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SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — He was demoted from a senior place on the World Financial institution due to sexual harassment. Now, the economist Rodrigo Chaves — who has campaigned as a populist outsider in an election marked by anger at conventional politicians — leads the polls to turn out to be Costa Rica’s subsequent president on Sunday.
It’s an surprising rise to prominence in a rustic that has taken a lead position within the development of progressive insurance policies in Central America, underlining how the need to punish political elites for what many citizens see as an insufficient authorities response to the area’s political scandals and financial challenges is overshadowing most different points.
In 2019, Mr. Chavez was reprimanded by the World Financial institution for what was proven to be a sample of sexual misconduct towards junior staff, although the main points of his conduct had been made public by a Costa Rica newspaper solely in August — particulars the presidential candidate has repeatedly rebutted.
Mr. Chaves’s denial and downplaying of a documented historical past of sexual harassment come two years after one other Costa Rican politician, the previous president and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Óscar Arias Sánchez, narrowly averted prosecution for sexual abuse, in a scandal that shook the nation.
Mr. Arias was accused in 2019 of sexual assault or misconduct by no less than 9 girls, rising as some of the vital #MeToo instances in Latin America. Nevertheless, in December 2020, the fees introduced towards him by two of the ladies had been dropped.
Human rights activists now say that Mr. Chaves’s bid for energy threatens to undermine progress in Central America’s most liberal and egalitarian nation.
“The message that that is sending to society is that sexual abuse is one thing minor, one thing not severe,” mentioned Larissa Arroyo, a Costa Rican human rights lawyer. “This marketing campaign is normalizing and legitimizing the abuse.”
Mr. Chaves and his press workplace didn’t reply to an interview request.
Mr. Chaves languished in obscurity till his alliance with Pilar Cisneros, a distinguished feminine Costa Rican journalist, who introduced him to Costa Rican voters as an skilled administrator who would deal with corruption.
Only a day after Ms. Cisneros joined Mr. Chaves’s marketing campaign in August, the native newspaper La Nación made public the World Financial institution’s investigation that discovered he demonstrated a sample of sexual harassment towards junior feminine staff between 2008 and 2013.
Mr. Chaves responded by downplaying the findings: “Those that have kidnapped the nation are already displaying their concern of the candidacy of Rodrigo Chaves.” he mentioned in a video tackle posted on social media hours after the article’s publication.
The revelations did little to wreck Mr. Chaves’s marketing campaign. When the investigation was revealed, he was polling at simply 2 %. By the primary spherical of nationwide elections, held in February, he had earned sufficient votes to maneuver onto the presidential runoff.
Ms. Cisneros got here to Mr. Chaves’s protection, serving to to defend him from the complete influence of the revelations. “Do you suppose that Pilar Cisneros would have supported a sexual harasser?” she advised the native media in January. The following month, she received a congressional seat for Mr. Chaves’ get together.
Forward of the ultimate vote on Sunday, the state-run College of Costa Rica discovered Mr. Chaves narrowly main towards his opponent: a former Costa Rican president, José María Figueres. In a ballot of 1,000 voters performed by the college on March 24-28, Mr. Chaves led by 3.4 proportion factors, barely above the survey’s margin of error of three.1 %.
A separate ballot revealed by the College of Costa Rica on March 1 discovered that solely 13 % of voters thought that harassment accusations towards Mr. Chaves had been false. However 45 % mentioned that the accusations wouldn’t affect their vote.
Mr. Chaves has benefited from the unpopularity of his opponent, Mr. Figueres, who has been marred by accusations of corruption throughout his first time period in workplace within the Nineties. Mr. Figueres, who leads the nation’s oldest and largest political get together, the Nationwide Liberation Occasion, is accused of receiving funds within the early 2000s from a French telecommunications firm in return for preferential therapy whereas he was president.
Mr. Figueres has denied the accusations, and prosecutors who investigated the funds, which occurred after he stepped down, didn’t press prices.
Nevertheless, within the eyes of many Costa Ricans, Mr. Figueres and his get together have come to signify the venality and elitism of the nation’s political system, which many consider is not capable of remedy the nation’s financial issues, mentioned Ronald Alfaro, who leads the College of Costa Rica’s Heart of Political Research and Investigation.
