Elections in Costa Rica 2018

The elections of Costa Rica were celebrated between February and May 2018. 

There were five important candidates of the presidency: Who was winning the elections was Fabricio Alvarado, in the second position it was Álvarez Desanti, Juan Diego Castro was the third one, Rodolfo Piza was the fourth one and the last one was Carlos Alvarado. The first elections were interesting because Fabricio Alvarado and Carlos Alvarado who didn't have much opportunities to win, won the majority of the votes. After that, they had to participate in a second elections to know who was going to be the president.

Fabricio and Carlos are totally different, so why they won the first elections?

Fabricio was part of a political party called "Restauración Nacional" and Carlos Alvarado is from "Acción ciudadana".

Fabricio knows that a lot of people in our country are very religious, so his political campaign was based in religion. He said that he wants to protect the traditional family and the values, that was the reason why he disagreed sexual education in school or high school, homosexual marriage and abort. He wanted Costa Rica stop being part of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights and a lot of people were agree with him and his proposes. 

Fabricio is evangelic, but not only evangelic people support him, even Catholics did too. One of the things that helped Fabricio gain votes was his opinion about a laic state. He wanted that Catholic continue being the official religion in the country but Carlos Alvarado wanted a laic state.

The situation with Fabricio is an example about how religion is an influence in the governmental power. People are using the religion to gain votes in different countries of the world.

But, what about Carlos Alvarado? Why people support him?

A lot of people were disagree with Fabricio Alvarado, they were angry because Fabricio was using the religion to be the president and they thought that religion and politics are not related. 

But the main reason people didn't support Fabricio was the proposals of him. He just talked about homosexual couples, abort and other polemic topics and people needed to know about the economical situation, about the tax plan, education and other topics that will affect everyone. Also people thought that Fabricio was threatening the human rights. 

One day after the first elections, a group of friends created "Costa Rican Coalition", a group in Facebook. This social movement had a specific objective: Inform people about all proposes, not only about homosexuality and abort. This group thought that Carlos Alvarado was the best candidate, so they start supporting him. 

It is very interesting how social networks could help a political campaign, people post their opinion in this group and they felt more involved in the campaign. This social movement gave an answer about what kind of people Costa Ricans are and changed the mind of a lot of people who supported Fabricio Alvarado at first.