Q COSTA RICA (by Luis Paulino Vargas Solís) — Today, as the specter of successive presidential re-elections emerges as a threat to Costa Rican democracy, and as a harbinger of what could become a dictatorship, it is worth remembering that it was precisely Oscar Arias who resurrected the specter of re-election.
It was in 1969 when a constitutional reform definitively outlawed re-election. According to that rule, no person who had been president of Costa Rica could be president again.
It was in 2003 when, after several failed attempts, Arias managed to secure a favorable majority in the Constitutional Chamber, which allowed him to overturn that provision, although it was fortunately maintained that re-election could not occur until eight years after leaving office.
I believed it then, as I believe it now: that action, promoted by Arias and condoned by the Constitutional Court or Sala IV, was absolutely spurious.
The 1969 reform was the fruit of a profound democratic conviction that I fully share: that democracy is more vigorous and healthy when the limits to the concentration of power are clearly defined.
The illegitimate repeal of 2003 was the product of the vanity of a politician who, despite his flowery speeches, harbored certain authoritarian tendencies.
It is no coincidence that, during his second term (2006-2010), and in the face of strong opposition to the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, Arias coined the concept of “tyranny in democracy.”
In a way, that man sowed the seeds that, years later, contributed to the hurricanes that are currently battering us. The fact is that, by achieving the repeal of the 1969 law, Arias set a precedent that was seized upon and replicated in other Latin American countries by leaders with authoritarian leanings.
But above all, Arias opened a Pandora’s box without which the current excesses, proposing indefinite reelection, would not be heard with the stridency with which we are forced to endure them.
Recalling this is surely uncomfortable. Saying it is not at all pleasant. But it is a part of our recent history that we cannot and must not forget.
The article is a translation and adaptation of Luis Paulino Vargas Solís’s post on social media. Read the original here.