Costa Rica

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Right-wing candidate from the governing PPSO leads presidential race with 53.01 percent of the vote, early results show.

The right-wing law-and-order candidate, Laura Fernandez, has taken a commanding lead in Costa Rica’s presidential election, according to early results.

With ballots from 31 percent of polling stations counted late on Sunday, Fernandez, of the governing Sovereign People Party (PPSO), had 53.01 percent of the vote, the results showed.

Alvaro Ramos of the centre-left National Liberation Party ‍was in second place ⁠with 30.05 percent, while former First Lady Claudia Dobles was in third place with 3.9 percent.

Fernandez ‌needs at ‌least 40 percent to win the election outright and avoid ‌a run-off on April 5.

The 39-year-old politician is the handpicked successor of incumbent President Rodrigo Chaves, and campaigned on continuing his tough security policies.

The historically peaceful Central American nation’s crime surge in recent years could be a deciding factor for many voters. Some fault Chaves’s presidency for failing to bring the rates down, but many see his confrontational style as the best chance for Costa Rica to tame the violence.

Fernandez was previously Chaves’s minister of national planning and economic policy and, more recently, his minister of the presidency.

Costa Ricans also voted for the 57-seat National Assembly. Chaves’s party is expected to make gains, but perhaps not achieve the supermajority he and Fernandez have called for, which would allow their party to choose Supreme Court magistrates, for example.

Twenty contenders were seeking the presidency, but no candidate other than Fernandez and Ramos reached 5 percent in the preliminary and partial results.

Laura Fernandez, President Rodrigo Chaves’s protege and former chief of staff, is a frontrunner and could avoid an April 5 run-off.

Polls have opened in the Costa Rica general election as the ‍centre-right populist government seeks to extend its mandate and secure control of the Legislative Assembly at a time when drug-fuelled violence has gripped the country.

Voting stations opened at 6am local time (12:00 GMT) on Sunday and will remain open until 6pm (24:00 GMT), with early trends likely within hours.

Laura Fernandez, President Rodrigo Chaves’s protege and former chief of staff, is leading in the polls ⁠with more than 40 percent, enough to win outright and avoid an April 5 run-off. ​She has pledged to continue Chaves’s tough security policies and anti-establishment message.

Her closest ‍rivals in the 20-candidate field are Alvaro Ramos, a centrist economist representing Costa Rica’s oldest political party, and Claudia Dobles, an architect representing a progressive coalition and a former first lady whose husband, Carlos Alvarado, ‍served as president ⁠from 2018 to 2022.

Both are polling in the single digits but are seen as the two most likely to compete in a possible run-off if Fernandez falls short of 40 percent.

Fernandez has also urged voters to hand her 40 seats in the country’s 57-seat Legislative Assembly, a supermajority that would allow her to pursue constitutional reforms. The current government holds just eight seats and has blamed ​congressional gridlock for blocking its agenda.

Polls show about a ‌quarter of the 3.7 million voters remain undecided, with the largest group being between the ages of 18 and 34 and from the coastal provinces of Guanacaste, Puntarenas and Limon.

“People are tired of promises from all the governments, including ‌this one, even though the government has said things that are true, like needing stronger laws to restore order,” said Yheison ‌Ugarte, a 26-year-old deliveryman from downtown Limon, a Caribbean ⁠port city that has been the hardest hit by drug violence.

Despite homicides surging to an all-time high during his term and multiple corruption investigations, Chaves remains deeply popular, with a 58 percent approval rating, according to the University of Costa ‌Rica’s CIEP polling.

While consecutive re-election is not allowed in Costa Rica, Fernandez has pledged to include Chaves in her government and positioned herself as the continuity of his mandate.