| Ottón Solís | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 31, 1954 Costa Rica |
| Nationality | Costa Rican |
| Fields | Latin American Studies |
| Institutions | University of Florida |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester |
Ottón Solís Fallas (born 31 May 1954 near Perez Zeledón) is a Costa Rica politician. He graduated with a BEcons from the University of Costa Rica in 1976 and gained a Master's Degree in Economics from the University of Manchester in 1978. He is currently an Eminent Scholar at the University of Florida.[1]
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Solís was the National Economics Minister and Political Planning during the Óscar Arias administration, acting in this capacity between 1986 and 1988. He was elected as a law-maker at the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998.
Solis is the founder, president and three time presidential candidate of the Citizens' Action Party (Partido Accion Ciudadana), which, in the 2002 Costa Rican presidential elections broke the prevailing bipartisan political model to occupy a strong third place in the Presidential race.
A virtual tie between former President Óscar Arias and Solís forced a recount in the 2006 presidential election. Ultimately, Arias won, though by only a few thousand votes over the 40 percent threshold required to avoid a runoff. The Citizens' Action party won 17 of the 57 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the national legislature, becoming the second most powerful political force of Costa Rica, ousting the Christian Social Unity Party from their traditional position. In the general election of 2010, Solis' PAC only received approximately 25% of the total vote, while his rival, Laura Chinchilla, the PLN's candidate obtained 47% of the vote turnover. It was the third attempt of Solis to reach the presidency of Costa Rica. on February 8 Solis announced that he was abandoning politics for good, expressing his desire to create spaces for a new emerging leaders with his party Solis leaves politics (in Spanish). In another interview Solis stated again that he is not planning to become again the PAC's presidential candidate. This decision reflects, in his opinion, the commitment of his party to renew Interview with Otton Solis (in Spanish).
Solís asserts that his party- PAC- is not guided by any ideology. In an interview he stated that "We, at PAC, have not been interested in adopting an ideology. There are proposals that can be considered as coming from the center-right, such as the efficiency of the state, sound fiscal and monetary policies, the conviction that work is what takes to get people out of poverty. But there are other views that can be perceived as socialist, such as our conviction that access to such things as health, education, electricity, telecommunications, culture, technology, and sport, cannot be left to the market forces; universal access criteria must prevail in those cases." How you can call that? I don’t know, but if God commands to say something then I’d say that our ideology is human rights and citizens’ action."
Solis has outspokenly criticized neoliberalism in Latin America that he associates with the policies advocated by the Washington Consensus, which in his view are wrong, and have led Latin America countries towards the wrong path. Interview
Solís is a critic of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). He has called for the renegotiations of CAFTA to add protection for vulnerable farmers and industrial companies. He has said that, in its current form, "CAFTA will increase poverty in Central America because it will displace farmers and industrial workers and will increase the cost of health care."[1] He also said that "I never imagined CAFTA was going to be so one sided", and "The law of the jungle benefits the big beast. We are a very small beast."[2] Solís sees several possible detrimental aspects that could come from CAFTA. First he claims that it will cause the breakup of the public telecommunications and electricity monopolies which will have to be privatized. Additionally he argues that the lowered trade barriers will cause a flood of cheap food products from the United States and this will force small-scale farmers out of the internal market.[3]