Costa Rica’s Festival of Suffrage Unique in Central American Elections

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica —  The flags, the music, the blaring horns, the dancing in the streets--all this speaks of the festival going on in Costa Rica. In this one, the patron saint is suffrage and the conga lines lead to the ballot box.

On Sunday, the citizens will elect a president, a legislature and hundreds of mayors, but the candidates and the issues seem secondary to the ritual celebration of a peaceful if noisy electoral event unmatched elsewhere in turbulent Central America.

Costa Ricans look at elections somewhat as the Chinese look at fireworks. They are useful to keep away the devil of havoc, to scare off the coups, revolutions, frauds and abuses that beset El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south.

“We are in Central America only geographically,” former President Jose (Pepe) Figueres said the other day. “Otherwise, Costa Rica is completely different. The elections show that.”

Army Disbanded

It was Figueres who virtually invented the present system and ensured that it would endure by disbanding the armed forces about 40 years ago.

A U.S. diplomat here commented: “Just because an election takes place here without coups, violence or other ills . . . that doesn’t mean they’re taken for granted. This is an important observance for Costa Ricans--a celebration.”

One might think the fiesta would be dampened by Costa Rica’s two outstanding problems: tension on the border with Nicaragua and a crippled economy burdened by a large foreign debt.

Not so. The streets of San Jose, the capital, are dotted with salsa bands and banner-waving men and women who dress their children in the colors of their favorite candidate. In school, as an early civics lesson, the youngsters will cast mock ballots.

The hoopla is only now reaching a crescendo, though the campaign has been under way for six months. The rallies of even the minor parties draw crowds of several hundred--and on cold nights.

Costa Rica, which is about the size of West Virginia, has roughly 3 million people and grows mostly coffee and bananas. This year, six parties are putting up candidates for president and the Legislative Assembly.

Two Main Parties

Only two parties will attract significant numbers of votes: the National Liberation Party and its presidential candidate, Oscar Arias, a former planning minister, and the Social Christian Unity Party, which is running Rafael Angel Calderon, a former foreign minister.

Auto horns endlessly blare support for one candidate or the other: two beeps for Arias (Os-car, Os-car) and three for Calderon.

Luis Alberto Monge, the incumbent president and a member of the National Liberation Party, cannot by law succeed himself. Whoever takes his place will be the country’s youngest president ever. Arias is 44 and Calderon is 36.

The positions of the two candidates vary mainly in degree rather than substance, and this is appropriate for wooing a mainly middle-of-the-road electorate.

Arias, a jowly law school graduate, hopes to bring the economy under control by putting a lid on government spending. But he also plans to maintain the size of the bureaucracy, in keeping with his party’s traditional dedication to big government.

As for Nicaragua, Arias professes a neutrality that he defines as non-interference in the affairs of neighboring countries.

Calderon, whose prominent nose has been a favorite subject of caricaturists, wants to reduce the size of government and re-establish a private banking operation to parallel the state-run system.

U.S. Training Favored

He is more openly belligerent toward Nicaragua, and he calls on the Sandinista government in Managua to respect Costa Rica.

Both candidates favor continued U.S. training for their rural police force in the wake of border incidents last year that took the lives of two Costa Rican civil guardsmen. Both candidates have also said they will seek easier repayment terms for Costa Rica’s foreign debt, which stands at about $4 billion.

The U.S. Embassy says it is not concerned about the outcome, but it is clear that Calderon is more in line with the Reagan Administration’s bias toward private enterprise and maintaining a hard line toward Nicaragua.

At this point, the race is considered too close to call. In years past, well-to-do Costa Ricans took out newspaper ads to offer wagers on the winner. This year, none has dared to do so.

Typically, Costa Ricans vote on the basis of problems close to home. In the poor, south side neighborhood known as Aguantafilo (hunger-suffering in Costa Rican slang), residents of tin shacks have been fighting for new homes. Recently some of the squatters reached a settlement, and they plan to move to lots provided by the government where they will build their own houses. They are voting for Arias, whose party is responsible for solving their problem.

Some Stay Put

Others in the neighborhood think the lots are too far from the city and lack adequate services. They are staying put and voting for Calderon.

“We are grateful for the lots the government is giving us, so we prefer Oscar,” said Rafael Saenz, whose makeshift home is decorated with the green and white of Arias’ party. Saenz said he works as a cameronero, a shrimper, which is Costa Rican slang for someone who takes odd jobs.

The walls of his shack are lined with record album covers and pages from magazines, a reflection of the kind of poverty that, according to revolutionaries, leads to unrest and violence. But Saenz rejects the kind of solutions that are being adopted in Marxist-led Nicaragua.

“We wouldn’t trade this in for anything,” he said. “We like elections here.”

Next door, the home of Rodolfo Hernandez is decorated with a blue-and-red banner, Calderon’s colors. “We hope he will give us a better solution to our housing,” Hernandez said. “I don’t want to live in the sticks.”

A visit to Aguantafilo by Calderon’s wife cemented Hernandez’s support, he said. And he, too, is sold on elections.

“We fight over a lot of things here, but not elections,” he said. “They give us hope,’

Such an attitude may stem from familiarity with the cost of upheaval. In the 1940s Costa Rica had a bloody civil war that drove military-backed leaders from power. And since then, Costa Rica’s neighbors have provided plenty of examples of how not to pursue politics. Hardly one of them has been free of violence in the past 40 years, while Costa Rica has experienced exceptional social peace.

Changing Politics

The politics of Central America have changed recently, giving some Costa Ricans the idea that their neighbors are at last trying to emulate their system. Sunday’s vote here marks the end of a two-year round of historic elections in the region.

In El Salvador and Guatemala, civilian governments have been elected to replace military regimes, though the armed forces in both countries retain immense power. In Honduras, civilian rule has been confirmed after a rocky four-year start. But there, too, the military retains its traditional influence.

Nicaragua’s 1984 presidential election merely ratified the Sandinistas’ rule, a political-military juggernaut that had dominated the country for six years.

In Panama, a country that is not usually considered part of Central America, the military has deposed an elected president and installed the vice president in his place.

Costa Rica, long the odd man out in Central America, differs markedly from the others, in terms of how it goes about its elections and the clear-cut nature of the outcome.

In Costa Rica, no one is afraid to make clear his electoral preference. On the other hand, in El Salvador years of civil war and repression discourage any open display of partisanship.

Here the parties out of power do not engage in the ever-tempting Central American sport of plotting coups. In Honduras, rumors of such plotting were heard for months before last year’s election. But Costa Ricans do not even imagine such an alternative. Anyway, there is no army to bring off a coup.

No Gang Tactics

No gangs of youths break up opposing political rallies, a standard tactic of intimidation in Nicaragua. There, neighborhood watchdogs also put pressure on voters by deciding who is to get a ration card.

In Costa Rica, roving bands of youths sound auto horns and trade jibes with rival bands drawn up across the street, with no apparent fear of reprisal from the eventual winner.

Fraud, which in Panama is generally the deciding factor in elections, seems to be out of the question in Costa Rica. Observers move about freely at the polling places, and the results are announced almost immediately. Costa Ricans vote by impressing a thumbprint on the ballot below a picture of the favored candidate.

On Sunday, after the votes are counted, the president-elect will prepare to rule the entire country. In Guatemala, the recently inaugurated president controls barely the capital city; in the countryside, the armed forces hold sway in military zones.

Before Costa Rica’s new president takes power, in May, the outgoing administration will give up command of the public security forces, including the police and rural guards. The new president may take up the command or not.

And all the blaring of horns will stop for four years.