President Arias Still Below 50% in Costa Rica
Support for Costa Rican president Óscar Arias remains under the 50 per cent mark, according to a poll by Unimer released by La Nación.

45 per cent of respondents rate the president’s performance as good or very good, down two points since September.

Arias - a member of the Partido Liberación Nacional(PLN) - won the February 2006 presidential election with 40.92 per cent of all cast ballots. Arias headed the government from 1986 to 1990, and was able to run again after the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly opted to bring back presidential re-election in 2003. He was sworn in for the second time in May 2006.

Costa Rica belongs to a group of Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic that signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States. However, Costa Rica remains the only nation that has failed to ratify the treaty. The issue is polarizing the Central American country, where numerous demonstrations against the CAFTA take place regularly. Arias himself supports the treaty.

Earlier this month, former Costa Rican president Rafael Ángel Calderón - who governed from 1990 to 1994- announced he would become a candidate in the 2010 presidential election. Calderón spent a year in preventive prison and house arrest for his alleged involvement in an embezzlement case, but has never been formally accused of wrongdoing.

Polling Data

How would you rate Óscar Arias’s performance as president?

Source: Unimer / La Nación
Methodology: Interviews with 1,200 Costa Rican adults, conducted from Feb. 13 to Feb. 24, 2007. Margin of error is 2.8 per cent.