Arias All Set For Win
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Costa Rica's former president Oscar Arias is ready to return to power in presidential elections only two weeks away, as voters turn to an icon after a slew of corruption scandals.

Arias, running for the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN), is a 65-year-old free market moderate, and has a commanding lead and all polls show him easily winning more than 40 percent support required to sit in the presidential chair. The possibility of a second round vote, like in 2002, are unlikely as Arias should be declared president by end of the night of February 5.

Arias says he decided to run for another term to put this Central American nation back on course after it was rocked by bribery scandals shaming three other former presidents.

His campaign slogan is "Si, Costa Rica!", asking votes on radio and television "respectfully" for their vote so that Costa Rica can once again be on the road to great things.

Costa Rica is famed for its lush jungle, top quality coffee and ecotourism resorts but the disgrace has taken the wind out of the country's sails.

Arias is Costa Rica's most famous son after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for authoring a peace plan that helped end bloody civil wars elsewhere in Central America.

Support is high for Arias, who was president from 1986 to 1990, because he has not been smeared by the scandals, although critics slam him as heavy-handed and arrogant.

Former presidents Miguel Angel Rodríguez (1998-2002) and Rafael Angel (1990-1994) Calderón where both jailed then moved to house arrest and now continue to be free on bail while waiting trial. Both former presidents are of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC).

PUSC candidate Ricardo Toledo has been last or next to last for most of the election, perhaps due to the scandals or perhaps to the low ratings and negative publicity generated by outgoing president and Toledo's former boss, Abel Pacheco.

The PLN's former president José María Figueres Olsen (1994-1198) has been implicated in scandal though never charged and is holding out in Switzerland, where he hold citizenship in that country, and refusing to come to Costa Rica after many judicial request. Figueres has been a non-factor in the Arias campaign, experts say.

"For me he is an honest person. He has his companies, but he governs for everyone," said Ernesto Matamoros, 72, a retired bank employee who plans to vote for Arias, the scion of a wealthy coffee family and a lawyer and economist.

An Arias victory would buck a trend in Latin America, where leftists have won a spate of recent elections as voters turned their backs on free market policies.

Arias, who likens himself to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, backs the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Costa Rica is the only nation in the region still to ratify the so-called CAFTA accord.