Word: costa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
During the campaign, Carazo at tacked the ills that had accumulated during eight years of National Liberation rule, including proliferating bureaucracy, reckless government spending and creeping socialism. Another issue was outgoing President Daniel Oduber's connections with Robert L. Vesco, the expatriate U.S. financier who fled to Costa Rica in 1972 to avoid facing U.S. charges of embezzling $224 million from a Geneva-based mutual fund he controlled. Carazo vowed to have Vesco expelled "for the nation's health." But Carazo's victory mostly reflected the voters' concern about the danger of continuismo, the permanent entrenchment...
...party has dominated Costa Rica's political life since 1948, when Party Founder José ("Pepe") Figueres beat back an attempted Communist coup that was launched on the issue of a fraudulent election. Subsequently, Figueres and Successor Oduber pushed through laws that have made Costa Rica what Ticos believe to be an almost tamper-proof democracy...
Institutionally, the key to the Costa Rican electoral system is a five-member group of independent jurists known as the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones, or T.S.E. Six months before voting day, and after the parties have made their nominations, the T.S.E. takes over the election machinery and assumes operational control of the country's 6,000 civil and rural guards; on election day, it dispatches some of the guards to the polls to maintain order but confines the rest to their barracks. The tribunal also oversees a highly refined campaign-financing system. Before the campaigning begins, the treasury distributes...
Besides all this carefully tended electoral machinery, Costa Rica has some advantages that help it maintain its allegiance to democracy. For one thing, political divisions are not sharp in a country that has achieved broad literacy (90%) and an average per capita income ($ 1,100) that is the highest in Central America. Costa Rica also benefits from a productive influx of European immigrants and a vigorous middle class...
...same advantages could be applied to Chile, Argentina or Uruguay, of course. What sets Costa Rica apart is the fact that, outside of a McHale's Navy consisting of three gunboats, it maintains no armed forces beyond the civil and rural guards. That largely precludes the possibility of any man on horseback seizing power by force. With no external enemies or guerrilla problem to deal with, Costa Ricans feel no need for armed muscle. Shrugs Foreign Minister Gonzalo Facio: "If we spent money on arms, we would probably have a smaller per capita income...