by Rod Hughes

The National Liberation Party election last month of Antonio Calderon that put him into the powerful general secretary seat underscores the profound changes the party has undergone since its members nominated Oscar Arias for a second term in 2005. Calderon, 49, is a centrist who defeated his left-wing opponent, Rolando Gonzalez, 57, by a healthy margin of 73-41 in the national assembly of party leaders.

Only a few years ago, such a victory for a centrist and pro-Central American Free Trade Agreement politician would have been unthinkable, as an article by Gillian Gillers implied in the Feb. 15 edition of the English-language weekly The Tico Times. Calderon, a lawyer and member of the party’s political board, had less experience than Gonzalez, a former lawmaker and general secretary. But it is Calderon who will have the clout in 2010 in picking the next Liberation presidential and Legislative Assembly candidates.

National Liberation began during the troubled 1940s as a think tank for concerned University of Costa Rica students as the Center of Political Studies. One of the greatest influences on the Center was a Cartago farmer named Jose Figueres, a liberal who became the national icon “Don Pepe,” a future military leader in Costa Rica’s brief 1948 civil war, two-term president and a powerful proponent of democracy in an era when dictatorships and oppressive oligarchies dominated Latin America.

The Center developed a socialist philosophy while avoiding the extreme of Marxism, a moderate position comfortable to Costa Rican voters. When the military junta headed by Figueres dissolved the army and began a program of nationalizations, then voluntarily stepped down so elected President Otilio Ulate could finish his term, the Center students applauded and incorporated Figueres into their fledgling party. The party became the first broad-based modern political party in the country, shunning the traditional Latin scheme of politicians being “caudillos,” strongmen who considered the party an extension of their own personalities.

In the 1950s, Figueres rode the wave of nationalization of industry fashionable in Third World nations but in a distinctive, Costa Rican way, buying the industry, not confiscating it. Thus, for example, the refinery run by Allied Chemical became RECOPE, the National Refinery. Costa Rica developed a capitalist-socialist mix that even the home-grown communist party could live with, although later Kremlin-admiring extremists would try to wrest power from Communist leader Manuel Mora.

Thus, there was room under Liberation’s umbrella for a variety of viewpoints. Former Center students such as Luis Alberto Monge, Daniel Oduber and Gonzalo Facio became powerful in the new party. It was partly to counter this vibrant force that President Rodrigo Carazo gathered the smaller parties that had supported him during his successful campaign, creating the Social Christian Unity Party. So the country became essentially a two-party system, Liberation on the left, Unity on the right, neither one far from the center.

Just how broad-based Liberation would be is best illustrated by the 1980s campaign for presidential nomination of Manuel Castillo, former president of the Central Bank and a member of the party Old Guard. This reporter followed Castillo to a rally of supporters during the tumultuous days when this country stood on the edge of a cauldron of civil wars. Castillo, despite his patrician, aloof style, was very much the democrat and it was painful to watch his discomfort as his supporters became more and more extreme in their opposition to the Communists, even the peaceful ones in the country. He had landed in a radical far-right gathering of his party’s faithful and the experience disturbed him.

When a young Liberation stalwart named Oscar Arias brashly proposed to become the party’s nominee, the Old Guard of the party was not happy. But Arias was well qualified, a graduate of the London School of Economics, obviously an intellectual and popular with the younger voters. He won the nomination and then the election with only lukewarm support of the party leaders. Then, despite party counsel to the contrary, he embarked on a diplomatic “peace offensive” that successfully brought the Central American civil wars to a halt and gained him the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize.

The local press, except for the English-language weekly, The Tico Times, editorially opposed his foreign policy and claimed that it took too much of his attention from internal economic affairs. Ironically, when Arias was finally re-elected to a second term in 2006, he made economics his crusade. But before that happened, he was to remain in the political wilderness, unable constitutionally to serve a second term until that law was overturned by the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber.

When he made it clear that the issue of CAFTA was central to his campaign, the party Old Guard nearly swallowed their teeth. Figures such as ex-president Monge refused to campaign for him and others left the party altogether. But Arias won out, through the same combination of astuteness, perseverance and intellect that landed him a peace prize. He had been successful in his peace initiative, after all, against the pressures of the Reagan Administration, the CIA and the State Department. He was no stranger to fierce opposition.

But politics abhors a vacuum. Liberation’s former place on the left was taken by the Citizen Action Party (PAC), bitter foes of CAFTA. After the lackluster 2006 election performance of Unity, that position on the right has been taken by the Libertarians. (Unity was badly wounded by corruption charges against two of its ex-presidents, a presidential candidate who did not, to put it mildly, set the electorate afire with enthusiasm and by the disappointing administration of Dr. Abel Pacheco, frozen by congressional chaos of multiple parties.)

Arias continues to show a marked sympathy for business, setting him apart from previous Liberation presidents who, while hardly hostile to private enterprise, paid far closer attention to social programs. Will he continue to lead Liberation down its new course? One never knows because the party has already gone through one drastic transition.

(The point of view of this analysis is solely that of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of the brokers and staff of American-European Real Estate. Your comments on the above or any other article in this news blog is warmly welcomed.)