The caricature published on Friday, August 29, by CRhoy.com, tells the whole story of ‘Chavismo’ and the 2026-2030 presidency and legislative assembly if Laura Fernandez is elected president and a legislature is elected in February.
Chavismo is a political ideology that emerged in Costa Rica, inspired by the current president, Rodrigo Chaves.
In the drawing, we see presidential candidate Laura Fernandez apologizing profoundly for the dishonesty that is already emerging.
“… I can’t imagine what the future Congress will be like,” she says while holding a table of PPSO requisites for legislative candidates:
- Defendants (in criminal cases)
- Tiktokers
- Owe the Caja
- “Abogado cariñitos” (lawyers willing to do anything)
- Former Ministers
More disturbing is the puppeteer behind the curtain, with one hand controlling the possible future president and the other the box of tricks.
Chavismo went through three parties to arrive at a PPSO in crisis and with questions. The party is currently in the midst of a controversy following the election of its deputy candidates last Sunday, August 24, after holding its National Assembly behind closed doors.
From questions about the ¢2.2 million colones quota established by the party statute for legislator candidates; closed lists; complaints; injunctions from delegates; and leaked audio recordings surround last Sunday’s election.
In 2022, Rodrigo Chaves, supposedly the man behind the curtain in the caricature, was elected president with the Social Democratic Progress Party (PPSD) and won a caucus of 10 legislators in Congress, including well known and respected former journalist Pilar Cisneros and the party’s president, Luz Mary Alpízar.
The split between Chaves and Alpízar came early. In August 2023, eight of the ten PPSD legislators attended activities of the PPSO and the Aquí Costa Rica Manda (ACRM), chaired by Rodrigo Chaves’s campaign advisor, Federico Cruz “Choreco.”
At the latter event, they announced their support for the party in the 2024 municipal elections.
By September of that year, Alpízar cast the decisive vote (support number 38) to rescind the bill to remove itself from the European Union’s gray list, which Chaves had vetoed. This was the final split between the two; Chaves even called her a “Judas” and Cisneros called her a “traitor” in the legislative floor session.
Alpízar attempted to remove eight of her colleagues from the PPSD, having joined ACRM, but was unsuccessful because she escalated the case to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) rather than the party’s Ethics Committee.
Since then, eight of the ten legislators have declared themselves Chavistas/government supporters in the PPSD.
Subsequently, in 2024, the TSE disqualified Pueblo Soberano (PPSO) and ACRM from running in the municipal elections, for failing to comply with the gender parity rule. Cisneros and company disassociated themselves from the party they had entrusted to Choreco due to the failure in the municipal elections.
From mid-2024 and early 2025, there was a growing expectation of which Chavista group would emerge, and everything pointed to the PPSO.
This became official on July 12, when Pilar Cisneros announced Pueblo Soberano as the continuation of Chavismo, in the so-called “Flag of Continuity.”