SI wins the Referendum

The official results of the referendum are 51.6 for and 48.4 against the CAFTA. The breakdown by provinces are the following:

San Jose: SI 51.7 NO 48.3

Heredia: SI 52.4 NO 47.6

Alajuela: SI 48.9 NO 51

Guanacaste: SI 47.3 NO 52.7

Puntarenas: SI 49.4 NO 50.6

Cartago: SI 56.5 NO 43.5

Limon: SI 54.9 No 45.1

The most surprising of these is no doubt San Jose, having voted overwhelmingly against president Arias and the PLN in last year’s elections and having repeatedly and decidedly appeared opposed to the CAFTA in various polls, the fact that it now voted in favor if the treaty is very strange and surprising. Guanacaste and Puntarenas were expected to come out srongly in favor of the TLC and did not. Even though the CAFTA was the most important issue in the national elections last year, votes in this referendum do not seem to have much to do with votes last year. Attempt to explain this vary widely. Some claim that there was fraud and that the organizers of the fraud, after having manipulated the rural provinces last time, decided to focus solely on San Jose this time, implying that the victory in the provinces is exemplary for what would have happened in San Jose without the fraud. Others, including some researchers of the UCR have found an interesting trend of vote reversal among the voters in Costa Rica. According to this observation, there is this strange trend of switching back and forth of the vote. So if the provinces voted for the Conservatives in one election and the central valley for the social democrats, then in the next elections it will be the central valley that votes conservative and the provinces that vote social democratic. So this could have something to do with the strange inconsistencies in votes. Others argue that the leaders of the NO spent too mauch time at their desks running the national campaign and did not do enough street work in the inner city. As more results come out, I will pick up this issue again…You can find more detailed results on the webpage of the Electoral Tribunal.

While on Sunday night, the leaders of the NO refused to concede, by Monday midday, Ottón Solís of the PAC, José Merino of the Frente Amplio, and Oscar López of the PASE accepted the results. The only grouping that is still holding out is the Movimiento Patriotico del NO al TLC under the leadership of Eugenio Trejos. Recall that this movement is based on hundreds of so-called Patriotic Committees in communities that have been organizing the local No campaigns. In an emergency meeting Monday afternoon, the Movimiento decided to have the local committees review the results their observers recorded and make a decision whether or not to accept the official results. An assembly of nation delegates will take an official vote later in the week instructing Trejos on what to do next. Some Comités have reported inconsistencies between the voted recorded by them and those reported by the TSE. More on this as it develops…

But with every single opposition politicians in the legislative assembly having accepted the victory of the CAFTA, it is hard to imagine what the movement could do now to stop the CAFTA.

Whether or not fraud was committed with the ballots, one thing is undeniable: the YES side violated the media blackout. Costa Rican law states that there is to be no campaigning and reporting on the campaigns during the last three days before an election. Several TV channels and the main newspapers did not follow the blackout order when they reported on the ongoing debate over the CBI benefits and possible expiration between US and Costa Rican officials, and comments by Bush administration officials regarding possible retaliation in case of a rejection of the CAFTA. (see La Nación of Friday, and Saturday for example). A blatant example was the coverage of the channel Repretel, owned by President Arias, of the dangers of loosing CBI benefits in case of a rejection of the TLC on Sunday morning as the the voting booths opened. Repretel interviewed representatives of the pineapple, banana, tuna, and textile industries stating variously that they will have to close down, relocate, cut back jobs, etc of the CAFTA does not go into effect.