that had governed or legislated with individuals clinging to positions of power.
Well, Chaves didn’t retire. Nor anything of the sort. He remains in power as the driving force behind the movement that allowed Laura Fernández to assume the presidency.
She is the face of a government in which the former president clings to immunity and holds two positions simultaneously: Minister of the Presidency (political strategist) and Minister of Finance (manager of the state budget). He sits at the center of a cabinet mostly made up of top officials he had already chosen before.
The top officials in the Ministries of Education, Social Development, Science and Technology, Transportation, Culture, and Communication remain in their posts.
The same is true for the executive presidents of ten autonomous institutions, despite any questions surrounding their management.
Other former officials from Cháves’s administration are now members of parliament, such as Nogui Acosta, Anna Katherina Müller, Esmeralda Britton, Osvaldo Artavia, Marta Esquivel, and Yara Jiménez (President of the Legislative Assembly), who served in the Chaves cabinet.
Fernández herself was Minister of Planning and Minister of the Presidency as part of the “peaceful revolution” movement championed by Cháves, but now, as President of the country, she asserts that she has the final say and that he, Chaves, is accountable to her.
She boasts of being “the heir to change” and the chosen one for this new four-year term, in which much of what Chávez sowed must bear fruit for “a people who resolved to break with a past that failed us,” she reiterated in her May 8th inaugural speech.
In a speech delivered at times with her trademark “shouts or harsh gestures” when reading the names of guests whom Chavismo considers adversaries, and with the predictable promises of a “tough on crime,” Laura Fernández vowed to “multiply the legacy” left by Cháves.
The people, “like someone waking from a nightmare, rose up suddenly” and now do not want to go back, she said.
However, in this task of continuing Cháves’s legacy and breaking with the past, Fernández relies on several high-ranking officials who come from those parties labeled as “culprits.”
The cabinet included, for example, Carlos Andrés Robles, one of the deputies from the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) who, during the previous four-year term, ended up siding with the ruling party and even helped maintain the immunity of the then-president.
Although he was initially announced as executive president of Incopesca, due to his failure to meet the academic requirements, he was appointed Minister without Portfolio of Coasts, Seas, and Fisheries—a title that didn’t even exist.
A similar situation occurred with Carolina Delgado, who spent her entire life in the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN), supporting candidates and governments in power, until she became a PLN legislator and ended up on the Chavista side, eventually being appointed executive president of the National Institute for Women (Inamu).
Yorleny León had done the same thing since 2022, serving as a PLN legislator and assuming the position of Minister of Social Development, a post she still holds.
Among those recently departing from other political groups is Juan Diego López, the executive president of the National Radio and Television System (Sinart). He previously served as an advisor and candidate for deputy with the Partido Nueva República, which ultimately became an ally of Chavismo during the previous four-year term.
Given his political background, López is also close to the conservative political movement aligned with evangelical Christianity. A group of leaders from this sector supported Fernández during his electoral campaign and is also close to approximately four pro-government legislators.
Present with a Past. The arrival of figures from other parties to the Chavista camps, where they denounce those parties, is nothing new. Laura Fernández herself began her career as a bureaucrat in a PLN government; her first vice president, Francisco Gamboa, comes from the PLN, and the second, Douglas Soto, from the PUSC.
The new head of the ruling party’s congressional bloc is Nogui Acosta, who for years was an advisor to the PUSC and later a prominent figure in the government of Carlos Alvarado, of the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC).
Translated and adapted from SemanarioUniversidad.com. Read the original in Spanish here.