{"id":300284,"date":"2010-02-09T23:05:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T04:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/bravo-costa-rica-39260\/"},"modified":"2010-02-09T23:05:05","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T04:05:05","slug":"bravo-costa-rica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/300284","title":{"rendered":"Bravo Costa Rica!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>On 02.09.10 03:00 PM posted by Ray Walser<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Chinchilla100209.jpg\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Chinchilla100209.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The election of Laura Chinchilla of the National Liberation Party on February 7 to the presidency of Costa Rica is an important milestone for Central America. President-elect Chinchilla has become <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/09\/world\/americas\/09costarica.html\" >Costa Rica\u0092s first<\/a> female president and the fifth woman elected president of a Latin America state since 1990.  Her election represents a further blunting of the populist Left\u0092s mythical invincibility in the region, and offers a pleasing counterpoise to the likes of anti-American machismo of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In Panama, Honduras, Chile, and now Costa Rica, leaders of the center or center-right are winning elections, helping curb the march toward the radical Left.<\/p>\n<p>President-elect Chinchilla, a former vice president, considers herself a staunch democrat and will likely continue Costa Rica\u0092s leadership in advancing democracy, respect for human rights, a free press, and economic opportunity in the region.<\/p>\n<p>In this way, she would continue the legacy of two-time Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias, who will now assume a place in history alongside the legendary founder of modern Costa Rican democracy, \u0093Pepe\u0094 Figueres. Arias helped to end the Central American wars of the 1980s; he challenged the Latin American tendency to blame the U.S. for the region\u0092s economic and social shortcomings; and he helped negotiate a peaceful settlement of the Honduran presidential and constitutional crisis.<\/p>\n<p>It\u0092s a record that will take courage and conviction to follow, but Chinchilla appears ready. She has promised to pursue <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/news\/americas\/story\/1470006.html\" >free market<\/a> strategies, to fight crime and drug trafficking in Central America, and to work cooperatively with the United States. And that deserves a welcome response from Washington, indeed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/09\/bravo-costa-rica\/\" >http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/09\/bravo-costa-rica\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 02.09.10 03:00 PM posted by Ray Walser The election of Laura Chinchilla of the National Liberation Party on February 7 to the presidency of Costa Rica is an important milestone for Central America. President-elect Chinchilla has become Costa Rica\u0092s first female president and the fifth woman elected president of a Latin America state since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}