When Costa Ricans go to the polls on Sunday, they will be choosing more than their next president. The vote could also determine whether the current administration’s governing style — marked by efforts to erode democratic norms — is reinforced or rejected.
Facing a record-breaking homicide crisis and a government at odds with the judicial and electoral authorities, many Costa Ricans have largely embraced the administration of President Rodrigo Chaves, a right-wing populist who has tried to weaken the institutions that act as checks on his power.
Now, his handpicked successor, Laura Fernández, has emerged as the front-runner in a race where she is competing against 19 other candidates — including a former first lady and a high school teacher.
Ms. Fernández, 39, who served as Mr. Chaves’s chief liaison with the Legislative Assembly, is hovering at or above the 40 percent threshold needed to secure a first-round victory and avoid a runoff, according to recent polls.
Her closest opponents, Álvaro Ramos, an economist and technocrat, and Claudia Dobles, a former first lady with a progressive agenda, remain in a distant second place with 9 and 8.6 percent of likely voters, respectively, according to a recent poll by the University of Costa Rica.
While Costa Rican law bars Mr. Chaves from seeking a consecutive term, Ms. Fernández has mostly campaigned on a platform that would see a continuation of his mandate, a message that has resonated with an electorate deeply troubled by rising crime.
Concerns about organized transnational criminal groups have been growing across Latin America, and have spread even into once-stable safe havens like Costa Rica.
Ms. Fernández has proposed imposing states of emergency to curtail civil rights in high-crime zones. She has promised to overhaul the court system that Mr. Chaves has accused of sabotaging his administration. And she has pledged to finish the construction of a Salvadoran-style prison commissioned by her former boss.
Sitting outside Ms. Fernández’s final campaign rally on Thursday, Karla Evans, 60, said she had faith in the candidate’s security proposals, specifically the new prison.
“That’s going to have a ripple effect,” Ms. Evans said. “Once that prison is built and they see how they’re going to be treated, everything will calm down.”
But experts warn that human rights abuses are often tied to some of these iron-fisted measures. And they fear that Ms. Fernández will fulfill Mr. Chaves’s wishes to concentrate power, which has led to authoritarian governments elsewhere in Central America.
“We have experienced an attack on the democratic institutions, which deeply worries us,” Claudia Paz y Paz, the director for Central America and Mexico at the Center for Justice and International Law, said of the Chaves administration. “There is a danger when you try to undermine the various checks and balances that exist.”
For nearly 80 years, Costa Rica, a country of more than five million people, has been a regional outlier of peace.
After a short civil war that left more than 2,500 people dead, the country famously abolished its army in 1949, trading its weapons for teachers and its soldiers for scientists. The nation redirected military funding toward public health, education and social infrastructure. And it placed its elections under the control of an independent tribunal and created government watchdog agencies.
But the deteriorating security situation has tested the country’s commitment to pacifism and its respect for the foundations of its democracy.
“There is a contradiction with what we have been as a society, or what we have pretended to be,” said Giselle Boza, a leading expert on freedom of expression. “This election has cast doubt on whether Costa Ricans really were so pacifist, so conciliatory, so law-abiding. It seems that this is not the case.”
Today, democracy observers continue to give Costa Rica a healthy ranking, but their latest reports carry a new set of warnings. At the center of those warnings is Mr. Chaves, a former World Bank official who was elected in 2022 amid revelations of sexual harassment, which he repeatedly denied.
Since taking office, he has used his weekly news conferences to attack anyone he sees as an obstacle — from prosecutors and lawmakers to journalists and his own party’s leadership — accusing them of being enemies of the people, of wanting to orchestrate coups against him and of stalling his policy proposals.
To justify his attacks, Mr. Chaves has popularized the claim that Costa Rica, with all of its checks and balances, is a “perfect dictatorship” where unelected bureaucrats thwart the president’s decisions.
Among his proposals is a bill designed to strip the comptroller general, a key government watchdog, of its power to oversee public contracts before money is spent. Mr. Chaves and Ms. Fernández see the agency as an obstacle to development; critics say it’s a major guardrail against corruption.
Analysts say that many Costa Ricans have come to perceive their judiciary as corrupt and their party system as out of touch with people’s everyday problems, and that they blame the political elites for widening inequality. A recent survey found that three-quarters of the country no longer identifies with a political party.
Tensions ran high last year, when the Supreme Court requested that Mr. Chaves’s presidential immunity — which prevents him from facing trial — be lifted to face corruption charges over a contract awarded to benefit a close ally of his. Months later, Costa Rica’s electoral authority, too, called for his immunity to be lifted after accusing him of using his power to meddle in Sunday’s elections and benefit Ms. Fernández.
In both cases, lawmakers fell short of the 38-vote supermajority required to prosecute Mr. Chaves, whose term ends in May.
Mr. Chaves criticized those efforts as being politically motivated, arguing that his opponents were trying to weaponize these institutions to avoid losing their grip over the country. He has also accused them of sabotaging his administration, which has been rocked by the expansion of organized crime.
And if something is on the minds of voters, it is insecurity.
In recent years, Costa Ricans have witnessed levels of violence they had rarely experienced before, with about 900 homicides every year since 2023 — figures that remain nearly 50 percent higher than those seen before Mr. Chaves took office. The rise in violence has come as the country transforms into a major transshipment hub for cocaine bound for the United States and Europe, facilitated by local criminal groups working with Mexican cartels. Last year, Costa Rica designated the South Caribbean Cartel as the country’s first transnational criminal organization.
The government’s efforts have not been enough to address what experts have called an “epidemic” of homicides that touches even those with no ties to drug trafficking. Authorities identified at least 873 killings last year, of which 86 victims, including dozens of minors, have been recognized as collateral damage.
A 13-year-old was shot in the head. A young mother was gunned down during a shootout near a mechanic’s shop. Gunmen opened fire at a recent Christmas celebration, killing three people.
“You don’t even want to go out at night anymore,” said Evelyn Villareal, a researcher who studies Costa Rica’s judicial system. “Because of this fear of organized crime, people are looking for a savior, a strongman who will protect them.”
Mr. Chaves has embraced that role with measurable success. Polling from the University of Costa Rica shows that he has consistently maintained a high approval rating, often hovering near 60 percent.
Ms. Fernández, who has said she will offer him a position in her cabinet if she is elected, has made his projects her own.
Her agenda, for example, includes finalizing the construction of the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime, or CACCO, a prison on the outskirts of the capital, San José.
The project is intended to mimic the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, the facility that President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador transformed into his signature “mega prison” — an emblem of his crackdown on gangs. This year, Mr. Chaves invited Mr. Bukele to symbolically inaugurate the prison, which is set to open in June.
But if Ms. Fernández wants to see Mr. Chaves’s plans accomplished, a possible victory at the polls would not be enough. Her party, Pueblo Soberano, would also need to secure at least 38 seats at the Legislative Assembly, a supermajority that she has specifically campaigned on.
It remains unclear whether the party will achieve a supermajority. But experts say that getting those seats could shift the balance of power in Costa Rica.
It would give Mr. Chaves’s movement the power to appoint a new slate of loyalist magistrates, which could lead to greater control over the judiciary. It would make Ms. Fernández’s bills immune to opposition overrides. And it would provide a path to amend the country’s constitution and permit consecutive presidential re-election — a goal top officials within the movement have openly discussed.
Some of Ms. Fernández’s supporters have made up their minds.
“Nobody is going to tell me, ‘Oh, they’re going to endanger this or that.’ No,” said Ms. Evans, the voter outside her campaign rally. “I put my faith in God that she will be elected and that she will do something good.”
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Mexico City, covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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