Scientist Laura Fernández was elected president of Costa Rica on Sunday with 48.7% of the vote, prevailing in a fragmented race with 20 candidates.
The election was shaped by growing public anxiety over violent crime, after the country recorded a homicide rate of 16.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025 — a historic high that turned public security into the decisive electoral issue.
Security replaces stability as political currency
For decades, Costa Rica marketed itself as Central America’s democratic exception: no standing army, strong institutions, and relatively low violence. That narrative fractured as organized crime expanded logistics routes through the country, transforming ports and urban corridors into nodes of transnational trafficking. Fernández’s victory reflects not ideological enthusiasm, but a defensive vote driven by fear.
Continuity with a harder edge
Aligned with outgoing president Rodrigo Chaves, Fernández campaigned on continuity — but with sharper rhetoric on law enforcement and institutional reform. Her platform promised faster judicial processes, stronger police coordination, and a more assertive state response to organized crime networks increasingly linked to global drug markets.
Fragmentation benefits incumbency
Runner-up Álvaro Ramos, from the PLN, secured 33.18% of the vote but failed to consolidate opposition support. With 20 candidates on the ballot, dispersion worked in favor of the governing camp, allowing Fernández to win without a majority mandate — a result that underscores political volatility beneath Costa Rica’s democratic surface.
Costa Rica joins a continental pattern
From Ecuador to Mexico, Latin American democracies are reorganizing politics around security as criminal economies globalize faster than state capacity. Costa Rica’s election signals the end of exceptionalism: the country is now navigating the same pressures faced by peers embedded in transnational drug, arms, and money-laundering circuits. Fernández’s mandate is not about ideology — it is about restoring a sense of control in a system increasingly shaped by global crime flows.
