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The rightwing populist Laura Fernández has won Costa Rica’s presidential election in a landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade.
Fernández’s nearest rival, centre-right economist Álvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40% needed to avoid a runoff.
With 94% of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing president, Rodrigo Chaves, had captured 48.3% of the vote, compared with Ramos’s 33.4%, according to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernández’s Sovereign People’s party erupted in celebrations around the country, waving blue, red and white-striped Costa Rican flags. “Viva Rodrigo Chaves,” some cheered, in a nod to Fernández’s mentor.
Appearing via video link at her party’s official election night gathering in the capital San Jose, Fernández, 39, thanked Chaves for giving her “the confidence to be president-elect of Costa Rica” and said his legacy was in good hands.
She vowed to “fight tirelessly” to ensure Costa Rica “continues on the path of economic growth, freedom, and above all, the progress of our people”.
The country of 5.2 million people, famous for its white-sand beaches, has long been seen as an oasis of stability and democracy in Central America. But in recent years, it has gone from transit point to logistics hub in the global drug trade.
Drug trafficking by Mexican and Colombian cartels has seeped into local communities, fuelling turf wars that have caused the murder rate to jump 50% in the past six years, to 17 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Fernández cites the iron-fisted Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who has locked up thousands of suspected gang members without charge, as an inspiration on how to tackle crime. Bukele was the first foreign leader to congratulate her.
Fernández’s win confirms a rightward lurch in Latin America, where conservatives have ridden anger towards corruption and crime to win power in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Honduras.
Chaves plucked Fernández from relative anonymity to serve as planning minister and chief of staff. In a conversation with her on Sunday night, Chaves said he was confident that under her leadership “there will be neither dictatorship, nor communism”.
Chaves presided over a sharp rise in violence but avoided blame by pointing the finger at the judiciary, saying it was too soft on crime.
Jessica Salgado, 27, said she voted for Fernández as the continuity candidate, because she felt the government was on the right track, even if violence had increased. “The violence exploded because they [the government] are going after the ringleaders, it’s like dragging rats out of the sewer,” Salgado told AFP.
Costa Ricans also voted for members of the 57-seat Legislative Assembly on Sunday.
Fernández’s detractors fear she will try to change the constitution to allow Chaves to return as president after her four-year mandate ends. Under the current constitution, he is barred from seeking re-election until he has been out of power for eight years.
The former president Óscar Arias, winner of the 1987 Nobel peace prize, warned on Sunday that the “survival of democracy” was at stake. “The first thing dictators want to do is to reform the constitution to stay in power,” he said, alluding to Chaves.
Fernández has said she is committed to upholding Costa Rica’s democratic tradition.
The drug trade has sucked in the high-density informal settlements of cities such as the capital, San José, where shootouts between rival drug gangs are increasingly frequent.
Fernández has vowed to complete construction of a maximum-security prison modelled on Bukele’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center. She has also promised to stiffen prison sentences and to impose a Bukele-style state of emergency in areas worst hit by crime.
