Costa Rica Election 2022 | Meet the Candidate: José María Villalta (FA)
José María Villalta is first and foremost a politician. The Broad Front (FA, its acronym in Spanish) current deputy and presidential candidate has always been involved in politics, in one way or the other. When he was in college, studying Law at the University of Costa Rica, he was dedicated to his guitar and to several protests linked to the student movement that made an impact at the beginning of the 21st Century in Costa Rica. He was also known as an environmental activist, being for many years the host of a television show about ecology. He wasn’t even done with his career when he got his first opportunity working in politics, starting in as an adviser to the then deputy José Merino del Río, who in 2004 became the founding president of the Broad Front party.
The 2022 election marks Villalta’s fourth time running for public office. The leftist politician ran and got elected as the FA representative in the Legislative Assembly for the 2010-2014 period, after which he was named presidential candidate for the 2014 election. The polls leading to the 2014 ballot placed him as a potential contender for the second round, but he finished in third place and PAC candidate Luis Guillermo Solís became President after winning to PLN nominee Johnny Araya. Nevertheless, after Villalta’s first presidential bid the FA got nine deputies, but he wasn’t able to be in Congress since deputies cannot get reelected on consecutive terms. Villalta ran for deputy candidate again in 2018 and became the only FA member in the Legislative Assembly for the 2018-2022 period.
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Now, he is again running for President after four years as Congress representative, and polls show him in the top five out of more than 25 candidates. Villalta says that some of the radical ideas he supported in the past no longer define him or his government plan. For instance, he is now vocally critical of leftist Latin American regimes like the ones in Venezuela or Nicaragua, whereas years ago he and the FA supported them without question. His proposed policies are more centered than ever before, and his program shifted from far-left politics to more social democratic stances. In the 2022 ballot, there is even a candidate, Jhonn Vega (from the Workers’ Party), who is more to the left than Villalta, and some left-leaning sectors are now more critical of his discourse.
“We want a fairer and more supportive Costa Rica for all,” Villalta said on December 2021, while presenting his government plan. For that, the FA candidate proposes lowering the cost of living, supporting small companies and independent workers, regulating the medicine market, and putting an end to unfair competition and speculative practices in several sectors. He defines his program as “tico socialism,” which is explained as a “deep, real and advanced democracy, an economic democracy that is not incompatible with the private enterprise, rather it is complementary.”
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Government plan
Immigration. José María Villalta was the only member of the current Legislative Assembly that voted against the digital nomads’ bill that was passed in 2021 and which provides benefits to foreigners with incomes above $3,000 per month who want to come and live in Costa Rica. He criticized the bill, saying that the minimum income to benefit from it is double the average monthly income per household in Costa Rica, and warning that, because of this law, the country risks being classified as a tax haven according to OECD standards. In his government plan, he exclusively proposes policies regarding Latin American, African, Arab, and Indigenous immigration.
Business. The FA presidential candidate is critical of the “imbalances” between the “advantages and privileges” that foreign companies have in the country, and the “abandonment” of national companies, “especially small and medium-sized ones.” This is why his party says it wants to promote productive linkages between foreign direct investment and local companies, and “encourage the permanence of all foreign direct investment that are labor, fiscal and environmentally responsible.” He doesn’t propose an end to Free Economic Zones (“zonas francas”), but he wants to impose a solidarity tax on them without damaging their productivity.
Taxes. True to his leftist worldview, Villalta considers that the fiscal policy of the country must be guided by three principles: tax justice, sufficiency, and sustainability. The FA tax proposal is “focused on highly progressive measures, which will not increase the tax burden on people with medium and low incomes, which will combat tax fraud head-on, and which will ensure public finances capable of ensuring citizens’ access to their fundamental rights,” according to their program. This logic applies to companies too, since they want to introduce a temporary tax on the profits of the largest companies in the country, as well as a tax on income and capital gains.
Health and quality of life. The FA is for legal, free and safe abortion in the public health system, wants to protect the rights of sexually diverse people, and agrees that cannabis should be legalized for medicinal, industrial, and recreational use. Villalta and the party see health and security as “axes of development and realization of rights”, and put mental health at the center of their policy to improve the quality of life in Costa Rica. To do this, they propose empowering the public social security system and undoing the privatization of health services.
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