Day 6 And Still No President
It is now six days since the presidential elections and Costa Ricans are taking it all in stride. One of the closest election in the history of Costa Rica that has yet to decide who will lead the country for the next four years is nothing like other Latin American countries where protests and upheaval in the streets would demand immediate results.

At the close of the electronic count Monday afternoon, both presidential candidates Oscar Arias of the Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN) and Ottón Solís of the Partido Acción Cuidadana (PAC) were over the required 40% and neck and neck that only a few thousands votes separated them.

With less than 12% of the polling stations reporting, the Tribunal Supremo de Elecctiones (TSE), suspended the vote at 3:15pm Monday, opting for a manual count and scrutiny of all ballots cast.

Speculation as to will win is in all directions, from Arias taking a bigger lead to the lesser known party PAC and Solís coming out ahead. Rumours of the candidates knowing who has won and meetings between Arias, Solís and TSE officials are fueling even more speculation of vote tampering and the election results being fixed.

However, the truth is that the TSE wants to make sure that, since the final result may be close as only a handful of votes, there is no mistake and is taking time to scrutinize each and every ballot and employing a host of people for the count.

The TSE is the final authority on who will be president and it expects to have the results of the manual count before the end of the month.

No matter who will be proclaimed president, Arias or Solís, one thing is for sure - the country is divided. But, since the days immediately following the election, one would not know it as Costa Ricans have gone back to their normal daily lives.

However, there are few signs of anything out of the ordinary, as a small group of college students have been holding sporadic vigil in front of the TSE offices in San José and to protest Arias and the free trade deal with the United States.

Costa Ricans are accustomed to clean and transparent elections every four years and hours after the vote the results are in and the new president is proclaimed. That was broken in the 2002 elections when, for the first time in Costa Rican history, and a second round election was required to elect a president.