Solis, winning the initial count, likely the PAC presidential candidate for 2014

July 23^rd, 2013 (InsideCostaRica.com) Political scientist and historian, Luis Guillermo Solis was has been nominated as the 2014 presidential candidate by the Citizen Action Party (PAC).  The PAC is the leading opposition force in Costa Rica.

The announcement was made on Sunday, though a hand recount continues at press time due to the slight margin of victory.

Solis won with 35.53% of his party’s vote, beating his main challenger, Juan Carlos Mendoza by just 0.31%.  Mendoza received 35.22% of his party’s vote in the initial count.

Solis, a 55-year-old political scientist, historian, and professor at the University of Costa Rica, was a member of the competing National Liberation Party (PLN) for nearly three decades, serving as general secretary of the party between 2002 and 2003.

Solis left the party in 2005, citing the abandonment of the party’s original “social democratic” ideals and unacceptable levels of corruption.

“I’m from a generation that in the second half of the twentieth century benefited from a development model that allowed social mobility and a relatively equitable distribution of access to opportunities, which among other things allowed a strong reduction of poverty and a good rate of economic growth,” Solis said in a recent media interview.

“I would like to be president in order to re-empower these conditions that allowed Costa Rica to differentiate itself in Latin America,” he said.

This is the first time since the party’s founding in 2002 that the PAC will not nominate its founder, economist Otton Solis (no relation).

The PAC is the main opposition party in Costa Rica.  Among its ideals is the rejection of what in Costa Rica it refers to as “neoliberal” policies of privatization and trade liberalization.