by Raúl Costales
Peter Guevara | 
Carlos Herrera | 
Carlos Salazar |
Federico Malavassi | 
Jose Francisco Salas | 
Ronaldo Alfaro |
The readers of Freedom Network News will by now be well aware of Costa Rican Congressman Otto Guevara, of the birth of the Movimiento Libertario in 1994 and of its electoral success in 1998. Such success continued in the February 3, 2002 election with the election of 6 out of a total of 57 Congressional seats. Nationwide we received about 140,000 votes for Congress, which represents 9.33% of the total, and more thantriple the vote we got in 1998. For each of the 7 provinces, our totals ranged from 2.7%to 11.8% of the vote; and only in one province (our lowest) did we miss electing aCongressman by more than 2%.
If you want to know more about these candidates, their pictures and
resumés appear in the English section of our website: www.libertario.org. There were several extremely close races which eventually went to a recount. Peter Guevara (Otto's brother) from Puntarenas province, after 2 recounts squeaked through by 6 votes. Carlos Herrera from Cartago province (whom some of you may remember from the London, Canada ISIL conference in 2000) was also elected (after a recount) by 331 votes. The other 4 were Federico Malavassi and Ronaldo Alfaro from San José province, Carlos Salazar from Alajuela province and José Francisco Salas from Heredia province.
The victory celebration at Movimiento Libertario headquarters.
Otto Guevara is in the middle. This gives the Libertarians about 10.52% of the Congressional seats. In the U.S. this would be the equivalent of electing 10 Senators and 45 Congressmen. We think that's enough to block Big Brother in many instances, and to achieve plenty of libertarian goals in the meantime.
We knew that at this stage it was a very remote possibility that our Presidential candidate Otto Guevara would win the Presidency of the country, although at one point he did attract 10% of preferences.
Another good result of the election was that for the first time in Costa Rican history the "minor" parties together were able to stop either of the traditional parties' Presidential candidates from obtaining the required 40% to avoid a runoff (which, incidentally, will occur on April 7th). This has sent a very loud message to the bipartisan monopoly that has ruled this country for so many years.
We also think that the Movimiento Libertario is proving that a principled,morally-centered defense of libertarianism can attract many voters in a relatively shorttime. When we founded our party, the libertarian philosophy was unknown in Costa Rica.When I first approached today's most popular local Libertarian, Otto Guevara, askinghim if he knew of the libertarian philosophy, he said: "No, what the heck is that?"
We have come a long way since then!
A factor that has us very excited is the great support we are receiving from young people – not only the youngest voters, but also high-school and college students who will vote for the first time in 2006. That support is understandable from many viewpoints, not least of which is that many young people are naturally rebellious, and libertarians are rebellious against the current political establishment, to say the least! But it's also the great advances in technology that have made these young people more self-reliant and unwilling to accept government control over their lives. Anyway, we will dramaticallyincrease our activity in high schools and colleges in the near future.
During the first months we concentrated on a Presidential campaign through TV ads, starting last July 16. Since Otto had been chosen best Congressman in many public opinion polls and by the news media, we had a positively-rated spokesman. Still, only about 60% of the people knew of him. By the end of our campaign, his name recognitionrose to 94.5%.
Our objective was to run a serious Presidential campaign that would air libertarian ideas and end up getting us invited to a nationally-televised debate with the traditional party candidates. We achieved that on January 7. And in his conclusion in that debate, Otto asked for the support of our Congressional candidates, and appealed to viewers to split their vote, which is fairly common in Costa Rica. (That is, to vote for someone whoreally has a chance to win the Presidential race this time, but vote for Congressionalcandidates from another party). So, when Otto's Presidential preference was pushing10% and our Congressional preference was much lower, we changed our message andbecame the only one of the four leading parties to seek (almost exclusively) theCongressional vote. The result was a rapid decline in Otto's Presidential preference ("Hewon't win, he's still too young", etc.) and a big increase in what we were really seeking:Congressional preference. In the end Otto only got 1.68% of the Presidential preference(about 25,000 votes), but it helped us achieve our main goal this time and laid thegroundwork for 2006.
We had budgeted $200,000 for our campaign, and exceeded that by about 8.5% because we were able to raise the money and increase our TV presence during the last month. Only about 10% of the money was raised overseas. Our TV campaign, includingproduction costs, absorbed 87% of our campaign costs; another 5% went towards radioand newspaper ads during the last 2 weeks, and the remainder was spent on flyers,billboards, flags, T-shirts, caps and bumper stickers. Nothing was spent on salaries, sinceall work was done on a volunteer basis, and we had no office-rental costs, since all spacewas donated – including a Party headquarters office in San José during the last 2 monthsof the campaign.
The total cost of $217,000, divided by the number of Congressmen we elected, comes out to a per-Congressman cost of $36,000.
Libertarians Refuse Welfare From Politicians
The ironic thing is that as libertarians we refused any "government" funds for ourcampaign, and were the only party to do so. But preliminary estimates indicate that wewould have been entitled to about $811,000 – nearly 4 times what we spent! You can betthat we will publicize this soon, as well as attacking the other 3 parties that qualified forsuch funds and will receive them.
No party even came close to getting a majority of Congressional seats (the leader only got a third). Further, 56 of the 57 seats are split among 4 parties, and we are one of them! This means that our negotiating power will increase significantly from our current 1 against 56, "David versus Goliath" situation. This should enable us to push forward some items in the libertarian agenda during the next 4 years, and to more effectively block legislation that violates individual rights.
But most importantly, there will be an increased discussion of libertarian ideas throughout the country. The Movimiento Libertario is a topic of study for high schooland college students, who regularly visit our Congressional office to learn more aboutlibertarianism. And the news media gives libertarian positions a prominent place.Further, our website in Spanish includes current Congressional topics, our positions andproposals, libertarian comics (a favorite of ours), our book, a test to find out if one is alibertarian, and much more.
What drives us in the Movimiento Libertario is a can-do attitude that seeks to attain liberty in our lifetime. If you want to join our worldwide team to make it happen, pleasevisit the English section of our website.
Raúl Costales (candoteam@libertario.org), a Cuban expatriate, is the former Chair of the Libertarian Party of Florida, and co-founder and Secretary General of Costa Rica's libertarian political party, Movimiento Libertario.
International Society for Individual Liberty
> Costa Rican Libertarian Victory
