by Rod Hughes
Costa Rican icon Franklin Chang has publicly come out in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which will surely cheer pro-CAFTA adherants as the clock tics away toward the Oct. 7 referendum on the divisive issue.
Of course, anti-CAFTA naysayers will say that this is hardly surprising from a NASA astronaut, dual U.S.-Costa Rican citizen who received his scientific university education in the United States. Still, Chang was a member of the so-called Committee of Notables who last year analyzed and reported on the pact but came short of either favoring it or condemning it. Chang himself takes the stance that “there is more good for Costa Rica than bad,” far from a total whitewash of the trade treaty offered by some proponents.
Meanwhile, pollsters are hard at work. A Unimer survey of registered voters published in the daily La Nación reveals that 53% of those surveyed said they would vote in the referendum, a comfortable margin above the 40% that the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) has set as the minimum suffrage necessary to make the result binding. Only 13% of the 1,300 voters interviewed definitely said they would not vote. But another 24% were lukewarm about going to the polls, expressing doubts that they would but not adamant about it.
Then, the pollsters zeroed in on those definitely decided to vote and found that 51.5% would vote for the country to enter CAFTA, while 42.!& would vote no. (The survey carries a measure of plus or minus 2.7% error.)
Curiously, women were more apt to vote no than the men. Of men, 56% will vote yes, 38% no. Women, on the other hand, are marginally opposed—only 46% are in the yes category while 47% will reject CAFTA, according to the poll.
The result, although encouraging to the pro-CAFTA adherants, hardly invites complacency, raising the spector of a last minute shift. In this country, we can still expect to be bombarded with even more propaganda from both sides. And both sides this week received a rebuke from the TSE for playing it fast and loose with the truth.