Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias Takes Presidency
By Eric Robinson
Two decades after his first overwhelmingly successful term as president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was sworn in again today as president. His second term seems to hold as many difficulties as his first term, but totally different in nature.
Born into a wealthy coffee family, Arias studied law and economics at the University of Costa Rica and Harvard, then earned a masters degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D in political science at the University of Essex in England.
His main challenge in his first term beginning in 1986 evolved around bringing peace to war-torn Central America. Though encouraged by the myopic US government to enter the war and support the re-establishment of the dictatorial right wing Nicaraguan contras in exchange for foreign aid, in a come-from-behind victory, the Ticos chose instead to elect the young peace advocate Oscar Arias as president in 1986. Arias urged US President Ronald Reagan to give economic aid to Central America rather than military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. His peace plan was said by Reagan to be “fatally flawed”, however Arias convinced five Central American presidents to sign the plan ending the Nicaraguan revolution bringing stability to the region. Arias emphasized the risks they ran to ensure peace would always be less than the irreparable cost of war. In 1987 when Arias received the Nobel Peace Prize, Ticos proudly viewed it as their own.
But now things couldn’t be different. While his popularity reached a resounding 84% in his first term, this time the sixty five year old Arias won by a hair, and only received 41% of all votes cast in a low turn-out election. His challenges are also very different, stemming largely from domestic problems, and the deep ideological division of Ticos regarding CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement) with the United States. Though Arias is in favour in principal with the agreement, he opposes ‘the abusive protectionism of the North’. He has also been an outspoken critic of the US involvement in the war in Iraq.
The office of the presidency in Costa Rica has been weakened over the last twenty years, as a number of powerful institutions and rights organizations have been created. The gap between rich and poor is widening, as education, health care, housing and public security are inadequate. Arias will need to govern with humility, which he is not used to. He will need to balance his traditional pro-environment views against the economic benefits of supporting industry.
Many voters that supported Arias this time did so for his international image “The real world does not allow us to live in isolation. Today the problems of one are the problems of all”, quoting him from a 1989 speech. Arias, being the first Nobel Prize laureate to ever return to presidency, in his own quiet, refined way may surprise all of us.