Costa Rica’s tourism-reliant economic system suffered enormously from the pandemic — in 2020, its gross home product noticed its biggest drop in 4 a long time. Whereas components of the economic system bounced again, the nation is struggling to rein in rising meals and gas prices.
“The accusations find yourself canceling one another,” Mr. Alfaro mentioned. “Voters find yourself casting their ballots not for the candidate they like however towards the candidate they consider has extra fleas than the opposite,” he mentioned.
Turned off by the scandals round each candidates, most Costa Ricans seem to have misplaced curiosity within the election. Solely 1 / 4 of all registered voters forged their ballots for both Mr. Chaves or Mr. Figueres within the first spherical of elections, which had the bottom turnout in 70 years.
Paperwork from the World Financial institution’s inside tribunal and labor union present that Mr. Chaves was punished in 2019 after two feminine staff filed harassment complaints. On the time, he was the financial institution’s nation head for Indonesia, a director-level place overseeing billions of {dollars} of lending to one of many world’s largest growing economies.
The ladies mentioned Mr. Chaves made makes an attempt to kiss junior staff on the mouth, made sexual feedback about their appearances and repeatedly made unwelcome invites to resort rooms and dinners. The identities of the ladies haven’t been made public.
One lady, who reported to Mr. Chaves, advised the tribunal that he “commented that he preferred it when she bent over, then proceeded to drop an merchandise and ask her to select it up for him,” a request she mentioned she refused.
Mr. Chaves was demoted and his wage was frozen, however the financial institution stopped wanting explicitly calling his conduct sexual harassment. He left the group days later and returned to his native Costa Rica to turn out to be the finance minister for the president, Carlos Alvarado.
The Costa Rican Communication Ministry mentioned the present authorities had been unaware of the harassment case, and that Mr. Chaves advised its members on the time that he returned as a result of he wished to spend his retirement together with his aged mom.
Inside six months, Mr. Chaves left his ministry place and introduced a presidential bid with a little-known political get together, promising to “return energy to residents” by holding referendums on necessary coverage matters.
Regardless of Mr. Chaves’s departure from the World Financial institution, his accusers introduced an attraction to the inner tribunal to evaluate the financial institution’s misconduct investigation.
“The information of the current case point out that Mr. C’s conduct was sexual in nature and that he knew or ought to have identified that his conduct was unwelcome,” the tribunal mentioned in its June ruling. A World Financial institution official mentioned the financial institution didn’t dispute the information of the case as introduced within the ruling.
Even earlier than the ruling was issued, in January 2021, the group banned Mr. Chaves from its premises and imposed a rehiring ban. The financial institution’s sister group, the Worldwide Financial Fund, mentioned it additionally restricted Mr. Chaves’s entry to its premises.
Within the months since, Mr. Chaves has denied or misrepresented the findings; as a substitute, he’s mentioned that the World Financial institution discovered little greater than an allegation towards him, referring to the financial institution’s preliminary determination to not name his wrongdoings sexual harassment.
He has additionally mentioned that he can freely go to the World Financial institution’s places of work — contradicting the financial institution’s ban on his entry — and that as president he’ll proceed doing enterprise with the financial institution, which has $2.3 billion in excellent loans in Costa Rica.
Mr. Chaves has additionally promised to “revise” the legal guidelines on in vitro fertilization and abortion, which have been made extra accessible by current presidential decrees. Abortion is authorized in Costa Rica when the being pregnant threatens a lady’s well being.
These measures threaten to derail the gradual however noticeable advances in girls’s reproductive rights beneath the current governments, mentioned Ms. Arroyo, the human rights lawyer. She mentioned the proposals additionally would harm Costa Rica’s position within the development of social rights in a deeply socially conservative area the place abortion is basically banned and the place violence towards girls goes largely unpunished.
Costa Rica’s political stability and robust democracy have lengthy made it an outlier in a area dominated by authoritarians and arranged crime, and the nation has achieved certainly one of Latin America’s highest ranges of social inclusion, in areas starting from entry to training and well being care to civil rights.
“If Costa Rica declines in its safety of girls’s rights,” Ms. Arroyo mentioned, “it’s most probably that the remainder of the neighboring nations won’t have this instance to maintain shifting ahead.”
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