Costa Rica Election 2022 | Meet the Candidate: Fabricio Alvarado (PNR)
January 9, 2018, was the day that changed Fabricio Alvarado’s life and Costa Rica’s political map forever. That day, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that same-sex marriages should be recognized in the region. The ruling was issued in response to a motion brought by Costa Rica and was applicable to countries that signed the American Convention of Human Rights. It was a huge moment for the progressive movement in the country, but also for conservatives, who were mad at the resolution and did not want the country to follow suit.
Fabricio Alvarado, a devout Evangelical Christian who mixes politics with religious fundamentalism, and who promised to ignore the ruling, became their favorite candidate for the general election that was going to be held less than a month from then. Before the Court’s ruling, he was not even considered a top-three contender in the election. But after that, his support skyrocketed and by the middle of January, 2018, three weeks before the ballot, he was leading the polls. Fabricio Alvarado eventually won the election, but since he didn’t surpass the 40% minimum support barrier, he had to go to a second round against PAC candidate Carlos Alvarado, who became President mostly because the majority of the electorate didn’t want the Evangelical politician as head of State.
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After the second round, he still was the leader of the second-biggest fraction in the Legislative Assembly, because his then party, National Restoration, was very successful in the first round. Since he was a deputy from 2014 to 2018, and deputies cannot be reelected on consecutive terms, he did not win a seat, but he sought control of the group from outside Congress. Nevertheless, differences sparkled between him and other leaders of the party and they ended up splitting that same year. Fabricio Alvarado started a new party named New Republic, and some elected deputies left National Restoration to join his ranks. The new party ran for the municipal elections of 2020, placing Fabricio Alvarado as the protagonist of the campaign even though he wasn’t in the ballot, but they received no elected mayors..
During the four years in between this and the last election, he and his team have been crafting his campaign for the 2022 vote. His conservative positions remain in place. In 2020, he signed the so-called ‘Madrid Charter’, a manifesto written by Spanish far-right party Vox and also signed members of the US Republican Party, Venezuelan opposition members, Fujimorists of Peru, and far-right and liberal politicians such as Eduardo Bolsonaro in Brasil and José Antonio Kant in Chile. This manifesto says, among other things, that Latin American leftism is a “criminal” group controlled by Cuba and supported by drug trafficking, whose ideological agenda consists of destabilizing liberal governments.
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Government plan
Immigration. His plan focuses mostly on massive migrations from Latin American countries and the control of people who illegally enter the country. “Migration must be understood as a phenomenon that must be managed and not fought,” his plan notes. Being so, Costa Rica “cannot carry out practices or public policies that limit the condition of a person with dignity due to their immigration status”. For him and his party, “criminalizing migration is one of the most recurrent violations of human rights”.
Business. Fabricio Alvarado wants to encourage and promote Free Trade Zones (“zonas francas”), not only in the Greater Metropolitan Area but also in places like Guanacaste, Puntarenas, Limón, and San Carlos. In his plan and his speeches, he usually emphasizes the need to strengthen the national industry after many years of focusing on attracting foreign investment, but he also supports that foreign investors come and foster the development of certain sectors, such as fishing. He also proposes “Cultural Free Trade Zones” in areas such as advertising, film production, design, and fashion.
Taxes. Like most candidates, “no taxes” is one of Fabricio Alvarado’s mottoes for this campaign. He wants to temporarily reduce the VAT (“IVA”) from 13% to 9%, as a means to promote consumption and economic recovery. His economic team defends that this measure, in the midst of a fiscal crisis, would “generate more dynamism in the economy, to the point that far from reducing collection, it would be maintained, or rather increased”. Concurrently, the candidate promises a “responsible and fulfilled fiscal policy” with the control of public spending and the generation of new income, but without new taxes.
Health and quality of life. Being a fundamentalist, Fabricio Alvarado is frontally against what he calls the “death agenda”, which includes social policies he deems threatening of Costa Rica’s “values and beliefs”, such as abortion, euthanasia, the ‘morning after pill’, and “gender ideology”, with its “deconstruction of family and the human being”. He puts the right to life and the “health of the family” at the center of health policies, and he insists that the public health care system should become more agile and effective in order to improve the quality of life. He is against the legalization of cannabis, except for industrial use.
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