The politics of Costa Rica take place in a framework of a presidential, representative democratic republic, with a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the president and their cabinet, and the President of Costa Rica is both the head of state and head of government. Legislative power is vested in the Legislative Assembly. The president and 57 Legislative Assembly deputies are elected for four-year terms. The judiciary operates independent of the executive and the legislature but remains involved in the political process. Costa Rica is a republic with a strong system of constitutional checks and balances. Voting is compulsory in Costa Rica but it is not enforced.
The Libertarian Movement Party is a political party based on libertarian conservatism in Costa Rica. It was founded in May 1994. After an important protagonism during early 2000s with its perennial nominee Otto Guevara among the main candidates and reaching third place in 2006 and 2010, it was affected by several corruption scandals and lack of funds, the party gradually suffered a debacle in 2014 ending in fourth on the presidential ticket, and fifth in Parliament. Later losing all its mayors in the mid-term local election of 2016, to finally having bad results in 2018 with Guevara's candidacy reaching only 1% of support and losing all seats in Congress.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría is a Costa Rican economist, lawyer, businessman and politician who served as President of Costa Rica from 1998 to 2002. He was minister of planning from 1968 to 1970 and minister of the presidency in 1970 during the administration of Jose Joaquin Trejos Fernandez ; member of the board of the Costa Rican Central Bank from 1966 to 1969; congressman from 1990 to 1993, serving as president of the Legislative Assembly during the 1991 to 1992 period; and was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004. He voluntarily stepped down from this post to return to his country to face allegations of financial wrongdoing during his presidential tenure in Costa Rica. On April 27 of 2011 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but this ruling was later reversed in a December 2012 decision by an appeals court, which found him innocent of all charges.
The Citizens' Action Party is a political party in Costa Rica.
Johnny Francisco Araya Monge is a Costa Rican politician. He was the mayor of the country's capital San José from 1998 to 2001 and again since 2003. He was also the co-president of the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) from 2010 to 2013. He is a member of the National Liberation Party (PLN) and was presidential candidate in the 2014 election.
Laura Chinchilla Miranda is a Costa Rican political scientist and politician who served as President of Costa Rica from 2010 to 2014. She was one of Óscar Arias Sánchez's two Vice-Presidents and his administration's Minister of Justice. She was the governing PLN candidate for president in the 2010 general election, where she won with 46.76% of the vote on 7 February. She was the eighth woman president of a Latin American country and the first woman to become President of Costa Rica. She was sworn in as President of Costa Rica on 8 May 2010.
Abortion in Costa Rica is severely restricted by criminal law. Currently, abortions are allowed in Costa Rica only in order to preserve the life or physical health of the woman. Abortions are illegal in almost all cases, including when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest and when the fetus suffers from medical problems or birth defects. Both social and economic factors have led to this legal status. It remains unclear whether abortions are legal to preserve the mental health of the woman, though the 2013 United Nations abortion report says Costa Rica does allow abortions concerning the mental health of a woman.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on Sunday, 2 February 2014 to elect a new president, two vice presidents, and 57 Legislative Assembly lawmakers. In accordance with Article 132 of the constitution, incumbent President Laura Chinchilla Miranda was ineligible to run for a second consecutive term.
Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera is a Costa Rican politician and educator who was the 47th President of Costa Rica from 2014 to 2018. He is a member of the Citizens' Action Party (PAC).
Ana Helena Chacón Echeverría is a Costa Rica politician, who served as the nation's 2nd Vice President, under Luis Guillermo Solís 2014–2018, and as Ambassador in Spain, under Carlos Alvarado. Her political career is dedicated to issues of feminism, human rights, and public health policy. Previously a cabinet minister and deputy, Chacón has also served on numerous committees and conferences on the national and international level.
Víctor Hugo Morales Zapata is a Costa Rican politician. He was a member of the Citizens' Action Party and the third deputy for San José for the 2014 to 2018 assembly. He resigned the party in 2017.
Renewable energy in Costa Rica supplied about 98.1% of the electrical energy output for the entire nation in 2016. Fossil fuel energy consumption in Costa Rica was 49.48 as of 2014, with demand for oil increasing in recent years. In 2014, 99% of its electrical energy was derived from renewable energy sources, about 80% of which from hydroelectric power. For the first 75 days of 2015, 100% of its electrical energy was derived from renewable energy sources and in mid 2016 that feat was accomplished for 110 consecutive days despite suboptimal weather conditions.
Sandra Cauffman is a Costa Rican-American specialist in electrical engineering and physics. She is known for her work at NASA in different projects. Her profile has been highlighted by UN Women for being a positive example for women, especially, youth and children. Cauffman worked for 25 years at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD in missions such as the mission to Mars MAVEN, and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-R. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. She served as the Deputy Director for the Earth Science Division from May 2016 - October 2021. She served as Acting Director in the Earth Science Division from February 2019 to June 2020. Cauffman started as a contractor with NASA on February 1, 1988, and became a NASA employee February 11, 1991. Cauffman is the first Costa Rican woman to lead a Mars-related mission.
General elections were held in Costa Rica in 2018 to elect both the President and Legislative Assembly. The first round of the presidential election was held on 4 February 2018, with the two highest-ranked candidates being Christian singer and Congressman Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz from the conservative National Restoration Party and writer and former Minister Carlos Alvarado Quesada from the progressive Citizens' Action Party, gaining 24% and 21% of the votes respectively. As no candidate received more than 40% of the first round vote, a second round run-off election was held on 1 April 2018 and was won by Carlos Alvarado Quesada, with a landslide victory of 60.6% of the vote.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Costa Rica was a part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have spread to Costa Rica on 6 March 2020, after a 49-year-old woman tourist from New York, United States, tested positive for the virus.
Thelma Darkings Bucknam is a Costa Rican actress and television presenter. She is known for hosting the Costa Rican talk show programs Conectados and previously Entre nos. Her film credits include Noi siamo angeli (1997), Caribe (2004), and El último comandante (2010).
Dragos Dolanescu Valenciano, known as Dragoș Dolănescu, is a Costa Rican psychologist and politician. Dolanescu is an independent congressman in the third year of the 2018-2022 legislative period. He gained his seat at the Legislative Assembly running in the Alajuela province race for the Partido Republicano Social Cristiano party (PRSC), which at the time he was also president of the organization. He resigned to PRSC after clashing with senior members of the party, who accused him of fund mismanagement in the 2020 municipal elections in retaliation for his resignation.
General elections were held in Costa Rica on 6 February 2022, to elect the president, two vice-presidents, and all 57 deputies of the Legislative Assembly. As none of the presidential nominees obtained at least 40% of the votes, a runoff was held on 3 April 2022, between the top two candidates, José María Figueres and Rodrigo Chaves Robles.
Carmen Geannina Dinarte Romero is a Costa Rican politician serving as the 30th and current minister of the Presidency of Costa Rica since 2020. A member of the Citizens' Action Party, she served as vice minister of SMEs and Entrepreneurship between 2014 and 2017 and as minister of Economy, Industry and Commerce between 2017 and 2018 in the Solís Rivera administration, and as minister of Labor and Social Security in the Alvarado Quesada administration from 2018 to 2020. Dinarte became the youngest person to hold the Ministry of the Presidency, as well as the third woman and the first person of Guanacastecan origin to do so, when she was appointed by president Carlos Alvarado Quesada in December 2020.
The 2021 Citizens' Action Party presidential primary or National Citizen Convention will be the primary selection process by which supporters of the Citizen Action Party selected their presidential candidate for the 2022 general elections on 8 August 2021.
