Last Friday, Laura Fernandez took Costa Rica’s presidential sash from her predecessor and political patron, Rodrigo Chaves. But Chaves didn’t ride off into the sunset. Days before her inauguration, Fernandez announced that Chaves will continue to serve as both as minister of finance and as minister of the presidency, the most powerful position in the Cabinet.
Not only will the former president hold two of the country’s most powerful executive branch positions, but also, more than half of Fernandez’s top appointees are holdovers from the Chaves government. And in the unicameral legislature, where the ruling party now holds a majority, all signs suggest that most lawmakers are beholden to Chaves and not Fernandez. This means that Costa Rica will effectively have two presidents, only one of whom formally sits atop the governing system.
Fernandez won the election in the first round earlier this year with more than 48 percent of the vote, almost 15 points more than her nearest competitor. Her Sovereign People’s Party, known by its Spanish initials PPSO, took 31 of the 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly, likely preventing lawmakers from blocking or stalling her agenda as they sometimes did with her predecessor.