Corrales To Run For President. Again.
José Miguel Corrales will take another crack at the presidential chair, this time under the flag of a new party - the Partido Unión Patriótica (PU) - a national party which was recently formed.

More than 70 delegates of the met yesterday for the first meeting of the Asamblea Nacional following the official inscription of the party before the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones.

Corrales lost the presidential chair to President Abel Pacheco of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) in a run off vote in the 2006 presidential election. He ran under the Partito Liberación Nacional (PLN) flag - the green and white party . He also ran and lost against Miguel Angel Rodríguez in 1996, also of the PUSC.

Now that the PLN in the 2006 presidential election is being led by former president Oscar Arias, Corrales and several other key party figures left the party, saying they are against re-election, a change that was made to the constitution last year to allow Arias to make another bid for the presidential chair.

The 2006 election will be different than most of the other elections, as more than 20 parties will be fielding candidates in all areas of the country, several will be fielding a presidential candidate as well.

The traditional two party - PLN and PUSC - system was broken in the last election when the Partido Acción Cuidadana (PAC) fielded a presidential candidate - Otton Solís - and forced a run off election, the first time in costa Rica's history.

The 2006 presidential election is foreseen as another first, the first time a president is re-elected if Arias wins and the first time that such a great number of different parties made a bid for the presidency.

Corrales at the nomination meeting warned that "the TLC will not pass" and is asking for an alliance "to stop those who want to sell our country."