Elections in Costa Rica 2026: Expert analyzes positions of candidates

Luis Fernando Calvo, director of the Tomás Moro Institute and expert in Social Doctrine of the Church, analyzes the positions and challenges of those who are emerging as the three main candidates for the presidency of Costa Rica in the 2026 elections.

The general elections in the Central American country will be held on February 1, 2026. Costa Ricans will elect their new president, the two vice presidents and the 57 deputies of the legislative assembly. If the next president does not receive at least 40% of the votes, the second round will be on April 5.

The three main candidates so far, explains the expert in an interview with EWTN News, are Laura Fernández Delgado, from the Sovereign People’s Party (PPSO), Álvaro Ramos from the National Liberation Party, the oldest in the country; and Fabricio Alvarado who “is from the representative of New Republic, which is a party with an evangelical Christian orientation.”

Essential topics such as the defense of life

Calvo, master in Social Doctrine of the Church from the University of Salamanca (Spain) and university professor, specifies that “Laura Fernández has expressed being pro-life, being in favor of the right to life, but at the same time she has appeared openly supporting the 2030 Agenda.”

“So it seems to me that in Laura’s case certainly some encouraging statements have been deduced from her on these very significant and sensitive issues, but at the same time there have been some contradictions in some acts and events of the past,” he adds.

In the case of Fabrizio Alvarado, he continued, “we see that there is an agenda that at least in the speech is openly pro-life, openly in favor of natural marriage and in this sense he historically has a more stable pro-life voting record, but what he has certainly lacked is for this speech to be translated into concrete actions.”

“And in the case of Álvaro Ramos we know that he is Catholic and is a person with a Catholic background in general. He, apparently, is an active person in the faith: he attends Holy Mass, but he has not yet expressed himself clearly” regarding the defense of life and natural marriage

Costa Rica’s challenges

After pointing out that several of the challenges have to do with the economy and employment, Luis Fernando Calvo said that he hopes that the next president “will reverse what I could call the destruction of the human being: we have a reality where the human being is being pulled, is being forced, is being pulled, is being tattered everywhere and this is noticeable not only in the agenda, for example, of the culture of death, of abortion.”

“In Costa Rica we have a technical abortion standard, in vitro fertilization, which has also been legal for some years” and in society we see “exacerbated consumerism, individualism and the very low birth rate.”

Another challenge has to do with the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality in a country and which in Costa Rica “is more worrying” because “it offers negative results with a very poor rating.”

“We have a reasonably good standard of living, but there are serious problems in properly redistributing wealth and it seems to us that this Catholic logic is fundamental,” he said.

The expert also referred to the strong polarization in the country, as in the rest of the region, where there are “very marked processes of social division” and the increase in insecurity “due to the terrible increase in homicides, organized crime, which even enters the high spheres of politics.”